Our Work

From the Academy

How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them

By Barbara F. Walter

A leading political scientist examines the dramatic rise in violent extremism around the globe and warns, “It could happen here.”

With her 2022 New York Times bestseller, How Civil Wars Start, Barbara Walter reshaped the conversation about the state of American democracy. The book won the Global Policy Institute Award, which is given to books that have “profoundly impacted the discussion of global politics.” It was named Book of the Year by The Sunday Times and one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times, The Times (UK), Esquire, and Prospect (UK). Walter has appeared on NPR, PBS Newshour, MSNBC, and TED to discuss her insights, and her book has been praised by publications such as The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, which deemed it “required reading for anyone invested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government.”

Walter, the Rohr Professor of International Affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego, came to Verto with a wealth of quantitative research on the origins of political violence around the world—and an urgent warning for the public. In our time working on How Civil Wars Start, we helped Walter distill her field’s findings into clear, accessible principles and helped shape her insights into a forceful book-length argument. Along the way, we worked with Walter to develop narrative case studies—including her own time in the field—that helped bring the book’s ideas to life. Her book stands as a model for social scientists who want to bring ideas from the academy to a wider audience and contribute to the public conversation.

Practical Nonfiction

Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It

By Jennifer Breheny Wallace

The definitive book on the “toxic achievement culture” overtaking kids’ and parents’ lives—and a new framework for fighting back.

Jennifer Wallace’s Never Enough became an instant New York Times bestseller when it was published in 2023. An Amazon Best Book of the Year and a selection by the Next Big Idea Club, Never Enough spoke to a generation of parents who saw their kids (and themselves) succumbing to the relentless pressures of grades, extracurriculars, and college admissions. Wallace’s observations about the roots of our toxic achievement culture, and how parents can resist and navigate it, earned wide praise from publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Journal of Books, and Publishers Weekly, as well as figures such as Angela Duckworth and Katie Couric, who described the book as “a wake up call for all of us.”

Verto is committed to supporting books that make a material difference in the world, and our collaboration with Wallace, an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared at 60 Minutes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, is a prime example. For Never Enough, we teamed up in the early stages of the project, providing coaching as Wallace balanced the competing demands of writing, research, and extensive reporting with students, parents, and experts across the country. Our team of editors, with decades of collective journalism experience, helped Wallace identify her best material and offered counsel on the most productive steps forward, encouraging ideas that took the book in exciting directions nobody had anticipated. Following on the success of Never Enough, Verto also worked with Wallace as she developed and wrote her second book, Mattering, forthcoming from Portfolio.

Social Critique

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

By Rhaina Cohen

Why do we assume romantic relationships are more important than friendships? And what can we learn about commitment, love, and family from people who put deep friendship at the center of their lives?

Named a favorite book of 2024 by The Marginalian, The Behavioral Scientist, Greater Good Magazine, and BookRiot, Rhaina Cohen’s The Other Significant Others follows the stories of people who have chosen to make friends, rather than spouses, their closest partners in life. Cohen weaves together original reporting with social science research and her own unusual journey to illuminate the challenges and rewards of breaking from the conventional mold of a fulfilling relationship. Her intimate storytelling and clear-eyed commentary made the book both a national bestseller and an Indie Bestseller, and earned her wide praise from outlets such as The Guardian, Booklist, Mother Jones, and Publishers Weekly. Ezra Klein “loved and recommended [The Other Significant Others] to everybody,” while Trevor Noah said, “It’s become my new bible.”

Cohen, a journalist at NPR, came to Verto for guidance as she tackled the challenges of a first book. Our team did development work with her in a few targeted areas: revising her chapter structure, honing her longform storytelling, and sharpening her ambitious argument.

Investigative Journalism

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination

By Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang

Award-winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang unveil the tech story of our times in a riveting, behind-the-scenes exposé.

Lauded as “the ultimate takedown” by the New York Times Book Review, An Ugly Truth is a stunning feat of investigative journalism. Frenkel and Kang drew on hundreds of original interviews to lay bare the costs of Facebook’s ruthless pursuit of growth. Their tireless and deeply sourced work made the book an instant New York Times bestseller, a winner of the Sabew Best in Business Award, and a Book of the Year at Fortune, Foreign Affairs, The Times (London), Cosmopolitan, TechCrunch, and WIRED. The book was also praised in publications such as the Washington Post, Business Insider, The Guardian, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly, which called the book “a paragon of investigative journalism.”

Verto served as a kind of virtual newsroom for Frenkel and Kang, offering editorial feedback on raw material and helping the team select reporting priorities in a quickly evolving and often adversarial environment. We also provided advice on structuring chapters, developing characters, and rendering scenes, even as Frenkel and Kang’s aggressive reporting continued.

Whistleblower Memoir

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

By Christopher Wylie

The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower tells the inside story of the data mining and psychological manipulation behind the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum, connecting Facebook, WikiLeaks, Russian intelligence, and international hackers.

Praised in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and The Guardian, among other publications, Mindf*ck is a riveting insider account of Cambridge Analytica’s “American operations.” Wylie’s whistleblowing in 2018 led to the largest data-crime investigation in history, and prompted Time magazine to include him in its list of the 100 Most Influential People of 2018. In Mindf*ck, an excerpt of which was featured in New York magazine’s One Great Story, Wylie recounts his role in the scandal and sounds the alarm about the terrifying new weapons of psychological manipulation and political influence that threaten democracies around the world.

Wylie came to Verto for help drafting Mindf*ck under an extraordinarily tight deadline, and required a level of operational security unusual for a typical book project. As Wylie navigated the pressures of being a whistleblower at the center of a massive international scandal, Verto helped Wylie craft a real-life thriller that also provided a deep analysis of the technological, psychological, and political forces that were building a dangerous new world. It is a work that, sadly, looks more prescient by the day.