What do you think?
Rate this book
The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck—and 4 Actions for Real Change
Winner of the 2025 North American Book Award Bronze Medal for Leadership and Management, and selected by Porchlight Book Company as one of the Best Business Books of 2025.
“What’s wrong with nice?!” A simple and powerful question. It demands we interrogate the unspoken rules that shape our lives, often without our realizing it.
“It costs nothing to be nice!” What a travesty of logic. Niceness is not free—it comes at a steep price. It’s a velvet glove over an iron fist, stifling dissent, prioritizing comfort over progress, and conditioning us to accept the status quo. Niceness is one of the most insidious social constructs, keeping us compliant, silent, and complicit in inequity. If we don’t question it, we stay exactly where power wants us—agreeable, easy to manage, and stuck.
The Price of Nice is about breaking free. Amira Barger deconstructs our cultural obsession with niceness, exposes its hidden costs, and offers a practical framework for real change. With sharp analysis and personal insight, she helps readers disrupt the narratives that keep them stuck and reclaim their power.
Guided by four dimensions rooted in social psychology—think, feel, do, revisit—this book offers immediate, adaptable practices for creating change. Because breaking free isn’t only what you know—it’s what you do next.
If you're tired of “good enough,” this book will challenge you, change you, and call you to more.
“What’s wrong with nice?!” A simple and powerful question. It demands we interrogate the unspoken rules that shape our lives, often without our realizing it.
“It costs nothing to be nice!” What a travesty of logic. Niceness is not free—it comes at a steep price. It’s a velvet glove over an iron fist, stifling dissent, prioritizing comfort over progress, and conditioning us to accept the status quo. Niceness is one of the most insidious social constructs, keeping us compliant, silent, and complicit in inequity. If we don’t question it, we stay exactly where power wants us—agreeable, easy to manage, and stuck.
The Price of Nice is about breaking free. Amira Barger deconstructs our cultural obsession with niceness, exposes its hidden costs, and offers a practical framework for real change. With sharp analysis and personal insight, she helps readers disrupt the narratives that keep them stuck and reclaim their power.
Guided by four dimensions rooted in social psychology—think, feel, do, revisit—this book offers immediate, adaptable practices for creating change. Because breaking free isn’t only what you know—it’s what you do next.
If you're tired of “good enough,” this book will challenge you, change you, and call you to more.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 28, 2025
5 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
Amira Barger
2 books4 followersAmira K.S. Barger, MBA, CVA, CFRE is a behavioral communications and marketing counselor, professor, author, and fearlessly authentic leader working at the intersection of health equity, DEI, and employee engagement to help organizations tackle society’s most pressing challenges.
She is the author of The Price of Nice, releasing on October 28, 2025—a bold exploration of how superficial niceness hinders real progress in workplaces and society.
Amira serves as Executive Vice President at a global consulting firm, where she provides senior counsel in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and strategic communications. A multi-award-winning scholar-practitioner and data-informed organizational architect, she teaches marketing, communications, and change management at California State University East Bay. Her work leverages design thinking to advance DEI and solve complex problems with clarity and care.
She writes about Black women in the workplace, Black motherhood, and the bold actions individuals and institutions must take to advance Black liberation.
Outside of work, she and her family are on a mission to visit all 417 U.S. national parks, collecting National Park Passport stamps along the way. She lives in Benicia, CA, with her life partner of 20+ years, Jonathan, their daughter Audrey, and their two furry sons, Bucky and Potato.
Get in touch: hello@amirabarger.com | mira.barger@csueastbay.edu
She is the author of The Price of Nice, releasing on October 28, 2025—a bold exploration of how superficial niceness hinders real progress in workplaces and society.
Amira serves as Executive Vice President at a global consulting firm, where she provides senior counsel in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and strategic communications. A multi-award-winning scholar-practitioner and data-informed organizational architect, she teaches marketing, communications, and change management at California State University East Bay. Her work leverages design thinking to advance DEI and solve complex problems with clarity and care.
She writes about Black women in the workplace, Black motherhood, and the bold actions individuals and institutions must take to advance Black liberation.
Outside of work, she and her family are on a mission to visit all 417 U.S. national parks, collecting National Park Passport stamps along the way. She lives in Benicia, CA, with her life partner of 20+ years, Jonathan, their daughter Audrey, and their two furry sons, Bucky and Potato.
Get in touch: hello@amirabarger.com | mira.barger@csueastbay.edu
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.