RECOMMENDED BOOKS 2018
A comprehensive list of the books I’ve consumed in 2018 to master the best of what other people have already figured out; includes re-reads and a mini-review of each book.
I started out with a goal of consuming two books a week.
I didn’t really care so much about retention, my strategy was exposure to as many ideas as possible.
If I had met my goal I would have gone through 104 books, I didn’t meet this goal. I ended up with 45 books.
But then the goal is not as important as the habit, I formed in the pursuit of the goal.
HERE ARE MY TOP TEN (10) BOOKS FOR 2018
1. Sapiens: A brief History of Humans — Yuval Noah Harris
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? Bold, wide-ranging, and provocative, Sapiens integrates history and science to challenge everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our heritage . . . and our future.
2. The Course of Love — Allain De Botton
This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience — fictional, philosophical, psychological — that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love.
3. Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy — Mark Regnerus
Sex is cheap. Coupled sexual activity has become more widely available than ever. Cheap sex has been made possible by two technologies that have little to do with each other — the Pill and high-quality pornography — and its distribution made more efficient by a third technological innovation, online dating. Together, they drive down the cost of real sex, and in turn, slow the development of love, make fidelity more challenging, sexual malleability more common, and have even taken a toll on men’s marriageability.
4. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty — Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?
Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it)
5. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World — Cal Newport
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfilment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.
6. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action — Simon Sinek
In 2009, Simon Sinek started a movement to help people become more inspired at work, and in turn, inspire their colleagues and customers. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, including more than 28 million who’ve watched his TED Talk based on START WITH WHY — the third most popular TED video of all time.
Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?
People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won’t truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.
7. Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples — Harville Hendrix PhD
Originally published in 1988, Getting the Love You Want has helped millions of couples attain more loving, supportive, and deeply satisfying relationships. The 20th-anniversary edition contains extensive revisions to this groundbreaking book, with a new chapter, new exercises, and a foreword detailing Dr. Hendrix’s updated philosophy for eliminating all negativity from couples’ daily interactions, allowing readers of the 2008 edition to benefit from his ongoing discoveries during his last two decades of work.
8. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert Cialdini
Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say “yes” — and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behaviour has resulted in this highly acclaimed book.
You’ll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader — and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.
9. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature — Matt Ridley
Referring to Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity’s best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture — including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved. Referring to Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity’s best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture — including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.
10. How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
I read this book every year! An amazing character guide.
You can go after the job you want — and get it!
You can take the job you have — and improve it!
You can take any situation — and make it work for you!
Dale Carnegie’s rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. One of the most groundbreaking and timeless bestsellers of all time, How to Win Friends & Influence People will teach you:
-Six ways to make people like you
-Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
-Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment
And much more! Achieve your maximum potential — a must-read for the twenty-first century with more than 15 million copies sold!
The Rest (in order of reading)
11. Eat that Frog — Brian Tracy
There’s an old saying that if the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’re done with the worst thing you’ll have to do all day. For Tracy, eating a frog is a metaphor for tackling your most challenging task — but also the one that can have the greatest positive impact on your life.
Eat That Frog! shows you how to organize each day so you can zero in on these critical tasks and accomplish them efficiently and effectively. The core of what is vital to effective time management is: decision, discipline, and determination. And in this fully revised and updated edition, Tracy adds two new chapters. The first explains how you can use technology to remind yourself of what is most important and protect yourself from what is least important. The second offers advice for maintaining focus in our era of constant distractions, electronic and otherwise.
12. Essentialism — Greg Mckeown
Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.
By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy — instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.
13. The Practicing Mind — Thomas Stener
In those times when we want to acquire a new skill or face a formidable challenge we hope to overcome, what we need most are patience, focus, and discipline, traits that seem elusive or difficult to maintain. In this enticing and practical book, Thomas Sterner demonstrates how to learn skills for any aspect of life, from golfing to business to parenting, by learning to love the process.
Early life is all about trial-and-error practice. If we had given up in the face of failure, repetition, and difficulty, we would never have learned to walk or tie our shoes. So why, as adults, do we often give up on a goal when at first we don’t succeed? In his study of how we learn (prompted by his pursuit of disciplines such as music and golf), Sterner has found that we have forgotten the principles of practice — the process of picking a goal and applying steady effort to reach it. The methods Sterner teaches show that practice done properly isn’t drudgery on the way to mastery but a fulfilling process in and of itself, one that builds discipline and clarity.
14. The Blockchain Revolution — Don Tapscott
In this revelatory book, Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son, blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and essential book about the technology driving the future of the economy.
Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolutionary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s best known as the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital currencies, it also has the potential to go far beyond currency, to record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certificates to insurance claims, land titles, and even votes.
15. Co-Opetition — Adam M. Brandenburger
Co-opetition is a business strategy that goes beyond the old rules of competition and cooperation to combine the advantages of both. Co-opetition is a pioneering, high profit means of leveraging business relationships.
Intel, Nintendo, American Express, NutraSweet, American Airlines, and dozens of other companies have been using the strategies of co-opetition to change the game of business to their benefit. Formulating strategies based on game theory, authors Brandenburger and Nalebuff created a book that’s insightful and instructive for managers eager to move their companies into a new mind set.
16. What Customers Want — Anthony Ulwick
In a book that challenges everything you have learned about being customer driven, internationally acclaimed innovation leader Anthony Ulwick reveals the secret weapon behind some of the most successful companies of recent years. Known as “outcome-driven” innovation, this revolutionary approach to new product and service creation transforms innovation from a nebulous art into a rigorous science from which randomness and uncertainty are eliminated.
Based on more than 200 studies spanning more than seventy companies and twenty-five industries, Ulwick contends that, when it comes to innovation, the traditional methods companies use to communicate with customers are the root cause of chronic waste and missed opportunity. In What Customers Want, Ulwick demonstrates that all popular qualitative research methods yield well-intentioned but unfitting and dreadfully misleading information that serves to derail the innovation process.
17. The Natural: How to Effortlessly Attract the Women You Want — Richard La Ruina
One of the world’s top pick-up artists, Richard La Ruina went from having no women to being a true master of seduction. Now he shows you how to do the same. So move over Mystery, and tell Neil Strauss that The Rules of the Game are about to be rewritten. Every element of the winning pickup is right here, from discovering confidence to exuding charm, learning conversation starters to mastering body language, to much more. And as you move from daydreaming to flirtation to passion to romance to love, The Natural will show you how it’s done.
18. The Passion Test —Janet Bray Attwood, Chris Attwood
Can a simple test change a person’s life? Through their New York Times bestseller The Passion Test, Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood have inspired thousands to shape their lives by discovering their passions and living according to what matters most to them. Readers can identify their top five passions by taking the Test, and then learn exactly how to align their lives with their priorities by following the Attwoods’ easy-to-follow step-by-step program of action.
Combining powerful storytelling and profound wisdom from models of passionate living such as Jack Canfield, Richard Paul Evans, and Stephen M.R. Covey, as well as drawing on their own personal experiences, the Attwoods show how living a full and impassioned life is not only possible, it’s inevitable — for anyone willing to take the Test.
19. Perennial Seller — Ryan Holiday
Bestselling author and marketer Ryan Holiday calls such works and artists perennial sellers. How do they endure and thrive while most books, movies, songs, video games, and pieces of art disappear quickly after initial success? How can we create and market creative works that achieve longevity?
Holiday explores this mystery by drawing on his extensive experience working with businesses and creators such as Google, American Apparel, and the author John Grisham, as well as his interviews with the minds behind some of the greatest perennial sellers of our time.
20. The Woman Question — Keneth Hagin
What is a woman’s place in the home? In the church? In the marriage relationship? Your questions answered.
Equipped with godly convictions and spiritual understanding, any woman can grow into the mighty vessel that God intended her to be! This book will answer questions such as: •Is the man the head of the woman? •Must women have their heads covered in church? •What is the proper dress and adornment for Christian women?
21. Enchantment — Guy Kawasaki
Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers and the undecided into the loyal.
Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.
Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions.
22. Fascinate — Sally Hogshead
And then there’s the most important question of all: How can your brand become impossible to resist? Master marketer Sally Hogshead reveals the surprising answers, providing readers with a framework to fascinating anyone.
The word “fascinate” comes from the Latin word fascinare, meaning “to bewitch or hold captive so others are powerless to resist.” Fascination is the most powerful force of attraction, drawing customers into a state of intense focus.
This extensively revised and updated edition includes Hogshead’s latest research on the science of fascination. Combining original case studies with award-winning copywriting experience, she gives you the exact words you need to capture the attention of a distracted world.
23. The Daily Stoic — Ryan Holiday
Why have history’s greatest minds — from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with today’s top performers from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities — embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise.
The Daily Stoic offers 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises, featuring all-new translations from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the playwright Seneca, or slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, as well as lesser-known luminaries like Zeno, Cleanthes, and Musonius Rufus. Every day of the year you’ll find one of their pithy, powerful quotations, as well as historical anecdotes, provocative commentary, and a helpful glossary of Greek terms.
24. Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy.Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the second book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the third book was written at Carnuntum. It is not clear that he ever intended the writings to be published, so the title Meditations is but one of several commonly assigned to the collection. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs.
25. The Enchiridion — Epictetus
Enchiridion written by legendary Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus is a manual of Stoic ethical advice. Compiled by Arrian, who was a student of Epictetus this great classic will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. For many, Enchiridion is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And for others who simply enjoy reading timeless pieces of classic literature, this gem by Epictetus is highly recommended. Published by Classic Books America and beautifully produced, Enchiridion would make an ideal gift and it should be a part of everyone’s personal library.
26.The Effective Execution — Peter Drucker
The measure of the executive, Peter F. Drucker reminds us, is the ability to “get the right things done.” This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.
Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned:
- Managing time
- Choosing what to contribute to the organization
- Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect
- Setting the right priorities
- Knitting all of them together with effective decision-making
27. Making Sense of Sex, How Genes and Gender Influence our Relationships — David P. Barash, Judith Eve Lipton
In Making Sense of Sex, the husband and wife team of David Barash, an evolutionary biologist, and Judith Lipton, a clinical psychiatrist, draw on their respective areas of expertise to explore and explain the central fact of our existence-that men and women are fundamentally, unalterably different. They present an eye-opening and wide-ranging consideration of what those differences are, how they came to be, why they are important, and what they mean in our everyday lives.
The authors integrate biological and anthropological findings with real-life stories of indviduals to address the conundrums that surround male-female behavior and relationships. Drawing on the latest research in evolutionary biology, they trace the multifaceted gender gap to the basic, defining difference between males and females: that one makes sperm, the other, eggs. They show how that distinction explains why women and men differ in essential ways, exploring such questions as: Why are men more attracted than women to pornography, group sex, and one-night stands? Why are women the “gatekeepers” of sex? Why do women have orgasms?
28. Traction, A Startup Guide to Getting Customers — Gabriel Weinberg
Most startups end in failure. Almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don’t have is traction — real customer growth.
This book introduces startup founders and employees to the “Bullseye Framework,” a five-step process successful companies use to get traction. This framework helps founders find the marketing channel that will be key to unlocking the next stage of growth.
Traction is a guide to getting customers, written for startup founders, marketers, and those interested in how today’s startups grow and get traction. This book shows you how the founders of several of the biggest companies and organizations in the world like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Paul English (Kayak.com) and Alex Pachikov (Evernote) have built and grown their startups. We interviewed over forty successful founders and researched countless more growth stories to pull out the repeatable tactics and strategies they used to get traction.
29. 168 Hours Laura Vanderkam
It’s an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are starved for time. We tell ourselves we’d like to read more, get to the gym regularly, try new hobbies, and accomplish all kinds of goals. But then we give up because there just aren’t enough hours to do it all. Or if we don’t make excuses, we make sacrifices- taking time out from other things in order to fit it all in. There has to be a better way…and Laura Vanderkam has found one. After interviewing dozens of successful, happy people, she realized that they allocate their time differently than most of us. Instead of letting the daily grind crowd out the important stuff, they start by making sure there’s time for the important stuff. When plans go wrong and they run out of time, only their lesser priorities suffer. Vanderkam shows that with a little examination and prioritizing, you’ll find it is possible to sleep eight hours a night, exercise five days a week, take piano lessons, and write a novel without giving up quality time for work, family, and other things that really matter.
30. Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion — Sam Harris
From Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of numerous New York Times bestselling books, Waking Up is for the twenty percent of Americans who follow no religion but who suspect that important truths can be found in the experiences of such figures as Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history. Throughout this book, Harris argues that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow, and that how we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the quality of our lives.
Waking Up is part memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris — a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic — could write it.
31. The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid — K. Prahaladin
Explaining that the world’s five billion poor make up the thefastest growing market in the world, Prahalad shows how this segment has vastuntapped buying power, and represents an enormous potential for companies wholearn how to serve this market by providing the poor with that they need.
32. Search Of The Perfect Healthcare System — Mark Britnell
With chapters on 25 different countries, this practical and succinct guide to the world’s major health systems explores what lessons can be drawn from each to improve health worldwide. Each chapter is an essay designed to give the reader essential knowledge of the history, strengths, weaknesses and lessons of each health system and provide a truly global health perspective — all in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
Whether a healthcare manager or a student studying health systems, this accessible and engaging book provides a fascinating insight in to how health care is delivered around the world.
33. Holy Sex — Gregory Popcak PhD
Common wisdom portrays sex and church to be at odds, yet studies show that Catholics have better sex, and more often. This witty, frank, and refreshingly orthodox book draws from the beautiful truths of Catholic teaching to show people of all faiths about rich and satisfying sexuality. Hailed by Christians across the spectrum from Christopher West and Janet E. Smith to John L. Allen, Jr., Holy Sex! includes dozens of questionnaires, quizzes, and valuable lessons from real-life stories.
34. Pre-suasion — Robert Cialdini
The acclaimed New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller from Robert Cialdini — “the foremost expert on effective persuasion” (Harvard Business Review) — explains how it’s not necessarily the message itself that changes minds, but the key moment before you deliver that message.
What separates effective communicators from truly successful persuaders? With the same rigorous scientific research and accessibility that made his Influence an iconic bestseller, Robert Cialdini explains how to prepare people to be receptive to a message before they experience it. Optimal persuasion is achieved only through optimal pre-suasion. In other words, to change “minds” a pre-suader must also change “states of mind.”
Named a “Best Business Books of 2016” by the Financial Times, and “compelling” by The Wall Street Journal, Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion draws on his extensive experience as the most cited social psychologist of our time and explains the techniques a person should implement to become a master persuader. Altering a listener’s attitudes, beliefs, or experiences isn’t necessary, says Cialdini — all that’s required is for a communicator to redirect the audience’s focus of attention before a relevant action.
35. Thinking Fast thinking Slow — Daniel Kahneman
In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.
36. The Tipping Point —Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell refers to the tipping point as that magic moment when a trend takes hold and spreads like wildfire. As in the spreading of a disease, where it goes from a mild inconvenience, to an epidemic, it is often a small change that causing a “tipping point.” Gladwell exposes these small changes and applies them to music, book and TV trends, as well as social movements. If you want to turn a small idea into a conflagration that takes over the country, this book will teach you how.
37. Willful Blindness —Margaret Heffernan
Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say, How could we have been so blind? Why do some people see what others don’t? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and from interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white collar criminals, distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, exploring the reasons that individuals and groups are blind to impending personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures-even crimes against humanity.
We turn a blind eye in order to feel safe, to avoid conflict, to reduce anxiety, and to protect prestige. But greater understanding leads to solutions, and Heffernan shows how-by challenging our biases, encouraging debate, discouraging conformity, and not backing away from difficult or complicated problems-we can be more mindful of what’s going on around us and be proactive instead of reactive.
38. Getting to Yes —Roger Fisher
Getting to Yes has helped millions of people learn a better way to negotiate. One of the primary business texts of the modern era, it is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution.
Getting to Yes offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict. Thoroughly updated and revised, it offers readers a straight- forward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting angry-or getting taken.
39. Never split the difference — Chris Voss
After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles — counterintuitive tactics and strategies — you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.
Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Difference gives you the competitive edge in any discussion.
40. The Way of the Superior Man —David Deida
Though much has changed in society since the first publication of The Way of the Superior Man, men of all ages still “tussle with the challenges of women, work, and sexual desire.” Including an all-new preface by author David Deida, this 20th-anniversary edition of the classic guide to male spirituality offers the next generation the opportunity to cultivate trust in the moment and put forth the best versions of themselves in an ever-changing world.
In The Way of the Superior Man, Deida explores the most important issues in men’s lives―from career and family to women and intimacy to love and spirituality―to offer a practical guidebook for living a masculine life of integrity, authenticity, and freedom. Join this bestselling author and internationally renowned expert on sexual spirituality for straightforward advice, empowering skills, body practices, and more to help you realize a life of fulfilment, immediately and without compromise.
41. How to become a Straight A student — Cal Newport
Most college students believe that straight A’s can be achieved only through cramming and painful all-nighters at the library. But Cal Newport knows that real straight-A students don’t study harder — they study smarter. A breakthrough approach to acing academic assignments, from quizzes and exams to essays and papers, How to Become a Straight-A Student reveals for the first time the proven study secrets of real straight-A students across the country and weaves them into a simple, practical system that anyone can master.
42. The All or Nothing Marriage — Eli J Finkel
Eli J. Finkel’s insightful and ground-breaking investigation of marriage clearly shows that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. Indeed, they are the best marriages the world has ever known. He presents his findings here for the first time in this lucid, inspiring guide to modern marital bliss.
The All-or-Nothing Marriage reverse engineers fulfilling marriages — from the “traditional” to the utterly nontraditional — and shows how any marriage can be better.
The primary function of marriage from 1620 to 1850 was food, shelter, and protection from violence; from 1850 to 1965, the purpose revolved around love and companionship. But today, a new kind of marriage has emerged, one oriented toward self-discover, self-esteem, and personal growth. Finkel combines cutting-edge scientific research with practical advice; he considers paths to better communication and responsiveness; he offers guidance on when to recalibrate our expectations; and he even introduces a set of must-try “lovehacks.”
43. Who Stole Feminism — Christina Hoff Sommers
Philosophy professor Christina Sommers has exposed a disturbing development: how a group of zealots, claiming to speak for all women, are promoting a dangerous new agenda that threatens our most cherished ideals and sets women against men in all spheres of life. In case after case, Sommers shows how these extremists have propped up their arguments with highly questionable but well-funded research, presenting inflammatory and often inaccurate information and stifling any semblance of free and open scrutiny. Trumpeted as orthodoxy, the resulting “findings” on everything from rape to domestic abuse to economic bias to the supposed crisis in girls’ self-esteem perpetuate a view of women as victims of the “patriarchy”. Moreover, these arguments and the supposed facts on which they are based have had enormous influence beyond the academy, where they have shaken the foundations of our educational, scientific, and legal institutions and have fostered resentment and alienation in our private lives. Despite its current dominance, Sommers maintains, such a breed of feminism is at odds with the real aspirations and values of most American women and undermines the cause of true equality. Who Stole Feminism? is a call to arms that will enrage or inspire, but cannot be ignored.
44. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature — Matt Ridley
Referring to Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity’s best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture — including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.
45. Foundation: Foundation Prelude — Isaac Asimov
This daring story of humanity’s future introduces one of the great masterworks of science fiction: the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov. Unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, bold ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of people to save civilization from a relentless tide of darkness and violence — beginning with one exceptional man.
It is the year 12,020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, forty billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall — those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future.
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