Here are nine books that can help you understand the modern world, make better decisions, be more creative, and control your emotions.
1. Don’t Bite the Hook – Pema Chodron
Pema, a Buddhist nun who converted later in life from American roots, is a great teacher. She is able to simply and clearly connect with listeners and readers about a few powerful insights. In this book she talks about shenpa, the cycle of anxiety we buy into whenever confronted with a stressful situation.
2. Awakening the Buddha Within – Lama Surya Das
There are countless books for Westerners in search of the simple insights of Buddhism. This book is quite detailed and serious.
3. Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity – Hugh MacLeod
There are a million books about creativity. There are very few books that challenge the resistance so directly and effectively. This book eliminates the excuses that have been holding you back from being creative.
4. Presentation Zen – Garr Reynolds
A collection of effective tactics that are available to anyone who has made the choice to be more productive using a Zen approach.
5. The Lonely Crowd – David Riesman
This is a great sociology book; the key argument is that fitting into a large group is a relatively new phenomenon and it has changed the way human beings interact.
6. The Managed Heart – Arlie Russell Hochschild
Hochschild was given significant access to stewardesses working at Delta Airlines in the 1960s. She chronicles the deadening pain they felt as they were forced to bring cheerfulness and emotion to work each day. This was a breakthrough on the study of human emotions.
7. Stone Age Economics – Marshall Sahlins
Despite the clever title, this book is actually about how primitive cultures worked. One key takeaway is that hunter-gatherers were the idle rich. They worked about three hours a day and spent the rest of the day resting.
8. Honest Signals – Alex Pentland
Pentland is a professor at MIT, and this is ostensibly a book about some amazing technology he’s putting together that measures the interactions people have all day. This is about the incredible power of nonverbal communication and tribal hierarchies in the way we interact.
9. Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless.
Hat tip to Love My Life Right Now
Fiction for a New Age 