Books Recommended by Jordan B. Peterson
Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist and psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He authored the books “Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief” (1999) and “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” (2018). His main areas of study are in the psychology of religious and ideological belief, and the assessment and improvement of personality and performance.
Peterson is the co-creator of two online programs that help people better understand themselves, but also to change. One of them is the Self Authoring Program – a series of online writing programs that help people explore and resolve problems of their past, rectify their present personality faults, enhance virtues, and improve their future. The other program is Understand Myself and it provides users with detailed information about their personalities.
Peterson has a B.A. in political science and psychology from the University of Alberta, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from McGill University. He also stayed as a post-doctoral fellow at McGill’s Douglas Hospital until 1993.
Between 1993 to 1997, he lived in Massachusetts, while teaching and conducting research at Harvard University as an assistant and an associate professor in the psychology department.
Peterson moved back to Canada in 1998 and became a full-time professor at the University of Toronto. One year later, he released his first book, ‘Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief’, which examines several academic fields to describe the structure of systems of beliefs and myths, their role in the regulation of emotion, and more. In 2004, a 13-part TV series based on the book aired on TVOntario.
Since his Harvard years, Jordan video-recorded his classes which were popular among students. He then uploaded them on YouTube, so that his students were able to access them whenever they wanted. But after the Canadian government introduced a new law where gender identity and gender expression were added to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination, Jordan started uploading a series of videos titled “Professor against political correctness”, where he criticized Canada’s ultra-liberal policies related to gender politics and free speech. He stated that the new laws and doctrines scare him and, by today, he still refuses to call transgender persons by their pronouns.
Peterson started appearing as a guest at various podcasts, including The Joe Rogan Experience and Jocko Podcast, and slowly gained a huge audience.
In January 2018, he released his second book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos“, where he combined ancient tradition, faith and scientific research on human nature, and it’s one of the most popular books since.
Soon after the release, there was a fiery interview with Cathy Newman that made him gain overnight success. In less than one day after the talk, his book became an Amazon bestseller, the video had 3 million views on YouTube, and Peterson’s digital channels exploded. Although he attracted a lot of criticism, his large events from his worldwide book tour were consistently sold out, he has been among Top 10 Patreon creators 8 months in a row, and numerous Facebook fan groups were formed.
