Books Recommended by Mark Manson

An impersonal account of human nature and behavior and the structures that form human society. Imagine if an alien visited Earth for a few thousand years and then had to write a report to explain humans back home.

Frankl also survived Auschwitz, but he also happened to be a celebrated psychiatrist. This book argues for a therapeutic model based on a human sense of meaning, with much of it argued from Frankl’s experiences with the Nazis.

Another self-help classic, this time geared towards productivity and discipline. Timeless.

The Nobel Prize winner’s authoritative description and explanation of the cognitive biases that wreak havoc on our ability to understand the world.

Indistractable is the most practical and realistic approach to balancing technology with well-being. A must-read for anyone with a smartphone.

Imagine a self-help book written by the emperor of roughly ⅓ of the planet. Yeah, that’s what this is.

In this age of manufactured outrage and constant distraction, the ability to choose a focused inner stillness is arguably more important than ever before. Ryan Holiday’s book revives ancient wisdom that calls for a quiet life in a noisy and restless world.

Maybe the most condensed piece of wisdom on the market. Can be read in a day, yet practiced for a lifetime.

Written almost 500 years ago, this book is just as relevant now as ever. Machiavelli spent his career as an advisor to royalty. This book was his realistic and amoral advice to any would-be ruler or person in power.

A wonderful book on how our minds resist accepting data that runs counter to our assumptions and beliefs.

I read a bunch of books on writing before I wrote my first book and the two that stuck with me were Stephen King’s book and “On Writing Well” by Zinsser (which is a bit on the technical side).

A tome of a book. Pinker tracks the history of violence and makes the counterintuitive and controversial argument that we are less violent today than we have ever been before.

A short rumination on death and what makes life worth living by probably the most famous stoic philosopher.

A definitive look at how resilience or the ability to persist in the face of adversity determines our results more than almost anything else.

The best book on happiness I’ve ever come across. Gilbert’s take is that the problem isn’t that we can’t find happiness, it’s that we often don’t even know what happiness is.

The Durants wrote an 11-volume “History of the World” series that took up pretty much all of their adult lives. This small book is the distillations of the lessons from their decades of research.

A controversial classic from the 60s, Kuhn argues that large leaps in scientific progress necessarily must come from outside the scientific establishment.

I read a bunch of books on writing before I wrote my first book and the two that stuck with me were Stephen King’s book and “On Writing Well” by Zinsser (which is a bit on the technical side).

A wonderful marriage between ancient philosophical wisdom and modern psychological findings. Discusses how old ideas on happiness, success and virtue often have present-day scientific weight to them.

The origination of political science and a brilliant critique of government that is still important today.

A beautiful layman’s explanation of the Big Bang, astrophysics and the theoretical explanations behind our universe.

Brown’s best, in my opinion. This book shows how her ideas about vulnerability look in the real world.

Perhaps the most dizzyingly brilliant, fascinating and interesting books I’ve ever read. The book is about paradoxes and how they can explain consciousness. But to understand his thesis, Hofstadter takes you on an unforgettable journey to get there.

Written on his death bed, a look at how all of our anxieties and motivations are ultimately rooted in our fear of our own non-existence. Profound and thought-provoking.

The biography of Robert Moses, the most powerful man in New York City for most of the 20th century. The book uses his life to look at the nature of power.

Haidt puts forth an argument for a personality-driven model of political beliefs. Hugely important to understand why people believe what they believe.

Hoffer’s classic looks at the nature of mass movements, why they happen, and how they organize. Reportedly, this was Eisenhower’s favorite book.

Incredibly vulnerable, poignant and well-written. Strayed’s responses as an advice columnist are some of the most beautiful pieces of advice I’ve ever come across.

A tour de force of modern scientific thought. Bryson starts at the Big Bang and brings us all the way up to present day.

Probably Nietzsche’s most cogent statement of his views: that traditional morality is subjective and that people must evolve to a higher understanding of what’s valuable and what is not.

I read a bunch of books on writing before I wrote my first book and the two that stuck with me were Stephen King’s book and “On Writing Well” by Zinsser (which is a bit on the technical side). I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic.”

The root of Aristotelian ethics and therefore many of the moral ideas that underpin all of western civilization.

A difficult read and a total mind-fuck. Through painstaking logic, Parfit shows that: acting in self-interest is impossible, personhood does not exist, and pretty much anything you do is evil. This is considered by many to be the most important psychological work of the later 20th century.

An incredibly important idea for living in the age of abundance. Schwartz’s work finds that by multiplying our options and choices, we often become less satisfied with whatever we choose. Huge implications for 21st-century life.

The most definitive historical account of World War II, the Nazi Party and the Holocaust.

Sometimes an idea changes how you see the world. Dawkins explains the revolutionary idea in biology of gene selection, completely flipping evolutionary thought on its head.

The basis of empiricism the rival school of philosophical thought during the Enlightenment.

The original memoir. Confessions would inform a millennium of church theology and western philosophy.

Rationalism and empiricism were united under Kant’s immense observations about the limits of human cognition and reason. Arguably the most important philosophical work since the ancient Greeks.

Democracy for Realists is an eye-opening and sober look at the data on democracy and what makes it effective/ineffective. Hint: people are stupid.

The basis of rationalism, a school of philosophical thought that dominated during the Enlightenment.

Source of Descartes famous “I think, therefore I am.”

A tour de force against the desire to avoid, ignore and deny the role of genetics in human behavior and society.

Kegan integrates almost 100 years of developmental psychology research into one elegant model of how humans grow and mature.

Fukuyama’s magnum opus, a sprawling history of all human political systems and why some succeed and others fail.

Based on the famous line from Robert Frost, Peck’s book is often considered a self-help classic for its realism and sober viewpoints on suffering, love and growth.