The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch, who taught computer science at Carnegie Mellon, already knew he had terminal pancreatic cancer when he gave a talk in his university's last lecture series, on achieving the dreams of childhood. The talk was about living rather than dying: getting past obstacles, helping other people reach their dreams and making use of every moment. With Wall Street Journal writer Jeffrey Zaslow, Pausch turned it into a book meant partly as advice for his three young children. Each of its nine chapters opens with an episode from his life, then draws out what it taught him or how it moved him toward the dreams he had as a boy.

Andrew Huberman has called it one of his favorite books, and Jay Shetty urged his followers to read it.