Wherever You Go, There You Are

Jon Kabat-Zinn, an emeritus medicine professor at the University of Massachusetts, lays out a simple path for building mindfulness through meditation. He describes mindfulness as paying attention moment by moment, on purpose, with curiosity and compassion. Meditation is presented as a practice with scientific backing for lowering stress, sharpening cognitive function and raising awareness, and its exercises need no special place or time. It addresses both newcomers to meditation and people who have practiced for years. First published in 1994, it sold more than 750,000 copies in its first decade, and a tenth-anniversary edition added a new afterword by the author.

Andrew Huberman said he read it years ago and found it beautiful both as an object and in its content, with lessons in sitting down, following the breath, shifting focus and attending to the experience of eating one almond.