Angela Duckworth’s best-selling 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance describes how persistent practice, and not mere talent, is the key to success among students and professionals. Duckworth’s extensive research demonstrates that young people do best in activities that hold their interest and give them a sense of purpose. This encourages them to practice hard and overcome obstacles until they achieve mastery and success in school and, later, in their professional lives. The... Read Grit Summary

Historian and anthropologist Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) is a multidisciplinary study that uses anthropological, biological, evolutionary, and socio-economic analysis to chart the fates of different peoples throughout human history. Subtitled first as A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, and later as The Fates of Human Societies, the book seeks to understand why some groups of people have prospered while others have failed to advance to the same extent... Read Guns, Germs, and Steel Summary

Studs Terkel’s Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) features interviews with 160 people, the vast majority of whom lived through the Depression. Some interviews consist of only a few paragraphs, others two or three pages. Each interviewee shares Depression-era recollections. Terkel selects interviewees who together represent a cross-section of American society, including migratory workers, union organizers, evicted tenants, jazz musicians, actresses, teachers, writers, stockbrokers, coal miners, farmers, and members of President... Read Hard Times Summary

Heartland (2018) is both a memoir of Sarah Smarsh’s upbringing in rural Kansas as the daughter of working-class people and an exploration of the class system in America today. The book is subtitled: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth; this hits the core of the book, as Smarsh seeks to use her family’s anecdotes and memories to get to the truth of why mostly honest, hardworking people... Read Heartland Summary

Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things is a 2023 treatise by Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. This nonfiction work focuses on personal development and psychology. Grant is well-known for his extensive research on work motivation, organizational dynamics, and human behavior in professional settings, making him an authoritative voice on the subject of potential. His previous works, such as Give and Take (2013)... Read Hidden Potential Summary

Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products (2014) is a best bestselling book by Israeli-American author Nir Eyal, who draws upon his work a startup founder, gaming and ad designer, consultant, and professor of consumer psychology. In Hooked, Eyal coaches businesses and tech designers on how to increase user engagement through habit-forming design. He argues that, for modern tech companies, success is not only dependent on their total number of users, but how frequently those... Read Hooked Summary

How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle (2025) is a work of economic history and analysis by the American investor and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio. Published amid rising interest costs, geopolitical tension, and global fiscal uncertainty, the book serves as both a diagnosis of current problems and a cautionary tale for the future. Dalio combines data-driven research, historical comparison, and economic insight to reveal what he calls the “Big Debt Cycle”—a recurring pattern of... Read How Countries Go Broke Summary

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is a nonfiction book by Walter Rodney, a historian and political activist from Guyana. Originally published in 1972, this influential book describes how European regimes exploited Africa for their own enrichment while simultaneously creating insurmountable obstacles to economic, political, and social progress on the continent. In contrast to other scholars, who focus on the economic aspects of African development, Rodney considers economics alongside politics and various aspects of culture, such as... Read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Summary

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need (published in 2021) is a nonfiction book by Bill Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft. Gates is a founding member of Breakthrough Energy, an organization of private investors who first came together in 2015 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris to support the goal of fighting climate change. He was also a leader of the Global Commission on... Read How to Avoid a Climate Disaster Summary

How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery (2015) is a nonfiction book by Kevin Ashton about creativity. Ashton has led three start-ups and was a pioneer in the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) in inventory systems, underscoring his business credibility in this area. His thesis extends into the creative process involved in any field, including art and medicine. Ashton’s main point strikes an open and democratic tone: Being creative is... Read How to Fly a Horse Summary

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a 2013 satirical novel written by Mohsin Hamid. It tells the story of an unnamed narrator in an unconventional format: written from the second person point of view, it is ostensibly a self-help manual that unfolds in novelistic prose. At the beginning of each chapter, the narrator offers a brief discourse on topics as diverse as self-help, memoir, debt, or the reading and writing of literature... Read How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia Summary

How to Lie with Statistics is a 1954 nonfiction book written by journalist Darrell Huff to give the general reader ways to recognize deceptive statistics. Huff, supported by illustrations by Irving Geis, uses a combination of fabricated and actual examples of statistics that have errors, are misused, or can otherwise mislead an audience. Although Huff is a journalist with no background in the field, How to Lie with Statistics remains a best-selling text translated into... Read How to Lie with Statistics Summary

Theo Baker’s 2026 nonfiction book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University, is a work of investigative journalism and a coming-of-age memoir. The book chronicles Baker’s freshman year at Stanford University, where his initial ambition to become a coder in Silicon Valley is sidetracked when he joins the student newspaper. A series of investigations pulls him deeper into a campus culture defined by ethical decay, culminating in his reporting on... Read How to Rule the World Summary

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living is a self-help guide by Dale Carnegie. First published in 1948, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living established a benchmark for many subsequent self-help books on overcoming anxiety. The book outlines the adverse effects of anxiety on health and happiness and offers practical techniques to combat the habit of worrying. Throughout the text, the author advocates cultivating a positive mindset as a means of attaining inner peace... Read How to Stop Worrying and Start Living Summary

First published in 1936, Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People launched the American self-help industry, sold over 30 million copies, and became a template for the thousands of self-improvement books that followed. It asserts that success with others depends on listening, showing appreciation, and empathizing with them. The book was revised in 1981; the 2020 eBook re-issue of that edition is the basis for this study guide.The book is divided into... Read How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary

How Will You Measure Your Life? is a 2012 nonfiction book written by Clayton M. Christensen and co-authored by James Allworth and Karen Dillon. Christensen was a renowned professor at Harvard and also an experienced businessman in his own right. The book offers self-help guidance informed by business theory and uses case studies to provide insight for how best to find lasting happiness and personal satisfaction in life. This guide is based on the Kindle... Read How Will You Measure Your Life? Summary

Emily Dickinson’s Poem 54 received the title “If I Should Die” by an editor long after Dickinson’s death in 1886. The title bears the side effects of Dickinson's reputation: She's often viewed as a self-isolating woman with morbid thoughts always mulling over death, most often her own, thoughts she placed in verse—she talks here, for instance, about her grave decorated with daisies and even speculates on how attractive death could be if perceived at the... Read If I should die Summary

Vladimir Lenin wrote Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism in the midst of World War I. It was originally published in 1917. Lenin aims to put forth a “composite picture of the world capitalist system in its international relationships” at the turn of the 20th century (8). Lenin identifies World War I as an imperialist conflict that will end in social upheaval regardless of the outcome; capitalist powers will further entrench their ideals into society... Read Imperialism Summary

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini first appeared in 1984. The book was released again in 1994 and 2007. The first three editions of Influence, which has been translated into 44 languages, tallied 5,000,000 sales around the world. In 2021, Cialdini released the fourth edition of the book. The latest version includes current insights into the digital age and many testimonials from readers of previous editions. In Influence, Cialdini describes “levers of... Read Influence Summary

Originally published in 2019, Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men exposes the fact that despite differences in biology and societal roles, men are used as the standard default in virtually all matters from product design, to medical testing, to the tech industry, which creates algorithms that discriminate against women. Perez, a feminist activist and student of feminist economics, has the credibility to detail this problem in this work... Read Invisible Women Summary