In Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough (2023), author Michael Easter explores the workings of the scarcity mindset and its profound effects on modern human behavior. With his extensive background as a science journalist and contributor to major publications on health and psychology, Easter leverages his professional insights to explore how evolutionary tendencies towards scarcity impact human lives amidst contemporary abundance. This nonfiction work straddles the genres... Read Scarcity Brain Summary

Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder is a self-help book published in 1999 by physician and speaker Gabor Maté. Maté, who worked in palliative care for many years in Vancouver, Canada, uses a mixture of case studies and his own personal experience as a husband and father to present a new, attachment-based framework for understanding attention deficit disorder (ADD). The book critiques modern medicine and directly challenges many of the psychiatric... Read Scattered Minds Summary

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself is a 2011 self-help book by American author Dr. Kristin Neff. In her work, Dr. Neff, a research psychologist, explains the concept of self-compassion and explores its many benefits. She describes self-compassion as a mindset of kindness and acceptance and argues that it is an antidote to both arrogance and harsh self-criticism. By embracing self-compassion, Dr. Neff believes that people can develop a healthy sense of... Read Self-Compassion Summary

Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself is a best-selling 2021 self-help book by American therapist and social worker Nedra Glover Tawwab. In her work Tawwab explains what boundaries are and how to create them. Using anecdotes from her experiences as a therapist, Tawwab explores the reasons why people struggle to set boundaries with others, and the consequences of allowing others to set the terms of a relationship. The author argues that creating... Read Set Boundaries, Find Peace Summary

Originally published in 2013, Shift is the second book in the Silo series of postapocalyptic science fiction novels by Hugh Howey. Shift enriches the story of Juliette (which began in the first book, WOOL), by looking back and telling the story of Donald Keene, the architect of the silos—subterranean cities that house the remainder of humanity. In telling Donald’s story, Shift reveals the truth about the men who created World Order Operation Fifty (or WOOL... Read Shift Summary

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout (2024) is a self-help book by Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University and bestselling author known for his work on productivity and digital culture. The book builds upon his previous works, such as Deep Work and A World Without Email, while aiming to introduce a comprehensive philosophy for sustainable productivity. Slow Productivity challenges the prevailing notion that increased busyness equates to better... Read Slow Productivity Summary

Written by Peg Kehret, Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio (1996) is a middle-grade memoir that recounts the year the author first contracted polio. Kehret explains both the physical effects of the virus and the resilience and determination that allowed her to make a miraculous recovery. Small Steps has won several awards, including the Golden Kite Award (1996), the Pen Center USA West Literary Award (1997), the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award (1998)... Read Small Steps Summary

Published in the midst of the Covid-19 global pandemic of 2020, Juan Felipe Herrera’s “Social Distancing” is a visually abstract piece arranged in the shape of a sun. Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Herrera is a prolific author of both poetry and children’s literature. “Social Distancing” can be read both as a direct response to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as an extension of Herrera’s larger body of work—much of which addresses social, spiritual, and emotional... Read Social Distancing Summary

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic is a 2012 narrative nonfiction work about the relationship between animal infections and human disease. It was nominated for several awards and won the Science and Society Book Award, given by the National Association of Science Writers, and the Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology. In Spillover, Quammen’s narrative alternates between the outbreak and eventual discovery of recent emerging diseases, and the scientific discoveries... Read Spillover Summary

Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization (2022) is a nonfiction book by Neil deGrasse Tyson. An influential astrophysicist, author, and educator, Tyson is known for presenting scientific content in an entertaining way to help increase science literacy among the general population. The topics and themes in Starry Messenger differ from Tyson’s usual commentary in that he takes a sociological approach, examining current and historical sociopolitical views on topics such as gender, diet, justice systems, and... Read Starry Messenger Summary

Stella is a middle grade novel written by McCall Hoyle and published in 2021. The book is a work of fiction told from the first-person perspective of Stella, a beagle. When the novel opens, Stella is traumatized because she, a bomb-sniffing dog, failed to alert her handler to explosives, and her handler died in an explosion. Stella is quite fearful of loud noises and is about to be euthanized during the first chapters. She slowly... Read Stella Summary

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a nonfiction book about the cultural history of the human cadaver, written by Mary Roach. Roach explores how, for nearly two thousand years, the deceased human body has been used in research and experimentation leading to some of the most consequential innovations of the medical, scientific, and mechanical (among others) fields throughout human history. Across cultures and civilizations, death has been shrouded in mystery and taboo, yet... Read Stiff Summary

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, tells the story of a Harvard cognitive psychology professor, Alice Howland, and her descent into early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. When the novel opens, Alice is unaware of her disease; although she recognizes that she has become a touch more forgetful lately, she chalks this up to getting older and keeping a busy academic schedule. However, her lapses soon become worse, and a series of tests confirm that she has early-onset Alzheimer’s... Read Still Alice Summary

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again is a 2022 book by Swiss-British author Johann Hari. In this work, Hari investigates factors that help and hinder concentration and attention, arguing that people are steadily losing their ability to focus. Hari asserts that there are 12 main reasons behind this major societal change; the book is dedicated to exploring these factors. Stolen Focus also includes anecdotes from Hari’s own life... Read Stolen Focus Summary

Stop Letting Everything Affect You: How to Break Free from Overthinking, Emotional Chaos, and Self-Sabotage (2025), by Daniel Chidiac, is a contemporary self-help guide aimed at readers caught in overthinking, emotional reactivity, and self-sabotage. Using a direct, motivational voice and practical “how-to” framing, the book focuses on interrupting spirals (rumination, taking things personally, etc.), setting boundaries without guilt, and learning emotional detachment without becoming cold or unfeeling.Key takeaways include:Recognize Overthinking as a Self-Reinforcing “Thought Prison”Treat... Read Stop Letting Everything Affect You Summary

Strength in What Remains is a nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction writer Tracy Kidder. It chronicles the story of a Burundian man named Deogratias (Deo). Deo, a Tutsi, survived a genocide that embroiled Burundi and Rwanda—especially in 1993-94. Deo fled the hospital where he had a medical school internship. Without any resources, he made his way to Rwanda only to be forced to escape violence there, return to Burundi, and finally travel to America... Read Strength in What Remains Summary

Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887) by Nellie Bly is an investigative exposé detailing the horrifying conditions within the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. Bly, an American journalist and a pioneer in undercover reporting, entered the asylum under the guise of mental illness, using her work to reveal abuses and systemic failures in mental health care. Originally published in New York World newspaper installments, her account is both a work of investigative journalism and a seminal... Read Ten Days In A Mad-House Summary

The 5 AM Club (2018) is a self-help book by Robin Sharma that takes the form of a fictional narrative. The book is designed to impart lessons and methods to readers to, in the book’s view, elevate their lives. The story focuses on the importance of personal growth and the significant benefits that arise from finding an effective mentor. As the title suggests, the book contends that of all positive habits one can develop in... Read The 5 Am Club Summary

The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence With Everyday Courage is American motivational speaker Melanie Robbins’s second book on self-help (2017). Its content is largely derived from Robbins’s immensely successful 2011 TEDx Talk entitled “How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over,” which has since been viewed over 31 million times online. At the lowest point of her life, Robbins was dealing with financial debt and battling stress and anxiety to the point where... Read The 5 Second Rule Summary

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green is a book of 44 short thought pieces on the wonders and dangers of human activity on Earth. Published in 2021, the book entered the New York Times best-seller list at number one and received wide praise for its gentle amusement about the quirky habits of modern humans and its eloquent alarm at how we mismanage the Earth’s resources. Green is known for his... Read The Anthropocene Reviewed Summary