The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (2019) was written and illustrated by Charlie Mackesy, a British artist whose work has been exhibited all over the world. Mackesy worked as a cartoonist for The Spectator before becoming a book illustrator for the Oxford University Press. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse holds the record as the longest running number one on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is the... Read The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Summary

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by psychiatrist-researcher Norman Doidge catalogues recent scientific breakthroughs in neuroplasticity. It explores why scientists long believed in a hardwired, unchanging brain and how the discovery of plasticity changed not only the field of neuroscience but people’s understanding of human nature. It was first published by Penguin Books in 2007 and became a New York Times bestseller the same year. The... Read The Brain That Changes Itself Summary

The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership by Sam Walker (published in 2017) is a data-driven sports leadership study that challenges conventional wisdom about what makes teams achieve sustained excellence. Through rigorous analysis of over 1,200 teams across 37 sports categories since the 1880s, Walker, a founding editor of The Wall Street Journal’s sports section, identifies 16 teams that achieved unprecedented dominance and discovers that they share exactly one defining characteristic: the character of... Read The Captain Class Summary

The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure is a 1993 novel by James Redfield. A bestseller, the novel is a compilation of New Age philosophical and spiritual concepts, which Redfield labels as insights, that are loosely connected by a plot that follows the narrator’s search for them in the Peruvian jungle. An ancient manuscript is rumored to have been discovered, and the insights in the Manuscript claim that the end of the 20th century will witness a... Read The Celestine Prophecy Summary

Published by Portfolio/Penguin in 2011, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation is a business and sales book by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. It pushes a new approach for business-to-business (B2B) sales called the “Challenger Selling Model,” which leverages tension and insight to challenge the customer’s assumptions about their business and show how the supplier’s solution is suited to address overlooked business needs. The text’s discussion of this approach highlights themes of... Read The Challenger Sale Summary

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right is a 2009 book by Atul Gawande. The book provides insights into surgical care and the problems that often arise in the field, and offers the checklist as a simple, yet powerfully effective solution. Gawande includes a significant amount of data in the book, some of which is alarming for readers not involved in his profession as a surgeon. He also interviews many professionals from different industries... Read The Checklist Manifesto Summary

The Choice: Embrace the Possible is a memoir published in 2017 by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. After enduring anti-Semitism, cruelty, communism, and xenophobia, Eger integrates the lessons she learned to show how everyone can choose freedom and halt cycles of suffering. The memoir incorporates World War II history and psychological analysis into Eger’s story of survival, recovery, and joy. The Choice has received the Christopher Award, which acknowledges books, films... Read The Choice: Embrace the Possible Summary

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever is a 2016 self-help book by Michael Bungay Stanier. The book proposes using seven questions to foster more meaningful conversations between managers and staff—the result being improved communication and job satisfaction. Bungay Stanier advises that rather than rescue staff members, managers should learn to lead staff toward developing the skills necessary to solve problems on their own. Effectively, the coaching habits... Read The Coaching Habit Summary

Published in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Matt Haig’s The Comfort Book presents anecdotes, bits of historical and biographical insight, mantras, affirmations, and advice tailored to bringing readers comfort in times of need. Haig, the author of several works of both fiction and nonfiction, also draws on his personal experiences with mental illness, which he discusses in detail in Reasons to Stay Alive (2015).Content Warning: The Comfort Book contains references to suicidal ideation, sexual abuse... Read The Comfort Book Summary

The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self (2021) is a self-help book by Michael Easter, a journalist and academic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This book examines topics such as evolutionary biology, human psychology, and individual well-being. Leveraging his journalistic experience, Easter intertwines his own expeditions with scholarly inquiry, probing how the pursuit of discomfort can catalyze physical, mental, and spiritual maturation. While spanning diverse terrains—from Alaska’s rugged... Read The Comfort Crisis Summary

The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success (2010) by Darren Hardy describes how small improvements in a person’s habits generate large results down the line. The book explains how to take responsibility for results, make good habits that last, gain momentum with daily effort, avoid bad influences, and accelerate progress by going beyond the expected. The book has sold over one million copies. Hardy founded Success magazine; he has written four books... Read The Compound Effect Summary

The Courage to Be Disliked is a 2013 nonfiction self-help and psychology book written by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Structured as a Socratic dialogue between a youth and a philosopher, the book introduces Alfred Adler’s psychological theories, addressing common challenges and points of confusion in the context of real-world application.Kishimi is a Japanese philosopher, psychologist, teacher, and translator who has studied Adlerian psychology and Greek philosophy for decades. Koga, a Japanese writer, encountered Adlerian... Read The Courage to Be Disliked Summary

The Courage to Be Happy: Discover the Power of Positive Psychology and Choose Happiness Every Day is a self-help text by Japanese authors, philosophers, and lecturers Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. First published in English in 2019 by Allen and Unwin, The Courage to Be Happy is a companion text to Kishimi and Koga’s 2013 text The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real... Read The Courage to be Happy Summary

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin explores the creative process and artistic identity. Rubin, a renowned music producer and advocate of creative expression, explores how “creativity is a fundamental aspect of human existence” (1). Rubin’s collaborations include artists across genres, including Kanye West, Jay-Z, The Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Strokes, Metallica, System of a Down, Johnny Cash, and Adele. Rubin has won numerous awards for his work, including 9 Grammy wins and 18... Read The Creative Act Summary

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living is a 2016 self-help book by American author Ryan Holiday, with translated quotations provided by Stephen Hanselman. In this work, Holiday offers readers a year’s worth of daily devotionals based on works by major Stoic philosophers such as Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca. The author begins each devotional with a quotation, which he further explains and elaborates on in a brief analysis... Read The Daily Stoic Summary

The Dance of Anger (1985) by Harriet Lerner is a psychology and self-help book that addresses women’s experiences with anger and relationships. Written for women who feel silenced, dismissed, or misunderstood when they express anger—in families, marriages, friendships, or workplaces—the book reframes anger as a constructive force rather than a personal failing. Drawing on her clinical expertise in family systems therapy, Lerner provides both analysis and strategies, showing readers how to recognize destructive interaction patterns... Read The Dance of Anger Summary

Nadine Burke Harris’s The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity is a 2018 nonfiction book that explores the evolving science on the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and health disparities. Burke Harris is a pediatrician, a founder of San Francisco’s Center for Youth Wellness, and the first surgeon general of California. In her book, she recounts how her pediatric practice in San Francisco’s Bayview community helped her link childhood trauma to... Read The Deepest Well Summary

The Denial of Death was written by the American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker and published in 1973. The work explores the fear of death and the ways in which rituals and beliefs have helped humans to cope with it throughout history. It was inspired by the fact that Becker had been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Over the course of his life, he taught at several prestigious universities, including Syracuse University, UC Berkeley, and, by... Read The Denial of Death Summary

Book Details & Major ThemesJon Gordon’s 2007 self-help book The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy was a Wall Street Journal best-seller and tells the fictional tale of a man named George who, after a chance meeting with a unique bus driver, triumphs over serious career and marital problems using the power of positive energy. Both a work of fiction and a how-to manual on team-building, The... Read The Energy Bus Summary

The Family Crucible is a nonfiction book on the topic of family therapy, written by Augustus Y. Napier under the mentorship of Carl A. Whitaker. The book contains elements of fiction in that it does not adhere strictly to factual events. Napier is a psychologist who interned with Whitaker in the 1970s and continues to lead the family therapy movement today. The Family Crucible was originally published in 1998 and serves to explain The Challenges... Read The Family Crucible Summary