Books
The big ideas from popular books, without giving the whole thing away. Get the GIST, then decide if you want the REST.
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61 summaries, page 1 of 3
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
A clinical psychologist's twelve blunt, oddly named rules for carrying responsibility, telling the truth and finding meaning in a life that will include suffering.
1900: The Last President
An 1896 pamphlet by a New York lawyer imagines a populist outsider winning the White House and the republic coming apart, a Gilded Age warning that the internet rediscovered as prophecy.
1984
In a state that watches everything and rewrites the past daily, one clerk risks his life to think for himself and to love.
Altered Traits
A science journalist and a neuroscientist sort the hype from the hard evidence to show how meditation can lastingly change who we are.
Animal Farm
Farm animals overthrow their drunken master to build a society of equals, then watch the pigs who lead them slowly become the tyrants they replaced.
Atomic Habits
James Clear's case that tiny daily habits, backed by good systems and a new sense of identity, compound into remarkable change.
Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey
An 1893 children's fantasy sends a big-brained boy baron and his brilliant dog down a Russian well into a hollow earth of transparent people, a blind city of silver and a kingdom of ice.
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
A journalist plugs his own nose for ten days to show why breathing slowly and through the nose may be one of the most overlooked foundations of health.
Burnout
Twin sisters explain why stress stays stuck in the body, why women burn out in a rigged game, and the simple, shared ways to recover.
Come As You Are
Sex educator Emily Nagoski uses the science of accelerators, brakes and context to show women that their sexuality is not broken, only theirs.
Count Down
A leading reproductive epidemiologist explains why sperm counts in the West have halved in forty years, what everyday chemicals have to do with it, and what you can change at home.
Dark Age
Ten years after the revolution, Darrow's army is besieged on Mercury, the Republic's Senate is torn apart and Mars is overrun in the saga's darkest book.
Deep Work
Cal Newport argues that undistracted concentration on hard problems is becoming rare and valuable, and gives four rules for building a working life around it.
Dissolving Illusions
Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk argue that sanitation and nutrition, not vaccines, ended the great infectious diseases, a claim mainstream science rejects.
Do the Work
The Holistic Psychologist's guide to why willpower fails, how childhood wires our automatic patterns, and the daily mind-and-body practices that let you choose who you become.
Dopamine Nation
Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke explains why chasing pleasure leaves us in pain, and how abstinence, self-binding and honesty restore balance.
Emotional Agility
A Harvard psychologist shows how to face hard feelings, step back from them and act on your values through small, deliberate changes.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown's method for finding the few things that truly matter, cutting the rest, and making the vital work almost effortless.
Golden Son
Darrow, a Red miner remade as a Gold, turns his enemies on each other and carries his secret rebellion from Mars into a war across the solar system.
Goodnight Insomnia
Gregg D. Jacobs's six-week, drug-free CBT program retrains thoughts and habits to end chronic insomnia.
Hamlet
A grieving prince is told by his father's ghost to avenge a murder, and cannot be sure what to believe or how to act.
How to Change Your Mind
A skeptical journalist explores the science, history and first-hand experience of psychedelics, and what they reveal about the mind, the ego and healing.
Ikigai
What the centenarians of an Okinawan village can teach the rest of us about purpose, calm, food, friends and a reason to get up in the morning.
Iron Gold
Ten years after the revolution, its hero, its victims and its exiles discover what freedom really costs.