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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38 summaries, page 2 of 2
The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky's final masterpiece: a murder in a provincial Russian family becomes a battle over God, freedom, suffering and love.
The Descent of Man
Darwin finally turns his theory on ourselves, arguing that humans share ancestry, mind and even morality with other animals, and that mate choice helped shape us.
The Hidden Life of Trees
German forester Peter Wohlleben argues that a forest is a cooperative community in which trees communicate, share food and raise their young, and that we should manage it that way.
The High 5 Habit
Mel Robbins argues that high-fiving your own reflection every morning can quiet self-criticism and teach you to back yourself the way you back everyone else.
The Idiot
A gentle prince returns to Russia and tests whether pure goodness can survive money, pride and obsessive love.
The Let Them Theory
Mel Robbins argues that two words, Let Them, free you from managing other people, and two more, Let Me, put your energy back into the only thing you control: yourself.
The Odyssey
The cunning king of Ithaca fights monsters, gods and his own pride for ten years to get home, while his wife and son hold off a house full of suitors.
The Secret
Rhonda Byrne's blockbuster guide to the law of attraction, which teaches that your thoughts and feelings draw matching experiences into your life, and offers ask, believe, receive as the way to use it.
The Tyranny of Merit
Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues that our faith in meritocracy has made winners arrogant, made everyone else feel humiliated, and fuelled the populist backlash, and that humility and respect for work are the way back.
The War of Art
Steven Pressfield names the inner enemy that keeps us from our real work, Resistance, and shows how to beat it by turning pro and showing up every day.
To Kill a Mockingbird
In Depression-era Alabama, a tomboy named Scout watches her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, defend a Black man falsely accused of rape while a hidden neighbor watches over her.
What Is Life?
A quantum physicist asks how atoms can add up to a living thing, and his answers, an aperiodic crystal carrying a code-script and life feeding on negative entropy, help launch molecular biology.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Jon Kabat-Zinn's gentle classic on mindfulness: how to stop living on autopilot and pay attention to the only moment you have, on the cushion and at the kitchen sink.
You Can Win
Shiv Khera's step-by-step case that success is learned: begin with attitude, then build self-esteem, people skills, habits, goals and values on top of it.