Books
The big ideas from popular books, without giving the whole thing away. Get the GIST, then decide if you want the REST.
FiltersHistory & True StoriesComputers & TechnologySelf-HelpClear
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33 summaries, page 1 of 2
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.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari turns from humanity's past and far future to the present, asking how AI, nationalism, fake news and the loss of old stories will test us right now.
Atomic Habits
James Clear's case that tiny daily habits, backed by good systems and a new sense of identity, compound into remarkable change.
Best Evidence
David Lifton's fifteen-year investigation argues that President Kennedy's body was secretly altered between Dallas and Bethesda to hide shots fired from the front.
Blitzed
A novelist turned historian argues that methamphetamine, opiates and cocaine ran through Nazi Germany, from the blitzkrieg to Hitler's own veins.
Chaos
A journalist's twenty-year obsession takes apart the official story of the Manson murders and follows the threads to Hollywood secrets, a protected parolee, and the CIA's mind-control experiments.
Collapse
Jared Diamond compares societies that fell apart with ones that endured to show that environmental ruin is often decisive, but never destiny: societies choose.
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.
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.
Empire of the Summer Moon
How the Comanches built a horseback empire on the southern plains, and how Quanah Parker, son of a captive white mother, led them through its violent fall.
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.
Fingerprints of the Gods
Graham Hancock's bestselling detective story argues that a lost Ice Age civilization left its traces in ancient maps, flood myths and the monuments of Egypt and the Americas.
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.
Mastery
Robert Greene argues that greatness is a path anyone can walk: find your calling, serve a long apprenticeship, learn from mentors, read people well, and let deep immersion ripen into intuition.
Nuclear War: A Scenario
A minute-by-minute, fact-based account of how one missile launch could unravel into global nuclear war in 72 minutes.
The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months
Stop planning by the calendar year: treat every twelve weeks as a year of its own and let a near deadline, a weekly plan and an honest score do the work.
The 33 Strategies of War
Robert Greene turns three thousand years of military thinking into 33 strategies for everyday conflict, starting with the war inside your own head.
The 4-Hour Chef
Tim Ferriss uses cooking as a training ground for meta-learning, a system for picking up any skill far faster than the conventional route allows.
The 5AM Club
Robin Sharma's fable of a burned-out entrepreneur, a stuck artist and an eccentric billionaire makes the case that owning your first hour can transform your whole life.
The Alter Ego Effect
Performance coach Todd Herman shows how a deliberately built 'secret identity' can bring your best self out in the moments that matter most.
The Gulag Archipelago
A former prisoner's vast, secretly written account of the Soviet labor camps, tracing how a system born under Lenin swallowed millions and how ideology made it possible.
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 Hitchhiker's Guide to Python
The Python community's opinionated field guide to setting up, writing, reading and shipping great code.
The Immortality Key
A lawyer turned amateur classicist argues that the ancient Greek Mysteries, and perhaps the earliest Christian Eucharist, were powered by psychedelic sacraments that let initiates 'die before dying.'