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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17 summaries
A Fighter's Heart
A Harvard-educated wanderer trains and fights his way through the world's toughest gyms to discover why people choose to fight, and what the fight teaches them.
A Monster Calls
A thirteen-year-old whose mother is gravely ill is visited at 12:07 by a monster made from a yew tree, who trades three stories for the one truth the boy cannot say.
Allegedly
Convicted as a small child of killing a baby, sixteen-year-old Mary finally has a reason to tell what really happened that night.
American Prometheus
The Pulitzer-winning life of J. Robert Oppenheimer: the brilliant, contradictory physicist who led the building of the atomic bomb and was later destroyed by the Cold War security state he served.
Broken Throne
Victoria Aveyard's farewell to the Red Queen world: five novellas and a scholar's records that trace a kingdom from its apocalyptic birth to the hard, hopeful work of peace.
Can’t Hurt Me
A retired Navy SEAL and ultramarathon runner tells how he turned an abused, overweight, aimless young man into one of the toughest people alive, and hands over the mental tools he used.
One of Us Is Lying
Five students walk into detention and only four come out alive, each with a secret the dead boy was about to publish, in Karen M. McManus's fast, addictive teen mystery.
Red Queen
In a kingdom split by blood, a poor Red thief discovers she has a power only the ruling Silvers should have, and is hidden at the heart of their court.
Sunrise on the Reaping
Sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is forced into the fiftieth Hunger Games and decides to fight the arena itself, in Suzanne Collins's prequel about propaganda and the cost of defiance.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
A Nobel physicist's mischievous, curious, sometimes profound life stories, from cracking safes at Los Alamos to drumming samba in Brazil, ending with a famous warning against fooling yourself.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python
The Python community's opinionated field guide to setting up, writing, reading and shipping great code.
The Summer of Broken Rules
A grieving teenager returns to Martha's Vineyard for a family wedding, a week-long water-gun game of Assassin, and a groomsman she did not plan on.
The Telomere Effect
Victoria Aveyard's farewell to the Red Queen world: five novellas and a scholar's records that trace a kingdom from its apocalyptic birth to the hard, hopeful work of peace.
Thirteen Reasons Why
A high school boy spends one night listening to cassette tapes left by a classmate who took her own life, each side naming a person who played a part.
Tuesdays with Morrie
A busy sports columnist reunites with his dying college professor for weekly Tuesday visits, and their conversations become a final class on how to live.
We Were Liars
A wealthy family, a private island, four inseparable teenagers, and one summer the narrator cannot remember, however hard she tries.
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Richard Feynman's last book of memories moves from a childhood of questions and a doomed love story to his investigation of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.