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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29 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.
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.
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.
Atomic Habits
James Clear's case that tiny daily habits, backed by good systems and a new sense of identity, compound into remarkable change.
Before We Were Yours
Five river children are stolen for a corrupt Memphis adoption home in 1939, and decades later a senator's daughter uncovers the trail.
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.
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.
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.
Frozen River
In the winter of 1789 a Maine midwife examines a body pulled from the ice and sets out to win justice for a woman the town's judge would rather silence.
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.
Only Time Will Tell
A docker's son with a golden voice climbs out of Bristol's shipyards, while the secret of who his father really was waits to catch up with him.
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 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 Book Thief
In Nazi Germany, a foster girl who cannot read begins stealing books, and Death himself stops to tell her story.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
A blue-skinned packhorse librarian carries books through the Kentucky hills of 1936, loved by her readers and feared by nearly everyone else.
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 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 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.