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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83 summaries, page 1 of 4

Sam Sheridan

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.

Combat Sports
Fitness
9 min read
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

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.

Physics
Politics and History
10 min read
Book summary Can’t Hurt Me
David Goggins

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.

Mindset
Fitness
8 min read
Pierce Brown

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.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
Pierce Brown

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.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Iron Gold

Ten years after the revolution, its hero, its victims and its exiles discover what freedom really costs.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
7 min read
Pierce Brown

Light Bringer

A beaten Darrow crosses the Solar System to find allies while his rival Lysander reaches for a crown.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Morning Star

Broken by a year in the dark, a slave-born revolutionary rises again to lead a solar-system-wide war against the tyrants who rule it in the finale of the Red Rising trilogy.

Science Fiction
Space Exploration
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Red Rising

A teenage miner on Mars is remade as one of the ruling Golds to bring down the empire that hanged his wife.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Richard Feynman

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.

Physics
Creativity
10 min read
Mitch Albom

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.

Relationships
Philosophy
8 min read
Richard Feynman

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.

Physics
Space Exploration
9 min read

Bible - Book of Genesis

The Bible's book of beginnings: the creation of the world, the first humans, the flood, and the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, bound to God by promise.

Faith and Spirituality
10 min read

Bible - Book of Exodus

Israel's founding story: slavery in Egypt, Moses and the burning bush, the plagues and the sea, and then the covenant, the commandments and the tabernacle at Sinai.

Faith and Spirituality
7 min read

Bible - Book of Leviticus

The priestly heart of the Torah: how a people is to live beside a holy God, through sacrifice, purity, the Day of Atonement and the command to love your neighbour as yourself.

Faith and Spirituality
8 min read

Bible - Book of Numbers

Israel's forty years between Mount Sinai and the Jordan: two censuses, a refusal at the border of Canaan, a generation lost in the desert and a new one made ready.

Faith and Spirituality
7 min read

Bible - Book of Deuteronomy

Moses' farewell speeches on the edge of the promised land: the story so far, the law restated, a covenant to choose, and the death of Israel's greatest prophet.

Faith and Spirituality
7 min read

Bible - Book of Joshua

After the wilderness, Israel crosses the Jordan under a new leader, takes and divides the promised land, and is asked to choose whom it will serve.

Faith and Spirituality
7 min read

Bible - Book of Judges

Between Joshua and the kings, Israel falls again and again into unfaithfulness and is rescued by flawed champions such as Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah and Samson.

Faith and Spirituality
8 min read

Bible - Book of Ruth

A widowed foreigner's stubborn loyalty to her mother-in-law turns famine, grief and emptiness into a harvest, a marriage and the family line of King David.

Faith and Spirituality
9 min read

Bible - Book of 1 Samuel

Israel asks for a king and gets Saul, who rises and unravels while a shepherd named David, anointed in secret, kills a giant and spends years on the run from the man he will replace.

Faith and Spirituality
9 min read

Bible - Book of 2 Samuel

Israel's greatest king wins a nation, receives a promise that his dynasty will last forever, then watches his own sin tear his family apart.

Faith and Spirituality
11 min read

Bible - Book of 1 Kings

From Solomon's wisdom, wealth and Temple to a kingdom split in two, a line of failing kings, and the prophet Elijah's lonely stand against Ahab and Jezebel.

Faith and Spirituality
8 min read

Bible - Book of 2 Kings

From Elijah's chariot of fire to the burning of Jerusalem, the story of how two kingdoms ignored their prophets and lost their land.

Faith and Spirituality
9 min read