Non-fiction 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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93 summaries, page 2 of 4
Dopamine Nation
Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke explains why chasing pleasure leaves us in pain, and how abstinence, self-binding and honesty restore balance.
Emotional Agility
A Harvard psychologist shows how to face hard feelings, step back from them and act on your values through small, deliberate changes.
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.
Gentle and Lowly
Dane Ortlund draws on Jesus's own self-description and the Puritans to argue that Christ's deepest heart toward weary sinners and sufferers is tender, eager, unwavering love.
God and the Gay Christian
Matthew Vines argues, passage by passage, that Christians who hold the Bible as fully authoritative can also bless committed same-sex relationships.
God Has a Name
John Mark Comer walks line by line through Exodus 34:6-7, where God names himself, to show how the God you picture shapes the person you become.
God's Not Dead
A campus pastor's brisk, confident tour of the scientific, philosophical and historical case for God, written for seekers, believers and skeptics alike.
Goodnight Insomnia
Gregg D. Jacobs's six-week, drug-free CBT program retrains thoughts and habits to end chronic insomnia.
How to Change Your Mind
A skeptical journalist explores the science, history and first-hand experience of psychedelics, and what they reveal about the mind, the ego and healing.
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.
Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic
An orthodontist and an evolutionary biologist argue that modern life is shrinking our jaws, crowding our teeth and narrowing our airways, and that parents can do something about it early.
Lying
Sam Harris argues that even kind white lies cost more than they save, and that simply telling the truth makes life simpler and relationships deeper.
Man, Myth, Messiah
Rice Broocks argues from history that Jesus was no myth and no mere man, which leaves only one answer: the Messiah.
Man's Search for Meaning
A Viennese psychiatrist's account of surviving the Nazi camps, and the idea he carried out of them: people can bear almost anything if they have a reason to.
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.
My Big TOE
A NASA physicist's theory of everything: consciousness is the foundation of reality, the physical world is a virtual training ground, and the point of it all is to grow from fear toward love.
Never Split the Difference
The FBI's former top kidnapping negotiator shows how listening, labeling emotions and asking the right questions win better deals than compromise.
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.
People to Be Loved
A New Testament scholar keeps the traditional Christian view of sex and marriage while telling the church its treatment of gay people has to change.
Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body
Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman's 47-protocol field manual for sleep, exercise, stress, food, light, focus and personal growth, built on one rule: behavior first, molecules second.
Sacred Economics
Charles Eisenstein argues that our debt-and-interest money system manufactures scarcity and separation, and sketches a gift-based, ecological economy to replace it.
Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot
A former LSU goalkeeper tells her own sexual story to argue that the church's silence about sex has failed a generation, and that sex is God's idea.