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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224 summaries, page 6 of 10
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.'
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 Molecule of More
A psychiatrist and a writer show how dopamine, the brain's chemical of anticipation, drives our love lives, ambitions, addictions, creativity and politics, and why lasting happiness means balancing it with the chemicals of the present.
The Obesity Code
A kidney specialist argues that obesity is driven by insulin, not calories, and that eating real food less often, with regular fasting, is the lasting fix.
The Odyssey
The cunning king of Ithaca fights monsters, gods and his own pride for ten years to get home, while his wife and son hold off a house full of suitors.
The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need
A funny, plain-spoken classic showing that financial security comes from spending less, clearing debt, using tax breaks and buying index funds steadily.
The Real Anthony Fauci
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s heavily footnoted and widely disputed case that Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and the drug industry put profit and power ahead of public health, from AIDS to COVID-19.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
An American correspondent who watched Nazi Germany up close draws on its own captured archives to tell how a vagabond agitator came to rule a continent, and how his empire destroyed itself.
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
A Dead Sea Scrolls scholar argues Christianity began as a mushroom-eating fertility cult, and pays for it with his career.
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.
The Shack
A grieving father is invited back to the cabin where his daughter was murdered and spends a weekend there talking with God in three unexpected forms.
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.
The Tyranny of Merit
Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues that our faith in meritocracy has made winners arrogant, made everyone else feel humiliated, and fuelled the populist backlash, and that humility and respect for work are the way back.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
A British warship wrecks off Patagonia in 1741, its starving crew splits into warring camps, and the survivors come home with rival stories that put an empire's honour on trial.
The War of Art
Steven Pressfield names the inner enemy that keeps us from our real work, Resistance, and shows how to beat it by turning pro and showing up every day.
Theft of Swords
Two mismatched rogues take a too-good-to-be-true job to steal a sword, get framed for a king's murder, and stumble into a conspiracy and an ancient war that could reshape their world.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman shows how two modes of thought, a fast intuitive one and a slow deliberate one, shape our judgments and choices, and how to catch the mistakes the fast one makes.
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.
To Kill a Mockingbird
In Depression-era Alabama, a tomboy named Scout watches her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, defend a Black man falsely accused of rape while a hidden neighbor watches over her.
Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic
Psychiatrist Paul Conti argues that trauma spreads like a hidden disease through people, families and whole societies, and that knowledge, compassion and community can treat it and even prevent it.
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.
War Is a Racket
One of America's most decorated Marines argues that war is a business run for the few at the expense of the many, and offers three blunt ways to shut it down.
We Were Liars
A wealthy family, a private island, four inseparable teenagers, and one summer the narrator cannot remember, however hard she tries.