Recommend non-fiction books

[Kas]

Good to know that there is also another reader of Stephen Hawking. I like "The Universe in a Nutshell". It is a quite interesting study beginning at Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity up to the time curves and the bran world.

I have only started to read his books, but I want more.

 

[Mole]

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

 

[PumpkinMayCare]

My all-time fav:
Madeleine Bourdouxhe, a la recherche de marie. A very good book for women. I know it has only been published in its original language, French, and in German. But I'd love it to be translated into English. Not only was Mrs Bourdouxhe a very down-to-earth writer, who knew when it was time to be realistic in her writings, but also her spelling style is absolutely amazing! I enjoyed every frigging line. I just loved all of her books a lot, but a la recherche de marie was the best.

 

[Tellenbach]

For animal lovers:

Wesley the Owl

Dewey The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Maybe it’s tacky of me but Dawkins’ The Greatest Show On Earth

 

[Spectre]

I can instantly think of two books.

First "How I found freedom in an unfree world" by Harry Browne.
It is about escaping various traps in life and living the life that YOU want, rather than having your life dictated by others or by unchallenged assumptions.

The other book is "The triumph of emptiness by Mats Alvesson.
It basically tears contemporary society to shreds. His observations about the state of education is particularity interesting.

 

[Hiraeth]

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Even if you're not into yoga, there's some life changing insight and wisdom on spirituality and life in general. And even though yoga stems from Hindhu/Vedic philosophy, there's no promotion for any specific religion by Yogananda, so it's accessible for anyone. I really think this is one of those books that everyone should read at least once.

 

[Tellenbach]

I'm fascinated by how therapists treat or fix troubled people and these books contain some very interesting cases.

The Love Bug and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Dan Briddell

The Man With The Beautiful Voice by Lillian B. Rubin

Tales From a Traveling Couch: Psychotherapist Revisits His Most Memorable Patients by Robert U. Akeret

 

[citizen cane]

Blue Highways By William Least Heat-Moon immediately comes to mind. Also pretty much anything by Bill Bryson.

 

[Mole]

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben , click on The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben * OverDrive (Rakuten OverDrive): eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries .

And The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben, click on The Inner Life of Animals - Peter Wohlleben & Jane Billinghurst - Book - Free Ebook Download .

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Dialogues of Plato

 

[Red Herring]

I tend to enjoy several of the recent bestsellers in the behavioral economics area (Nudge, Habit, Freakonomics, etc.) as well as most Malcolm Gladwell stuff. At its worst it's entertaining and at its best it's illuminating.

The books on my reading list also includes several history titles like Why the West Rules - For Now and Sapiens....as well as Guns, Germs and Steel. Basically, I love anything that appeals to an Ne/Si approach to the world and suggests new connections between things.

I agree that Oliver Sachs makes for a great read. Oh, and if you don't mind that it's very, very dated in many regards, I can really recommend the writings of Sigmund Freud, especially in the German original since he writes beautifully and I found him very readable. Obviously psychology has moved on since then but his thinking and once revolutionary approach is still extremely interesting and helps to understand a lot of what followed in the arts and humanities.

 

[Agent Washington]

This is going to be the most INFP shit I'lll ever say.

...Kierkegaard's either Or

 

[Tellenbach]

A book about the history of treating MS:Curing MS: How Science is Solving the Mysteries of Multiple Sclerosis

From one of the pioneers of chemotherapy. It's an excellent account of the history of conventional cancer treatment.
The Death of Cancer

But if you truly want to understand cancer (what the disease really is and why researchers haven't been able to find a cure), read this one:
Tripping over the Truth: How the Metabolic Theory of Cancer Is Overturning One of Medicine's Most Entrenched Paradigms

 

[phoenix31]

The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity by Esther Perel.

The synopsis from Amazon:

Iconic couples’ therapist and bestselling author of Mating in Captivity Esther Perel returns with a provocative look at relationships through the lens of infidelity.

An affair: it can rob a couple of their relationship, their happiness, their very identity. And yet, this extremely common human experience is so poorly understood. What are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced? Why do people cheat—even those in happy marriages? Why does an affair hurt so much? When we say infidelity, what exactly do we mean? Do our romantic expectations of marriage set us up for betrayal? Is there such a thing as an affair-proof marriage? Is it possible to love more than one person at once? Can an affair ever help a marriage? Perel weaves real-life case stories with incisive psychological and cultural analysis in this fast-paced and compelling book.

For the past ten years, Perel has traveled the globe and worked with hundreds of couples who have grappled with infidelity. Betrayal hurts, she writes, but it can be healed. An affair can even be the doorway to a new marriage—with the same person. With the right approach, couples can grow and learn from these tumultuous experiences, together or apart.

Affairs, she argues, have a lot to teach us about modern relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment. Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, Perel invites readers into an honest, enlightened, and entertaining exploration of modern marriage in its many variations.

Fiercely intelligent, The State of Affairs provides a daring framework for understanding the intricacies of love and desire. As Perel observes, “Love is messy; infidelity more so. But it is also a window, like no other, into the crevices of the human heart.”

 

[LightSun]

A few books to share that have been some positive influence. Please others please do share those specifically pivotal readings which did make some impact upon you.

(1). Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (1995).

(2). Feeling Good by David D. Burns, M.D. (1980). [Cognitive Discipline of your mind].

(3). Frames of mind: Theory of Multiple Intelligences. by Howard Gardner (1983/1993).

(4). A New Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis, PhD. & Robert A. Harper PhD. (1961, 1975). ([Rational-Emotive, basically similar to Cognitive Disciplinary mind set]

(5). Please Understand Me by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates (1984). [MBTI also known Myers-Briggs Typology Index]

(6). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy by Dr. Albert Ellis (1962). ([Rational-Emotive, basically similar to Cognitive Disciplinary mind set]

(7). The Seven Sacred Spiritual laws of Success by Deepak Chopra (1994).

(8). 365 Days of Walking the Red Road: The Native American Path to Leading a Spiritual Life Every Day by Terri Jean (2003).

(9). World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts (Of International Religious Foundation (1991).

- - - Updated - - -

50 Spiritual Classics


1. Muhammad Asad The Road To Mecca (1954)

2. St Augustine Confessions (400)

3. Richard Bach Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

4. Black Elk Black Elk Speaks (1932)

5. Richard Maurice Bucke Cosmic Consciousness (1901)

6. Fritjof Capra The Tao of Physics (1976)

7. Carlos Castaneda Journey to Ixtlan (1972)

8. GK Chesterton St Francis of Assisi (1922)

9. Pema Chödrön The Places That Scare You (2001)

10. Chuang Tzu The Book of Chuang Tzu (4th century BCE)

11. Ram Dass Be Here Now (1971)

12. Epictetus The Enchiridion (1st century)

13. Mohandas Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1927)

14. Al-Ghazzali The Alchemy of Happiness (1097)

15. Kahlil Gibran The Prophet (1923)

16. GI Gurdjieff Meetings With Remarkable Men (1960)

17. Dag Hammarskjold Markings (1963)

18. Abraham Joshua Heschel The Sabbath (1951)

19. Herman Hesse Siddartha (1922)

20. Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception (1954)

21. William James The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

22. Carl Gustav Jung Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1955)

23. Margery Kempe The Book of Margery Kempe (1436)

24. J Krishnamurti Think On These Things (1964)

25. CS Lewis The Screwtape Letters (1942)

26. Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964)

27. Daniel C Matt The Essential Kabbalah (1994)

28. Dan Millman The Way of the Peaceful Warrior (1989)

29. W Somerset Maugham The Razor's Edge (1944)

30. Thich Nhat Hanh The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)

31. Michael Newton Journey of Souls (1994)

32. John O'Donohue Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (1998)

33. Robert M Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

34. James Redfield The Celestine Prophecy (1994)

35. Miguel Ruiz The Four Agreements (1997)

36. Helen Schucman & William Thetford A Course in Miracles (1976)

37. Idries Shah The Way of the Sufi (1968)

38. Starhawk The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979)

39. Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1970)

40. Emanuel Swedenborg Heaven and Hell (1758)

41. Teresa of Avila Interior Castle (1570)

42. Mother Teresa A Simple Path (1994)

43. Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now (1998)

44. Chögyam Trungpa Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (1973)

45. Neale Donald Walsch Conversations With God (1998)

46. Rick Warren The Purpose-Driven Life (2002)

47. Simone Weil Waiting For God (1979)

48. Ken Wilber A Theory of Everything (2000)

49. Paramahansa Yogananda Autobiography of a Yogi (1974)

50. Gary Zukav The Seat of the Soul (1990)"

source: 50 Spiritual Classics - Tom Butler-Bowdon

 

[Flâneuse]

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich - refutes the idea that America is a fair meritocracy where upward economic mobility is guaranteed for people who "just work hard enough". The author went undercover as a working class, minimum-wage worker and documents how difficult it is to even make a decent living, let alone to improve socioeconomic station through hard work alone.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - debunks the idea that racial/genetic differences underlie which societies flourish and dominate, explaining how differing natural resources and climates are behind differing levels of societal complexity

Factory Girls

I enjoy anything by Richard Dawkins, though as you probably already know many of his more recent books such as The God Delusion are basically anti-religion diatribes that are more focused on his philosophical rather than scientific arguments. In general his earlier books such as The Selfish Gene are more objective and scientifically rigorous, actually focusing on his area of expertise (evolutionary biology).

Interviews with Francis Bacon compiled by David Sylvester. - Bacon talks about his creative process and philosophy of art, as well as his opinions on various artists, movements and styles, especially those of the art world during his lifetime. Though I disagreed with a lot of his views (especially on abstract/nonrepresentational art and why he doesn't view it as true art in the highest sense), I found him to have an extremely fascinating and original way of understanding art and of looking at the world in general.

Stephen Batchelor's books on Buddhism as a secular practice and philosophy rather than a religion. Publications
My favorite is Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.

The Geography of Thought by Richard E. Nisbett. The author writes about how much cultural teachings and social structures affect how humans perceive and structure reality, focusing on differing philosophical frameworks and traditions of thought between the West and East and how in his view it leads to the general populations in different cultures having fundamentally different orientations toward understanding reality. In general, he argues that Western thought tends toward viewing reality as being made up of separate entities that interact with each other through simple and direct cause-effect relationships, while Eastern thought tends to be more holistic, focusing less on entities and events as discrete things than on the relations between them, as well as viewing cause and effect as involving entire contexts and countless interconnections rather than pinpointing one to a few distinct causes. He also relates this to the individualist/collectivist cultural divide. While the author is simplifying and generalizing about different cultures and their peoples (the West/East divide itself is a simplification that ignores the vast diversity within each of those groupings), he avoids overgeneralizing and stereotyping by making it very clear he is making very broad and general observations for which there are tons of exceptions and ignored complexities, both among individuals and cultures.