Top Book And Movie Recommendations for Adults Who Want to Thrive and Succeed in Life

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“I write for kids, and kids tend to be optimists. Even when the book has a dark theme, it’s always through the eyes of a fictional hero, a young person with integrity, someone a reader can identify with and in turn find a kind of integrity and power in themselves. The role of fiction is to rehearse one’s life. When reading books where they encounter things that they haven’t yet faced, they subconsciously rehearse what their reaction will be, how they’ll grapple with such things.”  ~ Louis Lowry, Author of The Giver.

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Let Me Get The Disclaimer Out Of The Way

Hey everyone,

First of all, thank you to my friends and family who send interesting movie and literature links my way. I’m sharing a curated list of books, movies, and documentaries that I believe are truly worth experiencing at least once in a lifetime. These works have profoundly shaped my perspective on the world, human nature, history, and resilience — they have challenged my assumptions, helped me put myself in others’ shoes and sparked deep reflection.

Before diving in, a note on “separating the art from the artist.” This has been a timeless and nuanced debate. Great art can emerge from flawed (or even deeply problematic) people, and knowing about an artist’s personal views or actions can complicate our enjoyment. I believe it’s often possible and valuable to appreciate the work’s intellectual, emotional, or cultural merits while critically acknowledging the creator’s shortcomings.

Recommendations here focus on the enduring power of the art itself, not endorsement of the individuals behind it. (I don’t fully agree with each and every idea in these works, and my views on some creators have evolved over time.)

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The Man Vs. Machine Age: Digital Literacy

• Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
• Our Final Invention by James Barrat
• Humans Need Not Apply By Jerry Kaplan
• Dopamine Nation By Anna Lembke
• A Human’s Guide To Machine Intelligence By Kartik Hosanagar
• Human Compatible By Stuart Russell
• The Tech Solution: Creating Healthy Habits for Kids Growing Up in a Digital World by Dr. Shimi Kang
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
• Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal

More recommendations HERE.

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On How To Thrive In The Digital Age

Find them HERE.

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On Parenting

Find them HERE.

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The World Around Us

• The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
• The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas
• American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
• Character and Opinion in the United States by George Santayana
• Teenage Gender Dysphoria: Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier

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Hack Your Productivity

• A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind By Shoukei Matsumoto
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less By Greg McKeown
• Primal Branding By Patrick Hanlon
• Storyworthy By Matthew Dicks
• The 4-Hour Work Week By Tim Ferris
• Anything You Want By Derek Sivers
• Getting Things Done By David Allen
• Atomic Habits By James Clear
• Show Your Work By Austin Kleon

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Mind Bending And Life Altering

• Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
• The Science Of Breathing By Yogi Ramacharaka (William Walker Atkinson)
• The Art of Happiness by the 14th Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler
• The Methods of Nonviolent Action By Gene Sharp
• The Psychology Of Money By Morgan Housel
• Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
• Happiness Hypothesis By Jonathan Hardt
• The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck By Mark Manson
• Willpower by Roy Baumeister & John Tierney
• Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff
• Range by David Epstein
• The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter
• Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky
• This Moment Is the Perfect Teacher: Ten Buddhist Teachings on Cultivating Inner Strength and Compassion by Pema Chödrön
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
• Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know By Adam Grant
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Free Will by Zen Harris and Moran Cerf
• The True Believer By Eric Hoffer
• Anatomy of an Illness By Norman Cousins
• Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
• Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by neurologist António Damásio
• They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
• Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari
• Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
• The Discovery Of The Unconscious by Henri F. Ellenberger
• The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley
• Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman
• Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon

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BEST Investigative Reporting

• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
• Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Hariri
• Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• In Defense of Food By Michael Pollan

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Chess Books

• Mind Master: Winning Lessons from a Champion’s Life by Viswanathan Anand
• Timman’s Titans: My World Chess Champions by Jan Timman
• The Moves That Matter By Jonathan Rawson

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Fiction Novels

• Defending Jacob by William Landay
• The Yearling is a novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
• The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
• Pandemic by Albert Camus
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
• The Invention of Wings: A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• Best Telugu Books: Find some amazing recommendations HERE.

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Memoirs

• Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
• Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
• A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold
• The Opposite Of Loneliness By Marina Keegan
• American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures
• The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony, Graham Spence
• Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
• Family Life: A Novel by Akhil Sharma
• Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran by Shirin Ebadi
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Half of a Yellow Sun: A Novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and One Man’s Story of Redemption in an American Prison by Shaka Senghor
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
• Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan
• Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be by Rachel Hollis
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• Infinite Ache – My First Mother’s Day Without Her by Saeed Jones

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Peak Performance And Personal Development

• Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
• The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
• How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• Homo Prospectus by Martin Seligman et al
• 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman
• Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness
• The Right Choice​ by Shiv Shivakumar
• Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
• Work Rules by Laszlo Bock
• The Unfair Advantage by Ash Ali & Hassan Kubba
• Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown
• Solve For Happy by Mo Gawdat (Also a memoir)
• The Practice By Seth Godin
• Tiny Beautiful Things from Dear Sugar
• You Think You Have Existential Angst, Read: Hunger by Knut Hamsun
• Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships by Sue Johnson
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
• To Sell is Human, by Dan Pink
• Influence By Robert B. Cialdini
• The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli
• The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
• Mastery by Robert Greene
• Tools of the Titans by Tim Ferriss

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Best Movies and Documentaries

Find the list HERE.

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Business And Professional Development

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock
• Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World by Ashley Goodall and Marcus Buckingham
• Mastering the Cube: Overcoming Stumbling Blocks and Building an Organization that Works by Reed Deshler
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future By Peter Thiel
• Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters

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Picture Books On Life

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Short Stories

• Monster by Michael Czyzniejewski
• Kaleidoscope By Ray Bradbury
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
• Kafan by Munshi Prem Chand
• Mr Know-All by Williams Somerset Maugham
• Belles Lettres from Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
• Apollo by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Where are you going, Where have you been by Joyce Carol Oates
• Goodbye and Good Luck By Grace Paley
• Tell Me a Riddle By Tillie Olsen
• Sticks By George Saunders
• The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen

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Biographies

• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
• Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

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On Death

• Too Soon to Say Goodbye By Art Buchwald
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End By Atul Gawande
• When Breath Becomes Air By Paul Kalanithi
• The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying By Nina Riggs

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On Writing

• Make a Scene By Jordan E. Rosenfeld
• Story Structure Architect By Victoria Lynn Schmidt

Alain de Botton Quote

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Novels

• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
• Luck by Mark Twain: So funny about how luck only preserved instead of hardwork and brilliance, BONUS: Jealous protagonist.
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

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Poems

• Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The Speed Of Darkness By Muriel Rukeyser
• Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
• Her Kind by Anne Sexton
• Hedgehog by Chu Chen Po
• Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Wish To Read

• We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
• The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
• The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Age of the Robot Book by Roger Bootle
• The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough
• Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
• She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity By Carl Zimmer
• The Big Picture By Sean M. Carroll
• Shackleton’s Leadership of the Endurance Expedition By Charles Chappell.
• Superintelligence By Nick Bostrom
• Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Youth Mentoring in the 21st Century By Jean Rhodes
• The Wealth of Nations By Adam Smith
• Cryptonomicon, A Novel By Neal Stephenson
• Descartes’ Error By Antonio Damasio
• Hola Papi : How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons By John Paul Brammer
• Pain Free By Pete Egoscue
• The Magna Carta of Exponentiality By Vusi Thembekwayo
• The Way of The Superior Man By David Deida
• State Change By Robin Berzin MD
• The Philosophy Of Symbiosis By Kisho Kurokawa
• Seeking Wisdom By Peter Bevelin
• The Wealthy Barber By David Chilton
• On Creativity: The Art of Possibility By Roz & Ben Zander
• The Game By Neil Strauss
• A Man In Love By Karl Ove Knasgard
• Land of Seven Rivers by Sanjeev Sanyal
• The Undocumented Americans By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• The Spy and the Traitor By Ben Macintyre
• Invisible Women By Caroline Criado Perez
• The Three-Body Problem By Liu Cixin
• The Story of Philosophy By Will Durant
• God’s Debris By Scott Adams
• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman By James Gleick

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Global Educators

• Pep Marí, was the head psychologist in the High Performance Center (CAR) of Sant Cugat (Barcelona)
• David A. Sousa (Author: The Power of Student Teams) (Said Teachers are Brain Changers, underlying neuroscience of how learning works) (Educational Neuroscience)
• Carol Ann Tomlinson (Differential Education)
• Nancie Atwell has run a small, independent K-8 school in Maine
• Linda Liukas: Lady in STEM – TED Talk
• Adriana Gascoigne Girls In Tech
• Chris Urmson: Co-founder and CEO at @Aurora_inno developing self-driving cars.
• Jinnah Dylan Hosein: Actor, Engineer, Scientist

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Neuroscientists

• Jon Levy. Behavioral scientist studying Influence, Connection & Trust
• Amishi Jha
• Robert Sapolsky, Author Of “Behave”
• Michael Thomas: Cognitive Neuroscience
• Dr. Andrew Huberman – Neurologist
• V. S. Ramachandran: American-Indian neuroscientist: Phantom Limbs
• Moran Cerf, Author Of Free Will

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Thought Leaders 

• Simone de Beauvoir, French existentialist philosopher
• Michael Rich, Founder, The Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders (CIMAID)
• Jonathan Haidt on The Open Mind: Politics and Religion: Testing American Righteousness
• Martin Lindstrom – Organizational Guidance System
• Sheena Iyengar, Author Of The Art of Choosing
• Maria Angelita Ressa
• Daisaku Ikeda – Japanese Buddhist Philosopher
• Vusi Thembekwayo – Entrepreneur and Global Business Speaker
• Slavoj Žižek (Slovenian Philosopher)
• J. B. S. Haldane – Socialist Biologist
• Ari Wallach – Futurist

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Writers

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Egypt’s multi-talented creator Salah Jahin
• Orhan Pamuk
• Carmen Agra Deedy
• Meenakshi Jain, Political Scientist And Historian
• James Baldwin
• Mallory Ortberg
• Johann Eduard Hari – British-Swiss Writer

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Philosophers

• Friedrich Nietzsche: Creative Self Expression
• Marcus Aurelius

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Psychologists

• William James – Founder Of Modern Psychology
• Roy Baumeister – Social Psychologist
• Dr Shelja Sen
• Jean Piaget: Swiss psychologist: Child Development: Science and Spirituality
• Abraham Maslow: Creator of Self-actualization concept.
• DR. DANIEL SIEGEL
  Psychiatrist, Author, Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute
• DR. LAURA MARKHAM
  Clinical Psychologist, Author, Founder of Ahaparenting.com
• KIM JOHN PAYNE
  Counselor, Author of Being At Your Best When Your Kids Are At Their Worst
• DR. TINA PAYNE BRYSON
  Psychotherapist, Author of The Power of Showing Up
• DR. CHRISTINE CARTER
  Sociologist, Greater Good Science Center
• DR. STUART SHANKER
  Science Director of the Self-Regulation Institute, Author of Self-Reg
• DAYNA ABRAHAM
  Author of The Superkids Activity Guide, National Board Certified Teacher
• DR. JOHN DUFFY
  Clinical Psychologist, Author of Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety
• DR. LYNYETTA WILLIS
  Licensed Psychologist, Author of the children’s book My Forgotten Self
• DR. KELLY BROGAN
  Holistic Psychiatrist, Author of A Mind of Your Own
• CINDY WANG BRANDT
  Author of Parenting Forward, Podcaster, Speaker
• SUZANNE MACDONALD TUCKER
  Physical Therapist, Founder of Generation Mindful
• DR. PETER GRAY
  Psychology Professor, Author of Free to Learn
• JANELL BURLEY HOFMANN
  Author of iRules, Speaker, Consultant
• DR. RICK HANSON
  Psychologist, Author of Resilient and Neurodharma
• DR. JOSEPH LEE
  Psychiatrist, Creator of Mental Healthiness classes
• JENNIFER MILLER
  Author of Confident Parents, Confident Kids, Consultant
• DR. SUSAN POLLAK
  Psychologist, Author of Self-Compassion for Parents
• TOSHA SCHORE
  Parent Coach, Co-author of Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges
• IRIS CHEN
  Recovering Tiger Mother, Unschooling Mom, Parent Coach
• COCO STANBACK
  Certified ADHD Coach, Certified CPS Provider
• DR. DEBORAH MACNAMARA
  Counsellor, Author of Rest, Play, Grow
• KEIRA MERKOVSKY
  Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Founder of Relationship Cubed

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The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness | Fernando Pessoa

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Best Book Recommendations And Reviews

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