100 books like Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

I loved Jay Glazer's book because it perfectly puts together how to defeat anxiety and depression through hard work, determination, and grit. 

I appreciated how he lays out his heartfelt story of trauma, survival, and triumph over adversity. Jay’s writing captured me at my core and touched my heart. It will move anyone who reads it to find hope and elicit change.

I absolutely loved this book by Asante Cleveland and my dear friend Jordan Pinckney because it is an incredible testimony of how faith in the human condition, and his ability to overcome struggle, strife, and pain can lead to light at the end of any tunnel.

This book must be read by any person who has ever experienced pain, as I can attest that it has helped me get through mine. If you think about it, we’ve all experienced pain.

Asante is a great role model for anyone who needs a jolt in life to find a better path. The two authors have written a book that changed my heart, my mind, and my life indefinitely.  

I was immersed in this book by Bob McGee because it is an incredible true story of a long-time painter of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the things he saw while employed at the GGB moved me to my gut.

His first person view is the very first of its kind, and this book is one of a kind. I was floored by how he shows the reader the hardship of the job, as well as the darkness of the harbinger of death that was the Golden Gate Bridge before the net was installed this year.

I also really appreciated how the book shines a beautiful light on the building of the GGB and all the effort it took to create such a global icon. 

I wholeheartedly loved the book of my good friend Stuart Katz because it is a tremendous literary achievement. The book is carefully put together from Stuart's perspective on his humanitarian and hopeful mental health efforts around the globe.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with Stuart in the past, and he is a phenomenal writer. I found it extremely hard to put this book down once I picked it up, I finished it in two days, and I am a slow reader.

This is a must-read for any world traveler, and I highly recommend you read it while on the road or in the air. It will enhance your traveling experiences and your mental health tenfold. 

This book offers a captivating tale of how the increasing knowledge of one disease, syphilis, created the foundations to understanding that the brain and mind are one and the same. The authors narrate the stories of patients whose “hysteria” (today referred to as functional neurological disorder) were traced to degenerative brain lesions that only belatedly were understood to be complications caused by remote infections with the bacterium Treponema pallidum. Several chapters follow the story of the important characters depicted by André Brouillet in the Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière (A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière), one of the most recognized paintings by neurologists, as it depicts Jean-Martin Charcot, shown among many of his disciples, demonstrating a “hysteric” seizure in one of his patients. The authors illustrate how we have gotten away with conceptualizing behaviors without biological basis and put the reader on notice that “mental illnesses” are neurological problems… show more.

One of the world’s best neuroscientists, who won the Nobel Prize in 2000, engagingly describes neurological and cognitive diseases/conditions and how they can be debilitating but, in some cases, can lead to extraordinary mental abilities in memory, visual arts, etc.

It came out the same year as my book, and it adds to and complements it. I found the descriptions of brain disorders compelling and the history of psychiatry woven into the chapters fascinating. The relationship between certain cognitive disorders and highly creative people is discussed, and an intriguing reason for this is proposed.

This fascinating book is essentially the story of prefrontal lobotomies and the surgery that was developed to carry out the procedure. Although it did help certain violent patients, it had serious side effects not recognized initially and was used inappropriately on too many patients (including President Kennedy’s sister).

The book recounts the history of why the procedure was developed and many of the scientists and surgeons involved. It provides a perfect case study of the caution needed when a new, thought to be miraculous, treatment for any disease is first tried.

We neuroscientists know a lot about how brains are, but not how they come to be. This book fills that huge hole: it explains how genetics and development shape the growing brain, and the consequences this has for our personalities and our mental disorders. Mitchell’s thesis is that the stochastic nature of development is key to understanding much of the variation between brains, and it has changed the way I think about the wiring of brains.

V. S. Ramachandran is a gifted experimentalist and writer who does not hesitate to pursue deep and important questions about our minds. Rather than employing expensive imaging or large sample sizes, he is more likely to use a cardboard box, an old stereopticon, or a rubber hand in his experiments. 

His creativity in finding concrete ways to test seemingly vague but interesting claims about our minds has led to several breakthroughs, in our understanding of phantom limbs and our ability to treat phantom pain, and also in our study of synesthesia—cases in which people see numbers as having colors, for example.

As I can attest, he is able to transmit to his students the idea that pursuing scientific questions can be thrilling, fulfilling, and so much fun that you can’t wait to get to work in the morning.

Nobel prize winner Gerald Edelman sums up in this book a model of human consciousness that has greatly informed my understanding. The framework he constructs involves intricate interconnections among myriad brain components— interconnections that operate according to a dynamic process that he terms “re-entry."

Written in a voice that is quite professorial, this book requires concentrated study, and is a must-have text for the serious student of human consciousness.