72 books like Chasing the Scream

Besides being one of the best psychologists in mankind's history, Viktor is a masterful storyteller. It's as if I was transported to Auschwitz at the time, where Viktor was imprisoned along with thousands of Jews; in a very compelling way, he leaves no hint of a doubt that it was thanks to his meaning in life that he was able to survive, and the minute that others let go of theirs, they let go of life itself.

In addition, Viktor also shares his logotherapy framework and how it was updated after his terrible experience. If you doubt the power of doing the work to search for your life’s meaning, this book is a must-read. 

Van der Kolk argues that trauma is one of the West’s most urgent public health issues. The trauma caused by childhood neglect, sexual or domestic abuse, and war wreaks havoc on our bodies.

Over time, traumatic stress is associated with lasting functional and chemical changes in the brain. But healing is still possible.

This book has long been a favorite of spiritual seekers, with its sweeping panoply of stories from antiquity’s gods and goddesses to the world’s wisdom traditions and more.

This is a book for those interested in the universality of human experience across time and culture—which I am. But even more, it opens our minds to the importance of a story itself.

Campbell helps readers understand that truth and fact are different—indeed, there are several kinds of truth: empirical truth, which depends on objective data, and also mythopoetic and narrative truth, which rely on symbols and stories to provide meaning.

Reding’s book on the methamphetamine epidemic in small-town Ohio is distressing but essential. He is exceptional in showing rather than telling how meth is in so many ways the Great American Drug. It makes you work even more maniacally, for one. And the hollowing out of Middle America makes the drug’s proactive nature even more attractive in these forgotten towns and cities. It is painful that the meth scourge might have eased but, as is so often the case, other destructive substances have quickly replaced it. 

The world of individual men is shaped by our continuing social, economic, and political power. But “men” aren’t one uniform group. We experience the world through our socio-economic class, ‘race’, sexual and gender orientations, ethnicity, physical differences, and more. When bell hooks died in 2021, we lost one of the US’s great feminists who long explored the intersectional nature of women’s oppression. She also wrote with great compassion about men, as you can also see in her book, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity.

If I were asked to recommend just one book on the history of drugs, this would be it. Courtwright is an expert in the history of drugs in the nineteenth and twentieth-century United States, but in this book, he zooms out—way out—to think about the larger history of humanity’s relationship to mind-altering substances.

At the book's core is Courtwright’s influential concept of a “psychoactive revolution” that influenced the histories of empire, globalization, and science over the past five centuries. I have been deeply influenced by his approach ever since I first read this book in grad school, and I use it often in my teaching. 

Decades before Netflix’s hit series Narcos, Gugliotta and Leen turned their prize-winning series of articles in The Miami Herald into a highly original book, Kings of Cocaine. What astounds me is how well the author’s uncovering the psychopathic violence, unimaginable profits, and political and social corruption of the Colombian cocaine trade. And this rot and bloodshed were not just occurring in the less developed Colombia but right inside Ronald Reagan’s America. 

A work of intrepid journalism and sizzling writing, Grillo’s El Narco is the result of upwards of a decade following the mercurial, terrifying evolution of Mexico’s drug cartels. I’ve taught this book to my Davidson College students studying Latin American politics and they repeatedly tell me that it is their favorite book they tackle in the course. 

Unlike so many heroines of historical mysteries who had dangerous jobs in the Great War—usually a spy, courier, or battlefield nurse—I found Iris Cooper refreshingly average, but not boring. She’s sailing from England to America after a round-the-world tour with her aunt. When a man dies in a deck chair, Iris searches for answers about his identity. I especially liked the fact that Iris used her shorthand and typing skills to become part of the ship-board inquiry into the death and holds her own with the panel, which is basically an old boy’s club. The parade of suspects is catnip for a mystery reader like me and includes a voluptuous film star, a mysterious professor studying criminology, a handsome musician, and an enthusiastic newspaper reporter. I enjoyed watching Iris come into her own as a sleuth and find a little romance along the way.

The 1892 ax murder of Andrew and Abby Borden has become a staple of American popular culture. Everyone familiar with the case has a firmly held opinion on the guilt or innocence of their daughter Lizzie. There are many theories on what may have happened that day, but we have no way of knowing the whole truth. Then, as today, the best we can do is a trial by jury. The Trial of Lizzie Borden is a detailed and well-researched book presenting evidence, testimony, and events surrounding that momentous trial, leaving the reader with the same question that faced the jury—did Lizzie do it? Though unlikely to change many opinions, it gives the reader a greater understanding of why that jury found Lizzie Borden not guilty.