100 books like Curious

Wharton Marketing Professor Jonah Berger has spent decades researching what makes ideas spread and marketing go viral. The best idea and brand story with the right archetype won’t make a difference if it isn’t seen. With today’s fragmented media landscape, you need to know what makes something catch on and drives word-of-mouth to spread your story.

This book outlines 6 characteristics of what makes things catch on with social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value, and story. Understanding these factors helped improve my brand stories. Even social media advertising only buys an interruption. It doesn’t guarantee action and spread.

David Aaker is an American Marketing Association Hall of Fame member and innovator in marketing management and branding through research, teaching, and books.

This book is his insight on brand storytelling with inspiration from his daughter Jennifer Aaker and other’s research on the power of stories. Aaker explains that stories are powerful in communicating strategic messaging. He also explains that in a digital age where content is king, stories are the key to content.

I especially liked his explanation of the types of signature stories and examples of brand signature stories – including the L.L. Bean story in the very beginning.

This book is all about brand building and it was integral to my advertising copywriting days.

Mark and Pearson use Jung’s 12 archetypes to classify brands, consumer markets, and consumers. We used their system to help our clients identify brand meaning and archetype and then used that as the basis for establishing relationships with customers.

Knowing the brand archetype helped me know what type of character’s story to tell. Brand and story archetypes become a shortcut to letting an audience and prospective customer know your brand story is about their story.

To tell a brand story, you need ideas. Where do ideas come from? No one really knew, including me, until James Young Webb wrote this book, and I discovered it years into my career.

Before reading Young's book, my ideas for marketing clients were often hit or miss. Sometimes, they were brilliant, and sometimes, just okay. What was the difference? I didn’t know until I read this five-step process. When I followed this process my ideas were better. Knowing and following the process will make your ideas and brand stories better.

Albert Einstein was, for a very good reason or three, Time magazine’s “Person of the Twentieth Century.”

Unfortunately, very few people are knowledgeable about his contributions to modern science, which are enormous and complex, and even fewer seem to know about his thinking on politics, war, and peace in particular, and the world in general.

In this book, readers have the opportunity to learn more about Einstein’s thoughts about the world of the 20th century, which are usually presented in a clear, accessible fashion.

Of all the books I've read about Einstein, this one was, perhaps, the most eye-opening for me. For years, the prevailing opinion was that while Einstein was (of course) brilliant, and his special and general theories of relativity were seismically important, he was on the wrong side of history with his views on quantum theory. Stone sets the record straight: Einstein was indeed skeptical of many aspects of quantum theory (particularly with his refusal to accept quantum entanglement and inherent randomness), but his challenges to the theory were so intelligent and so piercing, that the entire scientific community had to respond to him. Stone argues convincingly that Einstein's concerns were often the driving force propelling the theory forward.

Using Einstein's most famous equation as his organizational theme, Bodanis offers a fresh and exciting approach to Einstein's life and work. Energy, mass, and the speed of light become characters of their own as Bodanis traces our evolving understanding of the nature of the universe. The book is all about context—delightfully so—giving Bodanis an excuse to introduce a kaleidoscope of colorful personalities who either influenced Einstein, or were influenced by him, all connected by their relationship to this most powerful of all equations.     

You can’t talk physics without talking Einstein! This beautiful book explores Einstein’s curiosity and drive to know more, which began when he was young. His journey from nonverbal child to brilliant scientist is fascinating and inspiring for all kinds of readers.

This book has haunted me for years. For what is it, exactly, that gives it such enduring popularity? After all, it was first published in 1936, yet is still in print today. In his autobiography, Hogben remarks on the importance of eye-catching illustrations but speculates that its success may instead be because the book contains – most unusually for a 'popular' work – exercises and answers, making it more suitable for self-teaching. Whatever the real answer, his book must surely have something to teach anyone – like myself – who aspires to bring mainstream mathematics to life for the general public.

Scholarship, regardless of the particular field, is always a creative process. Craft and method, the fruits of a rigorous education and hard work, are essential prerequisites, but genuine breakthroughs often seem to result from some mysterious incubation: a wild dance of ideas that emerge from the subconscious, stirred up by the keen will to understand something. Only a few of them eventually make it, by way of sensual representations, to the surface of consciousness, where they are formed and articulated by logic and language. In this book, the great French mathematician Jacques Hadamard captivatingly describes his investigation into the psychological underpinnings of creativity. He stresses the role of images and emotions in thought processes. I have always liked his conclusion that every significant invention requires at least some poetic feel.