Fans pick 100 books like Determined

This book, by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD (Viking, September 2014), a bestseller, is probably the most renowned book on childhood trauma. His book changed my life and the way I look at healing from childhood trauma. \

Bessel has received praise from laypeople and professionals for this highly readable book. In it, Kolk emphasizes how the brain understands trauma and how, through different strategies, the brain can rewire itself to filter out thoughts and feelings associated with trauma.

Neuro-feedback, mindfulness, yoga, and play are included in the book to give the reader different methods for how to change the way the brain holds onto trauma. I have raved about Kolk’s title and the authenticity of his writing.  

Maté asks why chronic illness and general poor health are on the rise in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, one person in five has high blood pressure, while in Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And adolescent mental illness is on the rise everywhere.

Despite medical knowledge and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person by not considering how contemporary culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines our sense of emotional balance.

Maté dispels common myths about what makes us sick, connecting the dots between the maladies of individuals and the progressive malaise of society, and offers some suggestions for healing. 

Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk - molecular biologist, and Wolf Singer, a distinguished neuroscientist, discuss the concept of mind: our idea of self, the unconscious, the nature of free will, and the implications of neuroplasticity.

Although its methods differ, Buddhism, like science, aims to study the mind empirically. Buddhism tries to achieve this aim through focused introspection, while science analyzes the mind through observation and experiment. Beyond the Self presents a synthesis of Buddhism’s subjective experiences and neuroscience’s experimental results.

Ricard and Singer draw on insights from Buddhism and neuroscience to help us live more compassionate and ultimately happier lives.

The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and healthier lives. In fact, research reveals that the strength of our social connections can predict our health throughout the life span. Insights in this book are drawn from the personal lives of participants in the Harvard Study of Adult Development, as they were followed for each year of their adult lives, and supported by research data from this and similar studies.

Relationships of all kinds—friendships, romantic partnerships, families, coworkers—contribute to a happier, healthier life. According to The Good Life, it’s never too late to strengthen the relationships you have—and never too late to build new ones.

This book is now 40 years old, but it continues to set the agenda for analytic discussions of free will.

It is remarkably clear and honest about the difficulties faced by the author’s preferred view, as well as all alternative views. Despite its influence, a number of the ideas in this book (for example, parallels between the free will debates and external world skepticism) still remain largely unexplored.

This 17th-century debate remains both engaging and unresolved – testimony to the endurance of the free will problem.

Bramhall upholds a traditional view of free will, while Hobbes defends a more modern “materialist” view that is an ancestor to the views defended by List and Ismael above.

While many contemporary discussions of free will often focus on implications for moral responsibility, this debate is notable for the far broader range of considerations that the authors invoke, suggesting that the question of free will touches just about every aspect of our agency.

What fascinates me most about this novella is its ability to capture such depth and fullness in such a short length.

This book explores the concept of time and language, and how the way humans perceive time vastly differs from the alien species, and the way language ultimately affects time perception and decision-making as well.

I was impressed by author Kent Greenfield’s courage in questioning the near-sacred notion that all of our choices are free. Greenfield is not an enemy of choice, freedom, or liberty, but he understands how popular culture has reduced these complex concepts into not much more than advertising slogans.

A law professor at Boston University, the author uses relatable real-life examples, many of them personal, to illustrate how things that we think of as free choices are not as free as we would like to believe. Greenfield is not a pessimist, and I appreciate his suggestions for thinking more carefully about the extent to which our choices are truly and freely our own. 

A brilliant and accessible explanation for one of the central mysteries: how and why do we feel like we decide to act? Sometimes, we think we cause events when we don’t; other times, we act without knowing it. What gives?!

Through the story of his research programme, Wegner shows how each experiment fits together to build a satisfying explanation for how the mind fabricates for us a feeling of agency. As well as experiments, the book covers a set of fascinating phenomena, Ouija boards, hypnosis, and possession, and tries to show how they can be made sense of.

The whole thing is a window into how experimental psychologists do their work, as well as a compelling account of the nature of conscious will.

What I love about this book is its clarity and honesty. It is a work of philosophy that has nothing to do with the fashionable task of analyzing concepts at the time of its publication. It sets out a clear view about the nature of the world–what it is that science is telling us about the nature of the world–and discusses problems that this view gives rise to with admirable clarity and honesty. 

And the author makes a vital contribution in connection with his discussion of the nature of sensations and consciousness. Above all, I admire the patent honesty of this book so much, the capacity of the author to pursue his basic idea wherever it may lead, to the ends of the earth, with scrupulous honesty and integrity.