Fans pick 100 books like Experimenting with Religion

This book is a compilation of chapters written by (mostly) psychology professors who have dealt with creativity extensively throughout their careers, and I highly recommend it. The topics cover psychometric approaches to creativity, experimental studies in creativity, the history of creativity, biological bases of creativity, the development of creativity, relationships between creativity and intelligence, the types of motivation necessary to produce creative outputs, cultural aspects of creativity, computer modeling in creativity, the development of prodigies, and significant research into creative processes. I gained valuable insights into domains and areas that I never would have considered otherwise.

Reading this book will help you achieve emotional freedom. I came across Steven’s book in my pursuit of finding the best way to help my clients learn how to make the right choices when looking to find what gives them energy and what can take energy away. His book is a guide that masterfully helps you understand how you are likely to behave when overwhelmed and gives you a breakthrough approach to solving your behavior hijack.

I loved how something that can be so abstract and complex, like human behavioral patterns, can be simplified in a five-pattern model and be shared as a guide that shows you how our self-defense mechanism gets created, how it can high-jack us, and most importantly how we can get out of the trap. It helped me figure out, from an emotional perspective, what behavioral patterns I run whenever I am overwhelmed and which… show more.

Another happiness book!? Okay, if a philosophical book on the “art” of happiness isn’t your cup of Tibetan tea, then how about the science of happiness? Dr. Martin Seligmann is considered the founder of positive psychology – a movement to understand not just what’s wrong with people but what’s right. 

Though Seligman has written a few books over the decades on the research of well-being, I think Authentic Happiness is the best introduction to the many studies helping us find more meaning, engagement, and joy. My favorite part is that Seligman seems like a “natural grouch” – like a guy who didn’t want to believe in positive psychology but couldn’t ignore the robust research showing that we can change our well-being. Reading this is like chatting with the gruff, 40-year-teaching-veteran who is chock full of stories, wisdom, and insights to look at and live life differently.

Yes, this is a textbook, but if you are seeking a research design and methods text for psychology or a related discipline, this is easily my top choice.

There are lots of references to topical stories to keep everything relevant for students. There’s a truckload of valuable stuff online to support both teachers and learners. This fourth edition is right up-to-the-moment, Chapter 3 especially so, as it explains three types of scientific claims, and four types of validity that researchers should aim to achieve. That may sound forbidding, but Morling’s examples and explanations are pleasingly accessible.  

You may have heard of ‘significance testing,’ and the magical ‘p < .05,’ which somehow makes a research result ‘significant,’ which is often taken as (almost) ‘true.’ Even if you haven’t heard of all that, Kline explains clearly why significance testing has been disastrous for science, leading to misleading conclusions and much valuable research not even being reported.

He draws on my work to explain how ‘the new statistics’ (estimation) is a much better way to understand results. The first chapter is fairly easy to read. Later chapters are also terrific but get more technical as Kline explains lots of ways to do things better. As I’m quoted on the back cover, “Read this book and see the future!” Happily, the future is increasingly looking as Kline recommended.

There is a cottage industry of historical and analytical books attempting to explain where, exactly, our educational norms, structures, and strictures came from. Many of these are terrific, but Lagemann’s An Elusive Science is the best of the bunch for exploring how nineteenth and twentieth-century scientific research influenced modern educational practice. The author is the source of a line oft-quoted in ed circles: “I have often argued to students, only in part to be perverse, that one cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost.” This is the book that explicates and explores this almost primordial dichotomy, and how different philosophies of science became aligned with complementary philosophies of educational practice. A piercing, impeccably researched, enjoyable read. 

This book contains 17 chapters written by educational psychologists who have worked with creativity.  These chapters range from establishing the best conditions in organizations for creativity to occur, how to test for creativity, problem-solving and creativity, freedom, and constraint in creativity, time’s impact on creativity, how dreams and other insights influence creativity, how society influences creativity, the relevance of talent in creativity, to leadership involving creativity. The spectrum of perspectives is broad indeed and I have personally gleaned much about all the relevant domains relating to creativity from reading this book.

Once upon a time in the deep woods, a kind woman invited twelve family members and friends to Thanksgiving dinner. But not burning the turkey became the least of her worries. Wolf at the Door is a kick-ass nightmare, a ghoulish debut novella that will keep you sitting rigid in bed with your eyes and ears wide, long after its done. You may never walk in the woods again. How will our hero save her dinner guests from becoming the main course for two brutally vicious werewolves who just happen to be the neighbors? How well do you know the couple next door?

I discovered Wilson’s seminal book when I was in college.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that The Outsider changed my life. Before I read it I had no idea who I was or where I belonged. I was not a joiner. I wasn’t affected by peer pressure. As a consequence I felt alone and at sea.

At once, I recognized myself in The Outsider.

Wilson could have been writing about me. Suddenly, I understood who I was, why I reacted to certain things the way I did, and what my place in the world was and would be. There is no more desolate feeling of being alone and misunderstood in the world.

Wilson’s book gave me a sense of belonging. Who could ask for anything more?

Van Tharp’s Super Trader is the book that changed my perspective on trading.

After reading it I began thinking of trading like a business (O’Neil touches on this as well) that works best with well-designed systems and processes.

Tharp goes deep into psychology and belief systems. He says “We don’t actually trade the market. We trade our beliefs about the market.” If this is the case, we better gain as much awareness of our beliefs as we can! He was a huge inspiration in this department and was one of my biggest inspirations in the realm of trading psychology.

Tharp also introduces position sizing concepts in this book that reveal “how much we bet” has far more to do with our overall success in trading than most anything else. Even more so than where we enter and exit.