100 books like Life of the Mind

By Hannah Arendt,

Here are 100 books that Life of the Mind fans have personally recommended if you like Life of the Mind. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Book cover of About Looking

Sallie Tisdale Author Of The Lie about the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze

From my list on the existential crisis of looking in a mirror.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer, I’ve always been interested in ambiguity and ambivalence. How does that apply to the self? What does it mean to present myself to others? How do I appear to the world and how close is that to what I see myself to be? Are we ever truly seen—or willing to be seen? In a world where cameras exist everywhere and we are encouraged to record rather than simply be, how do we look in a mirror? Hannah Arendt said that we could tell reality from falsehood because reality endures. But I feel that nothing I experience endures; nothing remains the same, including the reflection. If anything lasts, it may be my own make-believe. Everything I write is, in some way, this question. Who is that?

Sallie's book list on the existential crisis of looking in a mirror

Sallie Tisdale Why did Sallie love this book?

This is a book of essays about the act of looking, especially looking at photographs and paintings and animals and other people. Thus these are essays about history, memory, suffering, beauty, and the self. Berger had a generous spirit; he wrote often about the lives of peasants and spent the last forty years of his life in rural France. Berger gazed upon the world in all its forms with composure and curiosity. 

By John Berger,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked About Looking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As a novelist, essayist, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to…


Book cover of Autobiography of a Face

Alan Martin Tansman Author Of Japanese Literature: A Very Short Introduction

From my list on moving, profound books about loss and resilience.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like many people, I have experienced my share of suffering. I have also spent a lifetime exploring the suffering of others through great works of literature and art. My attraction to Japanese literature–imbued with a Buddhist sensitivity to loss–reflects my taste for the melancholy beauty of works of art that transmute suffering into aesthetic form. The qualities I find in Japanese literature are in wonderfully long supply in writings from around the world. My list of favorite books is a small testament to that aesthetic work which has the potential to heal us.

Alan's book list on moving, profound books about loss and resilience

Alan Martin Tansman Why did Alan love this book?

Who among us has never felt shame? Who has never felt one’s spirit crushed? I myself have returned for relief from that periodic loss of inner spirit to this brave, unsentimental memoir of the ravages on Lucy Grealy’s face of a disease that condemned her to a punishing self-loathing.

Reading this boldly unabashed memoir of conquering shame, of finding an “inner eye” (and inner life) that could come to see as beautiful what the seeing eyes of the world saw only as ugly, I have felt buoyed by the possibility of reclaiming your own true self against the ravages of a hostile world. 

By Lucy Grealy,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Autobiography of a Face as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times Notable Book

"Grealy has turned her misfortune into a book that is engaging and engrossing, a story of grace as well as cruelty, and a demonstration of her own wit and style and class."—Washington Post Book World

“It is impossible to read Autobiography of a Face without having your consciousness raised forever.” – Mirabella

In this celebrated memoir and exploration of identity, cancer transforms the author’s face, childhood, and the rest of her life.

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her…


Book cover of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Rajiv Sethi Author Of Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice

From my list on human interactions and the complexity of social life.

Why am I passionate about this?

Rajiv Sethi is an economist, currently a professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research deals with information and beliefs, with particular focus on how stereotypes condition interactions among strangers. 

Rajiv's book list on human interactions and the complexity of social life

Rajiv Sethi Why did Rajiv love this book?

This path-breaking book presents a view of human communication as theater, where speakers choose their words to create desired impressions, and listeners try to interpret speech while guarding against manipulation and deceit.

Strategic interaction and interpretation are central to the argument. In effect, Goffman is examining dynamic games with incomplete information, decades below the formal language for such analyses was developed. 

By Erving Goffman,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the defining works of twentieth-century sociology: a revelatory analysis of how we present ourselves to others

'The self, then, as a performed character, is not an organic thing ... it is a dramatic effect'

How do we communicate who we are to other people? This landmark work by one of the twentieth century's most influential sociologists argues that our behaviour in social situations is defined by how we wish to be perceived - resulting in displays startlingly similar to those of actors in a theatrical performance. From the houses and clothes that we use as 'fixed props' to…


Book cover of Females

Sallie Tisdale Author Of The Lie about the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze

From my list on the existential crisis of looking in a mirror.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer, I’ve always been interested in ambiguity and ambivalence. How does that apply to the self? What does it mean to present myself to others? How do I appear to the world and how close is that to what I see myself to be? Are we ever truly seen—or willing to be seen? In a world where cameras exist everywhere and we are encouraged to record rather than simply be, how do we look in a mirror? Hannah Arendt said that we could tell reality from falsehood because reality endures. But I feel that nothing I experience endures; nothing remains the same, including the reflection. If anything lasts, it may be my own make-believe. Everything I write is, in some way, this question. Who is that?

Sallie's book list on the existential crisis of looking in a mirror

Sallie Tisdale Why did Sallie love this book?

A short, powerful investigation of how we construct and succumb to the lies of gender. Chu explores our fears of desire and how we allow politics to corrupt identity, believing gender to be so constructed that it can only be given and not created. Female is a quality we all carry, whatever label we use. Chu forces the reader to look in the mirror with a question instead of a statement, always uncertain about who that person really is. 

By Andrea Long Chu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Females as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Everyone is female, and everyone hates it."

So begins Andrea Long Chu's genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and the punishing force of desire.

Drawing inspiration from a forgotten play by Valerie Solanas-the woman who wrote the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol-Chu aims her searing wit and surgical intuition at targets ranging from performance art to psychoanalysis, incels to porn, and even feminists like herself. Each step of the way she defends the indefensible claim that femaleness is less a biological state of women and more a fatal existential…


Book cover of The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution

James Blachowicz Author Of The Bilateral Mind as the Mirror of Nature: A Metaphilosophy

From my list on the nature and capacities of our bilateral minds.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I like to think that I inherited much of this from my analytical “algebraic” mother, who was a nurse and tended to our family finances, and my holistic “geometrical” father, who was a carpenter. It’s probably no accident that my double major in college was in physics and philosophy...and, down the line, that I should develop a focused interest in human brain laterality, where the division between analysis and holism is so prominent.

James' book list on the nature and capacities of our bilateral minds

James Blachowicz Why did James love this book?

A comprehensive account by a pioneer of the discipline.

This book provides an overview of the relatively new discipline (in 1975) of “cognitive science,” so much so that I wondered whether I should have switched over from philosophy (I did not). It displays the breadth and depth of the discipline, which convinced me that one could no more be an expert in cognitive science in general than an expert in physics in general, biology in general, or philosophy in general.

This book is certainly a must-read for anyone interested either in the discipline itself or even in a corner of it, such as human brain laterality. (Be sure to see “hemispheres” in the index of this book.)

By Howard Gardner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Mind's New Science as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first full-scale history of cognitive science, this work addresses a central issue: What is the nature of knowledge?


Book cover of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

Chad LeJeune Author Of "Pure O" OCD: Letting Go of Obsessive Thoughts with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

From my list on thoughts, and our relationship with them.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a clinical psychologist, I listen to thoughts all the time. I’m also having my own, constantly. We rely on our thoughts to help us navigate the world. However, our thoughts can also be a source of suffering. At times, they're not such reliable guides or helpers. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a way of thinking about thinking. ACT captured my imagination early in my clinical career. I trained with ACT’s originator, Steven Hayes, in the early 1990’s. I’ve come to believe that being more aware of our own thoughts, and our relationship to them is key to creating positive change and living a life grounded in our values.

Chad's book list on thoughts, and our relationship with them

Chad LeJeune Why did Chad love this book?

In this witty and provocative book, psycholinguistics researcher Steven Pinker explores the role of language in shaping our experience of reality. 

Human-style thinking would not be possible without our capacity for language. Thoughts are basically internal language. Among the basic experiences shaped by linguistics is our experience of time. 

We use language to construct a spatial metaphor for time, thinking in terms of “moving” “forward” or “backward” in time. Pinker takes us for a walk around the metaphorical space of consciousness, examining how language shapes our experience of the world.   

By Steven Pinker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Stuff of Thought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Pulitzer Prize finalist author of The Blank Slate presents an accessible study of the relationship between language and human nature, explaining how everything from swearing and innuendo to prepositions and baby names reveal facts about key human concepts, emotions, and relationships.


Book cover of The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century

Marcus McCann Author Of Park Cruising: What Happens When We Wander Off the Path

From my list on new writing on sex and sexual politics.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a journalist, lawyer, and writer, I've been thinking and writing about state regulation of sexuality for 20 years. Political writing about sex can easily fall into orthodoxy; whether conservative or liberal, each side has its expected talking points. When I began investigating ways of thinking about public displays of sexuality in Park Cruising, I returned to the cache of sex-positive writing of the 1980s and 1990s. Some of it was invigorating, and some stale. So I sought out new writing about sex and sexuality, and I was richly rewarded. These books are just the tip of the iceberg; there's a feast of contemporary writing and thinking. So much to think through and explore!

Marcus' book list on new writing on sex and sexual politics

Marcus McCann Why did Marcus love this book?

I spent a lot of the last year pressing The Right to Sex into the hands of my smartest friends.

This book tackles some of the thorniest issues in sexual politics today, teasing out the seeming contradictions in feminist thought on campus sexual assault investigations, the Me Too movement, incels, and more. It’s compulsively readable; I was hooked from the first essay.

By Amia Srinivasan,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Right to Sex as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Laser-cut writing and a stunning intellect. If only every writer made this much beautiful sense.”
—Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

“Amia Srinivasan is an unparalleled and extraordinary writer—no one X-rays an argument, a desire, a contradiction, a defense mechanism quite like her. In stripping the new politics of sex and power down to its fundamental and sometimes clashing principles, The Right to Sex is a bracing revivification of a crucial lineage in feminist writing: Srinivasan is daring, compassionate, and in relentless search of a new frame.”
—Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion

Thrilling, sharp, and…


Book cover of The Second Sex

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier Author Of Off the Books

From my list on leave you shook and questioning.

Why am I passionate about this?

At age thirteen, sprawled on our shag-carpeted living room floor, I watched Poltergeist’s scariest scenes reflected in the glass doors of an old-school encyclopedia case. The blur made the film less scary—and aftewards, I noticed two smaller books leaned against Volumes 15-16: Italy to Lord. Reading Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time back-to-back that night rattled me harder than seeing Carol Anne sucked into the netherworld. I woke up with my worldview rearranged, and I hope you’ll find these books every bit as pleasantly unsettling.

Soma's book list on leave you shook and questioning

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier Why did Soma love this book?

What? Another book written in the 1900s? But bear with me, friends. There’s a reason de Beauvoir’s known as the “Mother of Modern Feminism” (and life partner of “Father of Existentialism” Jean-Paul Sartre, whom she’s buried alongside though they never actually had kids together or even shared a home).

Just as a film can shock us to tears when we recognize ourselves or those we love in it, de Beauvoir’s classic showed me some unsavory parts of myself. 

By Simone de Beauvoir, Constance Borde (translator), Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (translator)

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Second Sex as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The essential masterwork that has provoked and inspired generations of men and women. “From Eve’s apple to Virginia Woolf’s room of her own, Beauvoir’s treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of knowledge.” —Vogue

This unabridged edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as when it was first published, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.


Book cover of On Violence

William Clare Roberts Author Of Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital

From my list on understanding how power works.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a teacher, a student, and a reader by trade (that is, a university professor), and I spend most of my time trying to understand social and political power: why some people have it, and others don’t, how it circulates and changes (gradually or suddenly), why it sometimes oppresses us and sometimes liberates, how it can be created and destroyed. I mostly do this by reading and teaching the history of political theory, which I am lucky enough to do at McGill University, in conversation and cooperation with some wonderful colleagues.

William's book list on understanding how power works

William Clare Roberts Why did William love this book?

I think this little book is invaluable for its portrayal of power, not as power over others or as power to do something but as power with other people.

It took me a long time to appreciate this insight, and I still think there is a lot to disagree with and dislike about Arendt’s work in general, but I am indebted to her argument that human power is rooted in solidarity.

By Hannah Arendt,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked On Violence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Political theorist, philosopher, and feminist thinker Hannah Arendt's On Violence is an analysis of the nature, causes, and significance of violence in the second half of the twentieth century. The public revulsion against violence and nonviolent philosophies continues to diminish in the twenty-first century. In this classic and still all too resonant work, Hannah Arendt puts her theories about violence into historical perspective, examining the relationships between war and politics, violence and power. Questioning the nature of violent behavior, she reveals the causes of its many manifestations, and ulitmately argues against Mao Zedong's dictum "power grows out of the barrel…


Book cover of Dialectic of Enlightenment

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Author Of Is Artificial Intelligence Racist? The Ethics of AI and the Future of Humanity

From my list on future technologies and the ethics of AI.

Why am I passionate about this?

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at SOAS University of London and Fellow of Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge. Among over a dozen honorary appointments all over the world, Adib-Moghaddam is the inaugural Director of the SOAS Centre for AI Futures.

Arshin's book list on future technologies and the ethics of AI

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Why did Arshin love this book?

First published in 1947, this iconic book of the “Frankfurt School” could not be a study of AI and 21st-century technologies per see.

Instead it is a phantasmic explainer of how the mistakes of the past impinge on our humanity and the prospects for a better future. "What we had set out to do," Adorno and Horkheimer famously wrote in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

With spectacular erudition, the authors clearly show how the terror regime of the Nazis was rooted in the nefarious legacies of enlightenment Europe and its obsession with racial purity. As such, Adorno and Horkheimer presaged why it is that our polluted history feeds into racist AI technologies: Bad data, Adorno and Horkheimer would agree, produces bad outcomes. 

By Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Edmund Jephcott (translator)

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Dialectic of Enlightenment as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in philosophy, thinking, and existential crisis?

Philosophy 1,751 books
Thinking 48 books