Here are 21 books that On the Move fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a University Distinguished Professor at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I have devoted my career to studying service quality and ways to improve it, first in the commercial sector and, since 2001, in healthcare. I started my healthcare journey studying at the Mayo Clinic, and I have since done in-residence research at other health systems, most recently, Henry Ford Health in Detroit. My work includes research on improving the patient and family experience in cancer care. Kindness and dignity are vitally important in healthcare – and too often missing. I am on a personal mission to enhance healing in all its forms.
I loved this book because it builds from the sadness of a life taken far too young to the beauty of deep reflections on the meaning of life, love, and loss. Paul Kalanithi was a brilliant neurosurgeon just completing his years of training when he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.
Kalanithi, a new father, wrote much of this book while he was dying. As a writer myself, this book caused me to wonder if I could be so open about my reality, in a book or any other form, while dying. I do not know the answer, but I treasure the experience of having read a book that raised such a powerful stirring in myself. Like the other books I recommend, Kalanithi’s memoir is a gift from the book Gods.
'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal
What makes life worth living in the face of death?
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and…
Ever since I was a little girl, I felt intimidated to use my voice when I needed to, or didn’t feel confident to speak up or show up to support myself. It wasn’t until I studied emotional intelligence (EI) that I started to learn the tools that helped me develop my confidence and step into my power. My book has many of these tools in it, and I am on a mission to help leaders embrace intentional shifts in behavior, or pauses, to redirect their energy to feel more confident, calm, and clear–without the overwhelm.
I loved this book because Brene is the real deal. This book helped me know what qualities I needed to step up and own my full self–as an authentic, real-deal leader. When I didn’t feel confident during my career pause and after my burnout, I didn’t know what to do differently, let alone how to do it.
Through Brene’s storytelling and research, I felt inspired again. I wanted to step into my courageous self because I knew I was capable. Brene helped me get there in this book (and still does with her podcast under the same name!).
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead.
Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart!
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG
Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and…
I’m a psychiatry professor, researcher, and author at Stanford University. Besides OCD, my research has focused on the interface between technology and psychology, both in its negative manifestations (e.g., video game addiction, online narcissism, cyberbullying) and positive applications (e.g., telemedicine, virtual reality therapy, AI digital therapeutics). My reading tastes and non-scientific writing topics reflect the same interests—deep and highly personal psychological explorations of individuals on a quest for meaning or facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, symptoms, or character tests.
I loved the thrilling interweaving of historical fact with creative fiction, psychology with politics, and high Golden Age Amsterdam culture with Nazi Germany depravity.
Irv Yalom reimagines the inner lives of two men who couldn’t be more different, and whose individual and unique fates history still somehow found a way to unite.
A haunting portrait of Arthur Rosenberg, one of Nazism's chief architects, and his obsession with one of history's most influential Jewish thinkers
In The Spinoza Problem, Irvin Yalom spins fact and fiction into an unforgettable psycho-philosophical drama. Yalom tells the story of the seventeenth-century thinker Baruch Spinoza, whose philosophy led to his own excommunication from the Jewish community, alongside that of the rise and fall of the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, who two hundred years later during World War II ordered his task force to plunder Spinoza's ancient library in an effort to deal with the Nazis' "Spinoza Problem."
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I’m a psychiatry professor, researcher, and author at Stanford University. Besides OCD, my research has focused on the interface between technology and psychology, both in its negative manifestations (e.g., video game addiction, online narcissism, cyberbullying) and positive applications (e.g., telemedicine, virtual reality therapy, AI digital therapeutics). My reading tastes and non-scientific writing topics reflect the same interests—deep and highly personal psychological explorations of individuals on a quest for meaning or facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, symptoms, or character tests.
This book parlays the author’s personal experience with bipolar disorder and mental illness and her experience as a clinician treating these conditions to describe the sometimes clinical roots of genius.
How "artistic temperament," as expressed in literature, music, and the visual arts, differs from the euphoric highs and desperate lows of full-blown psychiatric conditions is the very worthwhile question she passionately tries to answer with and for us.
The anguished and volatile intensity associated with the artistic temperament was once thought to be a symptom of genius or eccentricity peculiar to artists, writers and musicians. Kay Jamison's work, based on her study as a clinical psychologist and researcher in mood disorders, reveals that many artists subject to exalted highs and despairing lows were in fact engaged in a struggle with clinically identifiable manic-depressive illness. Jamison presents proof of the biological foundations of this disease and applies what is known about the illness to the lives and works of some of the world's greatest artists including Byron, Van Gogh,…
For most of my life I’ve been both a writer and a swimmer. I’ve engaged in both activities for many decades, but I’ve always kept the two entirely separate. Write about swimming? Why? What would I say? What was there to say about water and the act of moving through it? It seemed to me that it was a case of “you have to be there,” that writing about swimming would be too removed from the immediacy, the tactility, the floating state of mind. It was only when I discovered works by some truly great writers that I began to see that I could write about my own love of being in water, and how I might go about it.
Everyone knows who the late Oliver Sacks is, and his extraordinary books have been read by millions. But not many know about Sacks’ great love of swimming, which he first wrote about in “Water Babies,” a beautiful personal essay published in The New Yorker in 1997. I had an “aha!” moment when I first read this essay, in my realization that Sacks and I were kindred water spirits, and that it was possible to write about swimming in a way that would engage readers of all stripes.
From the best-selling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcase Sacks's broad range of interests--from his passion for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's.
Oliver Sacks, scientist and storyteller, is beloved by readers for his neurological case histories and his fascination and familiarity with human behavior at its most unexpected and unfamiliar. Everything in Its Place is a celebration of Sacks's myriad interests, told with his characteristic compassion and erudition, and in his luminous prose.
After many years of studying the subject and still more writing about it, my mind is still blown away by the fact that pretty much everything around you is a chemical of some kind. Even more impressive to me is that all of the molecules that make up everything you can see, smell, touch, and taste are made from combinations of just a handful of elements. The periodic table is a one-page summary of pretty much everything, the ultimate Lego kit to build a whole universe. I love finding out about and telling the stories of these incredible chemical constructions.
Sack’s biography of his childhood in London is full of chemical curiosity and surrounded by family members who shared his enthusiasm, encouraged his experimentation, and supplied seemingly endless fascinating stories about elements and chemistry. There are stories of Sacks making powerful stinks in the garden shed and the titular Uncle Tungsten who talked about metals as though they were friends.
This memoir from Oliver Sacks is both a departure from and an enhancement of his previous psychologically orientated 'medical' writing. Not only is it a beautifully written account of an English childhood - seasoned by a childish passion for science - but it is told from the intimate and revelatory perspective of one of the most important and humane writers on psychology alive today. Oliver Sacks has the literary artistry of WH Auden and the intellectual rigour and questioning mind of Stephen Jay Gould. The world authority in his field, this is a remarkable insight into the mind and background…
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…
I am an author, science journalist, and storyteller. I worked for the PBS science series NOVA for many years, producing documentaries, podcasts, digital video series, and interactive games on everything from asteroids to human origins to art restoration. But I am particularly fascinated by strange brains, which is why I wrote my first book, The Memory Thief. I am currently at work on a second book about a different neurological disorder.
I loaned this pocket-sized gem to a neurologist friend who never gave it back, so I bought myself another copy. Author A.J. Lees is a leading Parkinson’s disease expert who has a bone to pick with the establishment and how medical science is practiced today. This soulful, lyrical, novella-length book explores the inspiration Lees took from the prolific writer William Burroughs, whose book The Naked Lunch is one of the best-known works of the beatnik generation. Lees follows Burroughs’ path into the Amazon, where Lees tries the medicinal plant yage, a drug he hopes could help Parkinson’s sufferers.
A fascinating account by one of the world's leading neurologists of the profound influence of William Burroughs on his medical career. Lees relates how Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, inspired him to discover a ground-breaking treatment for Parkinson's Disease. Lees journeys to the Amazonian rainforest in search of cures for Parkinson's Disease, and through self-experimentation seeks to find the answers his patients crave. He enters a powerful plea for the return of imagination to medical research.
Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls of Atomic City, the Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods. She has devoted her last three books to the history of Thanksgiving and gratitude, writing separate books for all ages.
The late Oliver Sacks was a neurologist who wrote eloquently about medical topics until he was taken from us by cancer in 2015.
Before he died, he wrote four lovely essays talking about his illness, and the great privilege of being human. Sacks was one of our greatest writers, thoughtful and incisive. Because he was dying as he wrote this, you may wish to wait to digest this book if you have recently experienced the loss of a loved one, and come back to it when you’re in a better place.
Oliver Sacks died in August 2015 at his home in Greenwich Village, surrounded by his close friends and family. He was 82. He spent his final days doing what he loved: playing the piano, swimming, enjoying smoked salmon - and writing . . .
As Dr Sacks looked back over his long, adventurous life his final thoughts were of gratitude. In a series of remarkable, beautifully written and uplifting meditations, in Gratitude Dr Sacks reflects on and gives thanks for a life well lived, and expresses his thoughts on growing old, facing terminal cancer and reaching the end.
As a teenager, I worked on cars and motorcycles in my spare time while apprenticing in an architectural millwork shop, paneling the homes of the rich and famous. Thus I discovered the great joys and satisfactions of working with my hands. After a long stint in graduate school, then four years as an editor at Fine Woodworking magazine and for Taunton Press books, I opened a custom design furniture business in 2000. Travel, writing, and reading are aligned passions, and I’ve lived, taught English, and woodworking here and abroad in France, Slovakia, India, and Japan.
Albert Sack is a riot. He lines up expensive antiques, ranks them from the definitive label “Masterpiece” to the slow-hand insult of “Good”. He describes each in brutally honest and thereby exceptionally insightful terms. One chair is “a brilliant achievement”, while a clock is “relatively crude,” and a table’s legs “end nowhere.” No one comes away with a trophy for participation, making the book exceptionally good to train your eye towards good design. You want people to like the things you make, don’t you? Learn to distinguish good from great with Albert.
An indispensable guide for collectors and dealers who want to compare and evaluate early American antiques. When Albert Sack's Fine Points of Furniture: Early American--Good, Better, Best was published in 1950, it established a new standard for evaluating American antiques. In his new book, Sack applies this standard to furniture pieces that have appeared on the market in more recent years. Full color and black-and-white photographs.
When Jennifer Shea married Russel Redmond, they made a decision to spend their honeymoon at sea, sailing in Mexico. The voyage tested their new relationship, not just through rocky waters and unexpected weather, but in all the ways that living on a twenty-six-foot sailboat make one reconsider what's truly important.…
I began research as an undergraduate at Harvard College, initially studying the effects of vitamin A deficiency on the photoreceptors in the eye that capture the light and initiate vision. After receiving my PhD and starting my own laboratory, I became fascinated with the other four classes of cells/neurons found in the retina, which begin the analysis of visual information: two being in the outer retina and two in the inner retina. We mapped out the synaptic interactions among the neurons, recorded from them, and began to put together the neural circuitries that underlie the visual messages that are sent to other parts of the brain.
One of Oliver Sack’s delightful books containing stories of individuals with various neurological disorders. I read the first one, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, back in the 1980s when it first came out and was hooked, now having read almost all of them.
The one I am recommending is, I believe, more relevant to an understanding of brain mechanisms. One criticism I have had of Sack’s books is that there is little in the way of neurobiological explanations for the conditions described. In my book, most chapters begin with a Sack-like story about a specific neurological condition that is then explained, as far as possible, neurobiologically in the chapter.
As with his previous bestseller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, in An Anthropologist on Mars Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world, and how we relate to those around us.
Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre; patients for whom disorientation and alienation - but also adaptation - are inescapable facts of life.
