Here are 100 books that Practical Wisdom fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve always thought of myself as someone who “cares about animals,” but I came to see that I was thinking mainly about mammals and birds and overlooking the vast majority of animal life: fishes and invertebrates. I’m a philosophy professor at the London School of Economics, and for almost 10 years now, I’ve also been part of an emerging international community of “animal sentience” researchers—researchers dedicated to investigating the feelings of animals scientifically. In 2021, a team led by me advised the UK government to protect octopuses, crabs, and lobsters—and the government changed the law in response. But there is a lot more we need to change.
I love the way the book takes you on a personal journey—full of close-up, underwater encounters with octopuses and cuttlefish—that led Godfrey-Smith to a profound revelation: evolution has created minds not just once but over and over again.
When we think about “animal minds,” we often think about cats, dogs, chimpanzees, and dolphins… but these are all mammals—only one tiny twig on the tree of life. Minds are everywhere, including in invertebrate animals that are very different from us.
'Brilliant' Guardian
'Fascinating and often delightful' The Times
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE
What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?
In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself - a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared.
Tracking the mind's fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to…
As an interdisciplinary scholar with professional musical training, I surveyed the literature in cognitive science for conceptual frameworks that would shed light on tacit processes in musical activity. I was tired of research that treats the musician either as a “lab rat” not quite capable of fully understanding what they do or as a “channel” for the mysterious and divine. I view musicians as human beings who engage in meaningful activity with instruments and with each other. Musicians are knowledgeable, skilled, and deeply creative. The authors on this list turn a scientific lens on human activity that further defines how we make ourselves through meaningful work and interactions.
This is a moving and profound book about how to reclaim our sense of self through meaningful activities and relationships. Crawford carefully studies how our attention is manipulated in various modern contexts, and what we can do to reclaim our sense of individuality. It is a book that underscores the importance of dealing with the real world—the people we encounter and the objects we use. This is the book that might convince you to take up knitting or the guitar. At the very least, it will help you understand some of what you gain by doing those things.
In his bestselling book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind.
We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self.
Crawford investigates the intense focus of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the…
As an interdisciplinary scholar with professional musical training, I surveyed the literature in cognitive science for conceptual frameworks that would shed light on tacit processes in musical activity. I was tired of research that treats the musician either as a “lab rat” not quite capable of fully understanding what they do or as a “channel” for the mysterious and divine. I view musicians as human beings who engage in meaningful activity with instruments and with each other. Musicians are knowledgeable, skilled, and deeply creative. The authors on this list turn a scientific lens on human activity that further defines how we make ourselves through meaningful work and interactions.
I love the way Malafouris delves into deeply philosophical questions about the boundaries of the mind. Working from the perspective of cognitive archeology, he broadly examines what makes us human in our engagement with objects and each other. Why does it help to understand the mind this way? Whenever we want to learn more about how we do the things we do, theories like Malafouris’material engagement theory can help us to organize familiar tasks and situations in a way that makes the underlying cognitive processes transparent. If you want to improve your performance in any area, conceptual frameworks like this one (and the one in my book) can bring tacit processes into focus.
An account of the different ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body, from prehistory to the present.
An increasingly influential school of thought in cognitive science views the mind as embodied, extended, and distributed rather than brain-bound or “all in the head.” This shift in perspective raises important questions about the relationship between cognition and material culture, posing major challenges for philosophy, cognitive science, archaeology, and anthropology. In How Things Shape the Mind, Lambros Malafouris proposes a cross-disciplinary analytical framework for investigating the ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body.…
As an interdisciplinary scholar with professional musical training, I surveyed the literature in cognitive science for conceptual frameworks that would shed light on tacit processes in musical activity. I was tired of research that treats the musician either as a “lab rat” not quite capable of fully understanding what they do or as a “channel” for the mysterious and divine. I view musicians as human beings who engage in meaningful activity with instruments and with each other. Musicians are knowledgeable, skilled, and deeply creative. The authors on this list turn a scientific lens on human activity that further defines how we make ourselves through meaningful work and interactions.
When I was a musician encountering theory in cognitive science for the first time, this book really moved me. I was searching for conceptual lenses on cognition in instrumental practice and this book is aimed at grounding the study of cognition in the body. I can still see myself sitting at a huge ugly desk under a tiny window thoroughly absorbed in this thrilling page-turner in the philosophy of mind. The book moved me so profoundly that I cried when I approached the last page, and gently closed the back cover. It is a precious book. It changed my world.
"There are books-few and far between-which carefully, delightfully, and genuinely turn your head inside out. This is one of them. It ranges over some central issues in Western philosophy and begins the long overdue job of giving us a radically new account of meaning, rationality, and objectivity."-Yaakov Garb, San Francisco Chronicle
I am a journalist who has written books on American history for the general reader but not an academic historian or specialist, though I have the utmost respect for both. I like to think I have an independent mind and that I look for ideas that challenge conventional wisdom but are rooted in good sense and critical intelligence. The books I have recommended here reflect this temperament and, I believe, an innate sense of the comic and absurd. These are desperately needed at a time when people take themselves much too seriously—as in a presidential election year.
I love this book because Flaubert has meticulously—and with a bracingly acidic intelligence—listed the cliches of his day…meaning what people, without thinking, automatically say about almost any subject, including the stock phrases that must accompany any subject. He exposes superstitions and absurdities that must have driven Flaubert nuts to hear. An American writer, Frank Sullivan, did something similar when he invented “the cliché expert” who would testify before Congress.
I recommend this book because we need to be reminded that our everyday speech and thinking are saturated with thoughtless absurdities. We take so much for granted that it is totally unexamined and ridiculous if it is only pointed out to us, which Flaubert does a masterful job of doing. As the book jacket puts it, “Throughout his life, Flaubert made it a game to eavesdrop for the cliché, the platitude, the borrowed and unquestioned idea with which the ‘right thinking’…
Throughout his life Flaubert made it a game to eavesdrop for the cliche, the platitude, the borrowed and unquestioned idea with which the "right thinking" swaddle their minds. After his death his little treasury of absurdities, of half-truths and social lies, was published as a Dictionnaire des idees recues. Because its devastating humor and irony are often dependent on the phrasing in vernacular French, the Dictionnairewas long considered untranslatable. This notion was taken as a challenge by Jacques Barzun. Determined to find the exact English equivalent for each "accepted idea" Flaubert recorded, he has succeeded in documenting our own inanities.…
Alongside writing poems and short stories, I am a clinical psychologist focusing on the psychology of men. People echo the vastness of the stellar expanse in which only 1% is matter like the planets and stars, our bodies, days in which we love and hate, moments we embody healthy intimacy or enact violence, the light that gives the face radiance. 19% of the universe is dark energy, and 80% dark matter-- less than 1% is light, and yet light is the foundation of life. "God is light," the ancient text intones, and though the words resound, what that light means in the despair of this world is a beloved mystery.
The title story of this collection is a miracle of human relations, ecstatic prose cut to perfection, and the multivalent understandings that arise when we give ourselves freely, openly, and yes brokenly to the will to love. There is nothing so sweet as the kind of development and shaping of humanity found in Davis’ short stories. An author whose work has appeared inBest American Short Storiesand won a Pushcart Prize, Davis is an author who has not received the kind of national following she deserves.
Claire Davis's novels have won acclaim from reviewers, readers, and booksellers alike. In "Labors of the Heart", she offers a stunning first collection of stories, some of which have been honoured by the Pushcart and Best American Short Stories anthologies. Adultery presents the quandary of a middle-aged man whose mother is cheating on her husband by keeping company with her ex-husband. In Grounded, a mother follows her teenage son as he attempts to run away along Montana's highways. And in Labors of the Heart, a lonely man - enormous and virginal - is literally struck by love for a woman…
It has been an incredible journey, starting with $200 in assets 45 years ago and finally starting to achieve what I had dreamed of in life and business after struggling for two decades. I learned through the value of reading and building quality relationships, with God's help, I would be successful in life and business. Based in Cave Creek, Arizona, I've spent my career building Desert Star Construction, known by clients and industry colleagues as "the best team in the luxury home business." It is an online community that helps overwhelmed Christian marketplace leaders rediscover their eternal purpose and find unending joy in their life and leadership.
Excellence comes from two Latin root words which together mean: "to rise out from." Excellence is the quality of rising to one's expected potential. The author finds a way to capture an area we all can get off track. We can be excellent when we stop worrying about being better than someone else. Our destinies are yet to be determined, and we can still become exceptional. Excellence is about leading our lives in a way that we will leave a legacy. Another reason we do not achieve excellence in our personal lives is that so many people are not on a quest for truth and wisdom but instead on a search for pleasure and happiness. We see how doing the right—far exceeds being right. The quotes from John Maxwell and Darren Hardy, among others, give valuable insights that you can start where you are today to Live a Life of…
Life is governed by certain laws and principles. These laws and principles are not “good” or “bad”, “moral” or “immoral”, they are simply true. However, what is so crucial for us to grasp is that these principles actually make life predictable.
Such an understanding creates the potential for more predictable outcomes in our lives. Most significantly, our lives will flourish when they are in harmony with these principles.
"This book lays out three principles that clearly point to a life of excellence. I am convinced that if one lives in accordance with these principles, his or her life will flourish…
I am a faith-based psychotherapist with over twenty years of experience working with couples, families, and adults recovering from trauma and relational wounds. I believe in evidence-based psychotherapy modalities, as well as the power of the Holy Spirit, to guide us each to our ultimate healing. I find journeying with others a sacred privilege and strive to foster love, authenticity, courage, and empowerment not only as a therapist but as a friend, wife, mother, and sister.
This book helped me evaluate my thoughts, actions and beliefs and reconcile to a point where there was true congruence with my heart values.
I loved how this book really challenged me to look at my own intellectual and emotional boundaries as I related to people of different views on life, politics and faith.
A universal pattern can be found in all societies and in fact in all of creation. We see it in the seasons of the year, the stories of Scripture, and even in our own lives.
In The Wisdom Pattern, Father Richard Rohr illuminates the way understanding and embracing this pattern can give us hope in difficult times and the courage to push through messiness - and even great chaos - to find a new way of being in the world.
A new version of his earlier book Hope Against Darkness, Father Rohr offers reflections in The Wisdom Pattern that bring…
As a wealth advisor for over 37 years, I find many people reach retirement lacking clarity and confidence. Traditional financial advice often focuses on things that are unknowable, uncontrollable, and frankly don’t matter that much. While sound technical investment, estate, and tax planning are critical, the soul’s need for meaning and purpose are as important as sound financial plans. The path to true financial peace may be simpler than you think. These books can help you focus on the fewer, more critical things so that you can thrive in retirement and free yourself from financial media which is not in business to support your vision of a meaningful life.
Bob Buford introduced me to this book at the Halftime Institute in 2013.
I found this book when I was going through a difficult season - a “falling". This book has helped me understand that much of what we judge as challenges or “falling” is the raw material for personal and spiritual growth.
And that through the wisdom and insights of these challenges, the second half can be a time of great joy and excitement. I re-read it annually.
A fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life In Falling Upward , Fr. Richard Rohr seeks to help readers understand the tasks of the two halves of life and to show them that those who have fallen, failed, or "gone down" are the only ones who understand "up." Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as "falling upward."…
I was fortunate enough to meet my husband over 17 years ago, and we have packed a lot of life in since then. Along with two kids and a dog, we’ve had our fair share of tough moments: financial challenges, bereavement, family issues, marital disagreement, and traumatic life events that taught me just as much as my two decades-long career as a relationship psychotherapist has. This, combined with working with individuals, couples, and partners in search of what love means and how to practically go about achieving it, has clarified for me just how much we all need tools and teachings when it comes to matters of the heart.
This book speaks to my soul. Wiest’s writing makes me feel enriched and nurtured as she talks about life and love in a magical, almost poetic way. Full of short and long essays, it’s easy to dip into this book for a grounding reminder, a calming voice, and a warm hug.
I sometimes read it in between my sessions with clients as it is so uplifting, even though it tackles serious subjects. I also adore that this was written when Wiest was a young woman (in her 20s), and it represents the hope and goodness we need in our increasingly hostile world. I feel inspired to be strong and gentle, mentally astute and emotionally awake, assertive and receptive, kind and firm, all at the same time.
101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, the global bestseller and social media phenomenon, is a collection of author Brianna Wiest's most beloved pieces of writing. Her meditations include why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life. Some of these pieces have never been seen; others have been read by millions of people around the world. Regardless, each will leave you thinking: this idea changed my life.
