Here are 100 books that The Complete Works fans have personally recommended if you like
The Complete Works.
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I was driven to become a veterinarian for as long as I could remember. Then, in high school, I developed a love of performance. I felt stuck. Should I choose art or science? I chose science, and despite a great career, I felt like something was missing. When I reconnected with my creativity through stand-up comedy, entrepreneurship and other non-artistic creative outlets, I found out what I had been missing. Why do we drop creativity for science? It was a common story. I dove into the research on creativity, and was blown away by how a bit of creativity can make us happier, more resilient, and make workplaces more effective.
As I read this book, I felt like the author was looking into my soul. I loved the short, punchy observations and challenges to anyone seeking to share their creativity. The Resistance is a force universal to everyone who is trying to share a little piece of themselves, and I love the way that it is broken down in this book.
I realized that when I could see what was holding me back from expressing myself, I was able to find strategies to mitigate that fear. This book was instrumental in my ability to express myself as an author and speaker.
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide forsucceeding in any creative sphere, The War ofArt is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.
What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do?
Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid theroadblocks of any creative endeavor—be it starting up a dreambusiness venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?
Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy thatevery one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer thisinternal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.
Service and leadership have been a primary focus of my life and work for many years. Though today these are matters of academic study, they weren’t when I was in school. I’ve written and spoken extensively on these topics to corporate, military, academic, governmental, and NGO organizations. I strive to narrow the gap between those who study leadership and management and those who apply the principles in practice. My approach is to pose questions and share the experiences of those who have made significant contributions throughout history into the present moment. The books on my list have meant a lot to me and many others. I hope you’ll find value in them, too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is recalled as one of the great essayists and speakers of the nineteenth century.
In a time of extraordinary change, Emerson helped forge a universal voice through the prism of the emerging American experience. Emerson ultimately conjured a unique, unmistakable American narrative.
This renders his work timeless. His essays—such as “Self-Reliance”—have been rediscovered by new audiences in the early 21st century.
In another moment of tumult and evolution, Emerson continues to offer actionable inspiration, encouraging everyone to cultivate the courage to experience life and work as a great adventure.
Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he called “the great and crescive self,” he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes.
Here are all the indispensable and most renowned works, including “The American Scholar” (“our intellectual Declaration of Independence,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes called it), “The Divinity School Address,” considered atheistic by many of his listeners, the summons to “Self-Reliance,” along with the more embattled realizations of “Circles” and, especially, “Experience.” Here, too, are his wide-ranging portraits of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and other “representative…
I grew up in Los Angeles and attended a progressive experiential learning school. The libraries were my classroom, the parks my playgrounds, and our twice-weekly field trips developed my journalistic skills. The week began with a contract agreement between myself and my teacher. My education made me a self-starter. My home was emotionally volatile. I became curious about healing: aligning my heart, mind, body, and spirit. My path unfolded to me. I became an actress on Broadway as my parents divorced and my school fell apart. My training in my mobile school delivered me into the real world. I was hungry to feel whole. Thus began my journey.
Rick Rubin is the prototype for my perfect man. Since I have a huge crush on his brain and voice (I could listen to him have a conversation all day), it is no surprise that I love his book outlining the creative process. It feels like it was channeled.
I use it as a daily reader, selecting a page for the day to contemplate during my morning meditation. I love the bite-sized wisdom, which feels like I could have thought of or written it myself—universal truth nuggets.
From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.
"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment.” —Anne Lamott
“I set out to write a book about what to do to make a…
Service and leadership have been a primary focus of my life and work for many years. Though today these are matters of academic study, they weren’t when I was in school. I’ve written and spoken extensively on these topics to corporate, military, academic, governmental, and NGO organizations. I strive to narrow the gap between those who study leadership and management and those who apply the principles in practice. My approach is to pose questions and share the experiences of those who have made significant contributions throughout history into the present moment. The books on my list have meant a lot to me and many others. I hope you’ll find value in them, too.
Charles de Gaulle is a consequential leader of the 20th century.
In an extraordinary turn of events, this little-known colonel emerged as the leader of France in exile during Hitler’s occupation. Following the Second World War he became a dominant political figure.
He can be seen as the founder of modern France, whose shadow reaches into our present moment.
In the 1930s he wrote a brilliant mediation on leadership, The Edge of the Sword.Though distilled from his lived experience in the military, de Gaulle provides insights that apply in many situations.
The book takes on additional significance when one considers the project of self-creation that the author undertook—first on himself, then on the re-creation of France, finally on Europe and the world, in his time and into our own.
I'm a PEN Award-winning historian of alternative spirituality and a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library. I track the impact and substance of supernatural beliefs—a source of fascination since my Queens, NY, boyhood—in books including Occult America, The Miracle Club, and Uncertain Places. I often say that if you do not write your own history, it gets written for you—usually by people who may not care about or even understand the values that emanate from your work. Given my personal dedication to the spiritual search, I call myself a believing historian (which most historians of religion actually are). I labor to explore the lives, ideas, and practices behind esoteric spirituality.
If, after all this, you remain a skeptic—and skeptic, in its classical sense, is a noble term that any of us should gladly claim—scientist Radin sorts out the issues in a manner that reflects both his integrity as a researcher (something that most critics are not) and his humor and skills as a communicator. Radin is, in my estimation, the inheritor of JB Rhine and a tireless seeker after truth in a clinical setting. He is the generational voice of many contemporary parapsychologists and philosophers of consciousness. Radin has personally rescued me from more errors than I can enumerate and in this book he impeccably surveys some of parapsychology’s evidence-based insights—and the social reasons for resistance to them.
Radin draws from his own work at Princeton, Stanford Research Institute, and Fortune 500 companies, as well as his research for the U.S. government, to demonstrate the surprising extent to which the truth of psi has already been tacitly acknowledged and exploited. "The Conscious Universe" also sifts the data for tantalizing hints of how mind and matter are linked. Finally, Radin takes a bold look ahead, to the inevitable social, economic, academic, and spiritual consequences of the mass realization that mind and matter can influence each other without having physical contact.
I like to tell people that I found my passion in life and it's books. I write them, read them, review them and I’ve been a librarian for 17 years. (I’ve worked in libraries for longer than that. Over 25 years!) It’s been dark times recently and romance has become my happy place. I’m a sucker for romances with pretty covers, quirky characters, and not so much of the on-page spice. If there’s some travel involved, even better!
This was one of those books that I just held in my hands quietly for a few moments after I finished reading it because I felt like I’d just finished a masterpiece. (Does anyone say that about a romance novel? I do, because this book has it all.)
I’ve always loved writing and what this author pulled off in the writing of this book is worthy of a standing ovation. The layers of the plot, those tidbits of information in the beginning that end up having a lot of meaning at the end. Ah! It was so beautifully and skillfully done! This is one of those books that makes me want to be a better writer. It’s an inspiration, and a really great story too!
A fantastic debut from a hilarious and brilliantly original new voice in women’s fiction.
Love is for suckers...isn’t it?
My brother’s getting married in a few weeks and asked for help picking a song for his first dance. I suggested Kiss’ ‘Love’s a Slap in the Face’. It didn’t go down well.
When she was a teenager, Zoë Frixos fell in love with Simon Baxter, her best friend and the boy next door. But his family moved to America before she could tell him how she felt and, like a scratched record, she’s never quite moved on. Now, almost 20…
William MacAskill is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. At the time of his appointment, he was the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world. He cofounded the nonprofits Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Y Combinator–backed 80,000 Hours, which together have moved over $300 million to effective charities. He is the author of Doing Good Betterand What We Owe The Future.
The Scout Mindset is one of the best books I know on reasoning clearly and developing a truth-seeking attitude. Galef argues that instead of being like “soldiers,” who engage in wishful thinking by defending the ideas they most want to believe, we should be more like “scouts,” whose goal is to actually find out what is true. The book includes some of the latest research on the skills and habits one needs to be an excellent reasoner.
Winner of best smart thinking book 2022 (Business Book Awards) Guardian best books of 2021
'Original, thought-provoking and a joy to read' Tim Harford
'Highly recommended. It's not easy to become (more of) a scout, but it's hard not to be inspired by this book' Rutger Bregman
When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a 'soldier' mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalising in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe…
I was never going to hack it as a scientist. So I became a journalist instead. After all, bothcareers stem from a sense of wonder about the world and asking questions, looking for answers, and accepting that there might not be any. In 2018, I started my narrative podcast Wild Thing,whichlet me explore some of our weirder collective fascinations (like aliens) using science, history,psychology, and humor. I’d never aimed the podcast at kids, but I realized that all those bigopen-ended questions that I had about everything were the same kinds of questions that kidshad - which really set me up to write the Wild Thing book series.
Fred was a pilot. He also was an avid ufologist. In October 1978, on a short flight in a privateplane from Melbourne to King Island in Australia, Fred has a conversation with air traffic controland claims to see a large aircraft — a UFO — flying around him… until it vanishes.
That is Fred’slast conversation with anyone as both he and his plane disappear, never to be found. Was it analien craft? Pilot error? Weather phenomenon?
There are no answers in Krasnostein’s chaptersabout Fred. But the story and her lyrical writing left me thinking about the nature of belief, thefascination we have with UFOs, and why we want our alien encounters to be real. Why do wewant to believe?
A Best Book of the Month at The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Deeply beautiful, and never simple.” ―James Gleick, author of Time Travel: A History
An unforgettable tour of the human condition that explores our universal need for belief to help us make sense of life, death, and everything in between.
For Sarah Krasnostein it begins with a Mennonite choir performing on a subway platform, a fleeting moment of witness that sets her on a fascinating journey to discover why people need to believe in absolute truths and what happens when their beliefs crash into…
I’ve been a Christian for 30+ years, and have had many questions about the Bible and theology. In order to answer my own questions, I’ve consumed scores of apologetics books, articles, videos, and podcasts, as well as studied the Bible itself, with lexicons and commentaries.
This is a book aimed at Christians and regards arguments that sceptics tend to raise. This was a great book. It wasn’t an easy read, or particularly well ordered, but it had a lot of meat and a few amazing nuggets.
Many arguments from atheists, agnostics, and skeptics are difficult, or at least intimidating, for most Christians to answer. With clear reasoning and understandable language Ron Rhodes provides readers with the explanations and scriptural background they need to respond to common arguments against faith including:
There is no such thing as absolute truth.
Genesis is a myth, not a scientific account.
A loving God cannot exist--there is too much evil and suffering.
If God created all things, how did He create Himself?
Sin is an outdated concept.
With this resource, Christians will be able to confidently respond to logical arguments against…
I am the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College. I started out as a macroeconomist but, early on, discovered stats and stocks—which have long been fertile fields for data torturing and data mining. My book, Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics is a compilation of a variety of dubious and misleading statistical practices. More recently, I have written several books on AI, which has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering because it is essentially data mining on steroids. No matter how loudly statisticians shout correlation is not causation, some will not hear.
The title is provocative but justified because so much of the “evidence” that we are bombarded with daily is bullshit. This is a wonderful compilation of statistical mistakes and misuses that are intended to persuade readers to be skeptical and to show them how to recognize bullshit when they see it.
Bullshit isn’t what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data.
“A modern classic . . . a straight-talking survival guide to the mean streets of a dying democracy and a global pandemic.”—Wired
Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based…
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