100 books like The Head Trip

By Jeff Warren,

Here are 100 books that The Head Trip fans have personally recommended if you like The Head Trip. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Oxford Companion to the Mind

Rita Carter Author Of Consciousness

From my list on how to start exploring consciousness.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was hooked on brain science from the moment in the 1980s when I saw the first blurry images that revealed the physical markers of thought. I set out to find out all I could about this astonishing new area of discovery, but there was practically nothing to be found – neuroscience as we know it barely existed. I pounced on every new finding that emerged and eventually wrote what was one of the first books, Mapping the Mind, that made brain science accessible to non-scientists. There are hundreds of them now, and these are some of the best.

Rita's book list on how to start exploring consciousness

Rita Carter Why did Rita love this book?

This is the one to get if you are shipwrecked on a desert island – or forced into another lockdown. Or, for that matter, if you need a doorstop that happens to contain fascinating essays on aspects of brain and mind from Abacus to Wittgenstein. Dip into it for a guaranteed good read or use it as a superior Google when you want to know things like why mirrors only reverse one way or the origin of the phrase “mad as a hatter”. It won’t disappoint.

By Richard L. Gregory,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Oxford Companion to the Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Oxford Companion to the Mind,edited by Richard L. Gregory, is a classic. Published in 1987, to huge acclaim, it immediately took its place as the indispensable guide to the mysteries - and idiosyncracies - of the human mind. In no other book can the reader find indiscussions of concepts such as language, memory, and intelligence, side by side with witty definitions of common human experiences such as the 'cocktail-party' and 'halo' effects, and the
least effort principle.

Richard Gregory again brings his wit, wisdom, and expertise to bear on this most elusive of subjects. Research into the mind and…


Book cover of The Human Brain Coloring Book

Rita Carter Author Of Consciousness

From my list on how to start exploring consciousness.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was hooked on brain science from the moment in the 1980s when I saw the first blurry images that revealed the physical markers of thought. I set out to find out all I could about this astonishing new area of discovery, but there was practically nothing to be found – neuroscience as we know it barely existed. I pounced on every new finding that emerged and eventually wrote what was one of the first books, Mapping the Mind, that made brain science accessible to non-scientists. There are hundreds of them now, and these are some of the best.

Rita's book list on how to start exploring consciousness

Rita Carter Why did Rita love this book?

This title is designed to help student neuroscientists grasp the staggeringly complicated anatomy of the brain by -literally – coloring-in its parts in a way that shows up their connections. Colouring- will take you straight into the Zone, and using this book will allow you to do it in public without people looking around for your carer. If it leaves you with a better idea of how the bits join up, count it as a bonus.

By Arnold B. Scheibel, Marian C. Diamond,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Human Brain Coloring Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Developed by internationally renowned neurosurgeons, this unique book is designed for students of psychology and the biological sciences, and medical, dental, and nursing students.


Book cover of The Conscious Mind in Search of a Fundamental Theory

Neil Mehta Author Of A Pluralist Theory of Perception

From my list on the conscious mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

Somehow, electrical impulses shoot through our brains to generate a surround sound, 3D-movie experience of the world. How on earth is this possible? When I was a college student, this question burrowed into my brain and wouldn’t get out. So I decided to make a living thinking about it. Now it’s 20 years later, I’m a philosophy professor at Yale-NUS College, and I still don’t know the answer!

Neil's book list on the conscious mind

Neil Mehta Why did Neil love this book?

Most things are ultimately explained by physics, but what if consciousness isn't? David Chalmers explores the idea that consciousness can't be explained in terms of bits of matter and energy scattered across spacetime; instead, consciousness is another basic part of the universe.

I’m impressed by how Chalmers’s arguments are extremely rigorous, but he also makes them accessible to ordinary people. It’s no surprise that this has become a classic of recent philosophy.

By David J. Chalmers,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Conscious Mind in Search of a Fundamental Theory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning?

David J. Chalmers unveils a major new theory of consciousness, one that rejects the prevailing reductionist trend of science, while offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain. Writing in a thought-provoking style, Chalmers proposes that conscious experience must be understood as an irreducible entity similar to such physical properties as time, mass, and space that exists at a fundamental level and cannot be understood as the…


Book cover of Stumbling on Happiness

Victor Haghani Author Of The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions

From my list on intelligent financial decision-making in less than 200 pages.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have over four decades of experience working and innovating in the financial markets and have been a prolific contributor to academic and practitioner finance literature. I started my career at Salomon Brothers in 1984, where I became a managing director in the bond-arbitrage group, and in 1993 I was a co-founding partner of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. I founded Elm Wealth in 2011 to help clients, including my own family, manage and preserve their wealth with a thoughtful, research-based, and cost-effective approach that covers not just investment management but also broader decisions about wealth and finances.

Victor's book list on intelligent financial decision-making in less than 200 pages

Victor Haghani Why did Victor love this book?

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert uses wit and science to reveal how we generally fail to predict what makes us happy and how we can do better.

I loved his discussions of why lottery winners aren't happier for long, how our memories create a "rosy past" illusion, and even why bad experiences can sometimes be better than good ones.

I loved the engaging stories and insightful experiments that Gilbert uses to dismantle common assumptions about happiness and offers fresh perspectives. I gained self-awareness and discovered unexpected paths to finding and savoring happiness.

Strap in for a thought-provoking journey that may just change how you view your own happiness and that of others-all with a healthy dose of humor.

By Daniel Gilbert,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked Stumbling on Happiness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Bringing to life scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, this bestselling book reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. 

• Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink?

• Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight?

• Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they…


Book cover of The Illusion of Conscious Will

Tom Stafford Author Of Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain

From my list on understanding the human mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am now a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield, UK. I co-wrote Mind Hacks with technologist Matt Webb; we had great fun doing it. My research has always been in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, using experiments to understand the mind and brain and how they fit together. 

Tom's book list on understanding the human mind

Tom Stafford Why did Tom love this book?

A brilliant and accessible explanation for one of the central mysteries: how and why do we feel like we decide to act? Sometimes, we think we cause events when we don’t; other times, we act without knowing it. What gives?!

Through the story of his research programme, Wegner shows how each experiment fits together to build a satisfying explanation for how the mind fabricates for us a feeling of agency. As well as experiments, the book covers a set of fascinating phenomena, Ouija boards, hypnosis, and possession, and tries to show how they can be made sense of.

The whole thing is a window into how experimental psychologists do their work, as well as a compelling account of the nature of conscious will.

By Daniel M. Wegner,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Illusion of Conscious Will as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism.

Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our…


Book cover of Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology

Tom Stafford Author Of Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain

From my list on understanding the human mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am now a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield, UK. I co-wrote Mind Hacks with technologist Matt Webb; we had great fun doing it. My research has always been in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, using experiments to understand the mind and brain and how they fit together. 

Tom's book list on understanding the human mind

Tom Stafford Why did Tom love this book?

Broks draws upon his experience as a neuropsychologist to tell illuminating case studies of those with brain injury and other anomalies of experience. Woven through are reflections on the philosophy of what it means to have a mind which is based on the meat of the brain and what it means for our sense of selves to have damage to that brain.

Humane and moving, with flashes of dark humour, Broks brings back from the outlying lands of human experiences lessons that are relevant for all of us.

By Paul Broks,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Into the Silent Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Orality and Literacy

Robin Reames Author Of The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times

From my list on transforming how you think about language.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by the power of language to propel everything we think—from our values and beliefs, to political views, to what we take for absolute truth. Once I learned there’s a whole field devoted to studying language called “rhetoric”—the field in which I’m now an expert—there was no turning back. Rhetoric has been around for more than 2,000 years, and since its inception, it has taught people to step back from language and appraise it with a more critical eye to identify how it works, why it’s persuasive, and what makes people prone to believe it. By studying rhetoric, we become less easily swayed and more comfortable with disagreement. 

Robin's book list on transforming how you think about language

Robin Reames Why did Robin love this book?

This book blew my mind when I first read it twenty years ago, and it still seems fresh when I revisit it now. 

Our common assumption about language is that it represents the world, plain and simple. However, Ong’s book colorfully captures how differently language was experienced in the oral world before the rise of literacy.

Hearers empathized with speakers and participated in the scenes their words evoked. There was an immersive and tangible sense of commonality that spread through the shared experience of sound, which comes from within one person’s body and enters another person’s body. Language knitted the culture together more than it indexed the world.

Ong’s book made it much harder for me to blithely assume that referentiality is a natural or inherent property of language. 

By Walter J. Ong,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Orality and Literacy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Walter J. Ong's classic work provides a fascinating insight into the social effects of oral, written, printed and electronic technologies, and their impact on philosophical, theological, scientific and literary thought.

This thirtieth anniversary edition - coinciding with Ong's centenary year - reproduces his best-known and most influential book in full and brings it up to date with two new exploratory essays by cultural writer and critic John Hartley.

Hartley provides:

A scene-setting chapter that situates Ong's work within the historical and disciplinary context of post-war Americanism and the rise of communication and media studies;

A closing chapter that follows up…


Book cover of Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence

Tom Stafford Author Of Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain

From my list on understanding the human mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am now a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield, UK. I co-wrote Mind Hacks with technologist Matt Webb; we had great fun doing it. My research has always been in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, using experiments to understand the mind and brain and how they fit together. 

Tom's book list on understanding the human mind

Tom Stafford Why did Tom love this book?

The evolution of the mind is not over yet!

Clark is a philosopher and shows with wit and many great examples how our minds evolved to be a tight meshing between our brains, bodies, and the environment. In this account, our human endowment is to naturally absorb technologies, whether as simple as a stick or as complex as the internet, into our thinking and so warp and expand our consciousness and our capacity for thought.

So much discussion of artificial intelligence is about what computers will do better than humans or instead of humans. This book explodes the whole notion: intelligence has always been artificial, and the most interesting questions are about how we’re going to use technology to think. Onwards!

By Andy Clark,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Natural-Born Cyborgs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From Robocop to the Terminator to Eve 8, no image better captures our deepest fears about technology than the cyborg, the person who is both flesh and metal, brain and electronics. But philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark sees it differently. Cyborgs, he writes, are not something to be feared-we already are cyborgs.
In Natural-Born Cyborgs, Clark argues that what makes humans so different from other species is our capacity to fully incorporate tools and supporting cultural practices into our existence. Technology as simple as writing on a sketchpad, as familiar as Google or a cellular phone, and as potentially…


Book cover of Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness

Marc Wittmann Author Of Altered States of Consciousness: Experiences Out of Time and Self

From my list on the frontier areas of time in psychology and physics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany. I studied Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and Munich (Germany) and have a Ph.D. in Medical Psychology from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Between 2004 and 2009 I was Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego. My research in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience is focused on the perception of time in ordinary and altered states of consciousness. The investigation concerning the riddle of subjective time as based on the embodied self leads me to answers of what matters most, the nature of our existence as self-conscious beings.

Marc's book list on the frontier areas of time in psychology and physics

Marc Wittmann Why did Marc love this book?

I think that Nicholas Humphrey with this book comes closest to an explanation of how consciousness might have evolved. Present-moment awareness of what we subjectively feel as happening “now” might stem from the constant feedback processing of perception-and-action cycles which extend over time. In his brilliantly accessible language Humphrey convinces the reader that consciousness is “thick” sensory-motor activity of what you feel as extended over time, phenomenal present-moment experience.

By Nicholas Humphrey,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the "soul niche." Tightly…


Book cover of Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness

Roger R. Pearman Author Of I'm Not Crazy, I'm Just Not You: The Real Meaning of the 16 Personality Types

From my list on personality and psychological type.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been using and research psychological type for 45 years in my various career roles—director of a university learning center, chief human resources officer, and independent consultant. I’ve yet to find a more practical and useful model for understanding human differences. The constructive use of differences is urgently needed in our age, as well as the goal of type development: making perceptions clearer and judgments more sound.

Roger's book list on personality and psychological type

Roger R. Pearman Why did Roger love this book?

Jungian analyst John Beebe has put his best thinking into psychological type with this look at his conceptualization of the eight functions of type. Beebe outlines how psychological energies pay out in everyday life and how we can leverage the insight for personal growth and well-being.

By John Beebe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book encapsulates John Beebe's influential work on the analytical psychology of consciousness. Building on C. G. Jung's theory of psychological types and on subsequent clarifications by Marie-Louise von Franz and Isabel Briggs Myers, Beebe demonstrates the bond between the eight types of consciousness Jung named and the archetypal complexes that impart energy and purpose to our emotions, fantasies, and dreams. For this collection, Beebe has revised and updated his most influential and significant previously published papers and has introduced, in a brand new chapter, a surprising theory of type and culture.

Beebe's model enables readers to take what they…


Book cover of The Oxford Companion to the Mind
Book cover of The Human Brain Coloring Book
Book cover of The Conscious Mind in Search of a Fundamental Theory

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