100 books like The Smoking Book

The Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano was by his own admission "a wretched history student," who set out "to rescue the kidnapped memory of all America, and especially of Latin America," from a "History [that] had stopped breathing: betrayed in academic texts, lied about in classrooms, drowned in dates, they had imprisoned her in museums and buried her, with floral wreaths, beneath statuary bronze and monumental marble."

In his Memory of Fire trilogy, Galeano resurrects the continent's real history in more than 1200 staccato images, built around quotations from colonial documents, contemporary press reports, and the like. These "fragments" come together in a "huge mosaic" to form a "voice of voices." This is exactly what I try to achieve in my own trilogy of books on the history of Prague.

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022, Annie Ernaux is one of France's best-loved writers. 

She writes through details. Collaging phrases, photographs, lines of songs, objects, advertising jingles, fragments of film, radio and TV programs, and the words of men in bed at night, Ernaux writes the history of modern France via an intensely personal memoir. Dien Bien Phu, the Algerian War, the May '68 revolt, 9–11 are all here, as seen through her eyes and told in her unmistakable voice. 

As one critic wrote, Ernaux "transforms her life into history and her memory into the collective memory of a generation." At once richly evocative and utterly unsentimental, this is one of the most original and impressive books I've read in a long while.

There are numerous reasons why this text should be read. Personally, Benjamin's reflections on progress and history are crucial to a critique of capitalist modernity.

From a methodological perspective, this text allows the reader to enter Benjamin's laboratory and grasp the essential aspects of his groundbreaking methodology that merged cultural analysis, historical research, and philosophical reflection. Benjamin's unique approach combined elements of sociology, anthropology, and literary critique, creating a multidisciplinary work that defied conventional boundaries.

The filmmaker Humphrey Jennings was a leading British surrealist and a founder of the pioneering social research project Mass–Observation. 

Built out of quotations from letters, diaries, literature, scientific journals, and official reports, Pandaemonium is his "imaginative history" of the industrial revolution in Britain. These "images," he writes, "contain in little a whole world—they are the knots in a great net of tangled time and space—the moments at which the situation of humanity is clear—even if only for the flash time of the photographer or the lighting." 

Published long after Jennings's death, Pandaemonium formed the basis for Danny Boyle's spectacular opening ceremony at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Jennings's use of revelatory images has strongly influenced my own approach to writing history. 

I first read this book in college, and it has powerfully shaped my philosophy of life. Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker, distinguished between “I-It” relationships, in which we use another person instrumentally, and “I-Thou” relationships, in which we encounter another face to face. He argues that personhood begins in the prenatal life of the child flowing to and from its mother, but ends in God where all parallel relations intersect.

As a lifelong cat lover, I’m especially fond of his idea that personhood is not limited by species. Buber recognized that we can authentically say “Thou” to a cat or even a tree. 

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.

As we learn in another classic, Primed to Perform by Doshi and McGregor, play is the most motivating activity there is.

I read this book for the first time during a dark period early in my career – where I did not feel inspired, engagement nor fulfilled. This book provided me with the framework to find meaningful activities – those where I was both skilled yet challenged to improve. Those activities where I would lose myself – where time would stand still.

Better yet, this book, framework, and philosophy have better helped me coach others to find play, engagement, and meaning in their activities at work and in life. 

I loved this book. It was a thought-provoking guide to navigating life's challenges and complexities. I especially loved the way Jordan Peterson drew on psychology, philosophy, and personal anecdotes to impart practical principles for finding meaning and purpose.

Each rule serves as a roadmap for self-improvement, urging you to confront challenges, take responsibility, and strive for a meaningful existence. Jordan Peterson's insights are both profound and accessible, providing me with a framework for personal growth in a world often marked by chaos.

Whether exploring the nature of truth or the importance of standing tall, this book is a compelling and enriching read.

Everyone values being happy – it’s something we all want and should want!

Haybron’s little book has so much wisdom packed into it about what happiness is and how best to get it. He draws on philosophy and psychology to argue that the feeling of happiness is actually made up of three different emotional states: attunement, engagement, and endorsement. 

He then explains the research about good strategies for getting into these positive emotional states.

My students have really enjoyed this book and it contains one of my favorite lines from a book of philosophy: “don’t be an asshole in the pursuit of happiness.”  

This book provides a historical overview of yoga philosophy and psychology and is a great introduction to the study of yoga. It was originally written in French by Mircea Eliade, who became the dean of Religious Studies all over the world, for decades training graduate students at the University of Chicago. The book is now a little dated on certain topics such as tantra and the yogic practices of Buddhism. Nevertheless, it stands as the preëminent classic in the field of yoga studies. It has a bouncy but elegant style and has been a favorite in the courses I have taught on yoga at the University of Texas at Austin.

While a student in India in his early twenties, Eliade had an affair with the daughter of his Sanskrit teacher, the renowned and august scholar, Surendranath Dasgupta. There is apparently a novel by Eliade in Romanian about this and another… show more.