Here are 100 books that The Status Seekers fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up around a lot of suffering over status. I didn’t want to suffer, so I kept trying to understand why everyone plays a game that they insist they don’t want to play. I found my answer when I studied evolutionary psychology. This answer really hit home when I watched David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries. I saw the social rivalry among our mammalian ancestors, and it motivated me to research the biology behind it. I took early retirement from a career as a Professor of Management and started writing books about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. I’m so glad I found my power over my inner mammal!
It’s hilarious and cringey at the same time to read this honest look at status anxiety. It’s hilarious to watch others seek status. As for yourself, you hopefully relieve your cringing because you see how status has obsessed people throughout history.
The author says we seek the love of the world as well as the love of a partner. The quest can ruin an otherwise good life, so he offers solutions. I love his explanation of the original “Bohemians.” They were the hipsters of the 19th century! They created those impressionist paintings we love because they were aching for status.
The author is a famous British philosopher who inherited a fortune. He sees that money does not relieve status anxiety. But he misses the real reason: because we’ve inherited the brain of status-seeking animals (as explained in all of my books).
From one of our greatest voices in modern philosophy, author of The Course of Love, The Consolations of Philosophy, Religion for Atheists and The School of Life - Alain de Botton sets out to understand our universal fear of failure - and how we might change it
'De Botton's gift is to prompt us to think about how we live and how we might change things' The Times
We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer - to a greater or lesser…
I grew up around a lot of suffering over status. I didn’t want to suffer, so I kept trying to understand why everyone plays a game that they insist they don’t want to play. I found my answer when I studied evolutionary psychology. This answer really hit home when I watched David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries. I saw the social rivalry among our mammalian ancestors, and it motivated me to research the biology behind it. I took early retirement from a career as a Professor of Management and started writing books about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. I’m so glad I found my power over my inner mammal!
“Envy is the only one of the 7 deadly sins that isn’t fun.”
The author is a great observer of the snobbery that surrounds you in daily life, from fashion snobs to intellectual snobs. He’s a “snobographer,” according to one reviewer.
This book invites you to laugh at the snobs, not to change your thinking. Pointing fingers feels good in the short run, but my books show that it hurts you in the long run. We all have the one-upping impulse because we’re all mammals. If you hate people who do this, you end up hating yourself. You may insist that you don’t care about status, but moral superiority is just more one-upping.
Observations on the many ways we manage to look down on others, from “a writer who can make you laugh out loud on every third page” (The New York Times Book Review).
Snobs are everywhere. At the gym, at work, at school, and sometimes even lurking in your own home. But how did we, as a culture, get this way? With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewers all manner of elitism as he examines how snobbery works, where it thrives, and the pitfalls and perils in thinking you’re better than anyone else.
Offering arch observations on the new footholds of snobbery,…
I grew up around a lot of suffering over status. I didn’t want to suffer, so I kept trying to understand why everyone plays a game that they insist they don’t want to play. I found my answer when I studied evolutionary psychology. This answer really hit home when I watched David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries. I saw the social rivalry among our mammalian ancestors, and it motivated me to research the biology behind it. I took early retirement from a career as a Professor of Management and started writing books about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. I’m so glad I found my power over my inner mammal!
Bourgeois Bohemians sneer at expensive cars, but they spend much more renovating their bathrooms. They are eager to make a statement against consumerism, but they are also eager to let you know how successful they are. I grew up around this thinking, so I love to hear the forbidden thoughts expressed publicly.
Brooks explains the inner conflict of bobos. They feel guilty about their success, so they call attention to their solidarity with the common man. They want to keep achieving, but don’t want to appear that way.
Brooks misses the deeper engine of this inner conflict: all mammals seek status in their herd or pack or troop because it promotes “reproductive success.” Natural selection built a brain that rewards you with serotonin when you raise your status.
It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore grey, and went to church. The bohemians were the artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the radical 1960's; bourgeois were the enterprising yuppies of the 1980's. Now the 'bo's' are all mixed up and it is impossible to tell an expresso sipping artist from a cappuccino-gulping banker. In attitudes toward sex, morality, leisure time and work, it is hard to separate the renegade from the company man. The new establishment has combined the countercultural…
I grew up around a lot of suffering over status. I didn’t want to suffer, so I kept trying to understand why everyone plays a game that they insist they don’t want to play. I found my answer when I studied evolutionary psychology. This answer really hit home when I watched David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries. I saw the social rivalry among our mammalian ancestors, and it motivated me to research the biology behind it. I took early retirement from a career as a Professor of Management and started writing books about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. I’m so glad I found my power over my inner mammal!
A thick science book on envy is just what we need to help us release this feeling. The author looks at “Man the Envier” in an anthropological way. He shows how diverse cultures have struggled to manage this natural impulse, even using “black magic.” That may sound crazy, but my Italian ancestors did this. They believed that suffering is caused by malocchio—the evil eye from a person who envies you.
I like this book because it shows how humans create envy inside themselves. You may not want to see inside yourself. It’s easier to dream that the perfect society that will relieve your envy. But you make yourself powerless when you do that because you can’t control society. You are better off building your power over your emotions, as my books explain.
This classic study is one of the few books to explore extensively the many facets of envy—“a drive which lies at the core of man’s life as a social being.” Ranging widely over literature, philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, Professor Schoeck— a distinguished sociologist and anthropologist—elucidates both the constructive and destructive consequences of envy in social life. Perhaps most important, he demonstrates that not only the impetus toward a totalitarian regime but also the egalitarian impulse in democratic societies are alike in being rooted in envy.
When I first started writing in English, which is my second language, I was reluctant to share my work with others. I was terrified they would find it lacking. It takes a lot of effort and research to write authentically for a foreign audience. I studied creative writing at different universities around the world to gain knowledge and experience. I published short stories and poems in online and print journals. Bit by bit, I gathered the courage to submit my first picture book manuscript.
My Big Welcome illustrates how kindness can help children overcome anxiety when they’re starting at a new school, moving, meeting new people. The story introduces a number of classroom situations that a newcomer might face. Emilia, the new girl, is welcomed with warmth and kindness. And the bright illustrations give off such a positive vibe.
When she must go to a new school, Emilia becomes afraid.
Will her new class be everything she fears?
Or will she get a big surprise?
This heartwarming story reveals the anxiety children feel when faced with new situations and shows children that new experiences bring many possibilities.
My Big Welcome is the perfect book for every child moving to a new school, starting a new class, or dealing with change.
Inspired by actual events, My Big Welcome shows that life can offer much more…
The topic of mental health, which is prominent in all the books I’ve recommended, including my own, is one I am passionate about. As a neurodivergent person, I know first-hand how difficult the teen years can be. Not only are you dealing with the issues like friends, family, and school, but you are working with other factors that can make learning and socializing especially difficult. When I was a teen, I did not have books like these to guide me and let me know I was not alone in my feelings and struggles. It is my deepest wish that all kids have books, tools, and guides to help them.
There may be other young adult books written about high school seniors who have no idea what they want to do when they grow up, but there aren’t many. That is one aspect I love about this book. There are many high schoolers, and adults, who have no idea what career they want. It’s important for them to know that is normal, especially in this high-pressure world. One of the two main characters, Lewis Holbrook, is that kid. He’s also a great friend, hiding a crush, and learning to be adventurous. I love books that show it’s okay to not have your life planned. I fear for the kids who are under so much pressure, and any book to help them gets a recommendation from me.
Senior year changes everything for two teens in this poignant, funny coming-of-age story that looks at what happens when the image everyone has of us no longer matches who we really are.
Senior year of high school is full of changes.
For Hayley Mills, these changes aren’t exactly welcome. All she wants is for everyone to forget about her very public breakdown and remember her as the overachiever she once was—and who she’s determined to be again. But it’s difficult to be seen as a go-getter when she’s forced into TV Production class with all the slackers like Lewis Holbrook.…
My love of helping others to heal started early. From the garden I started when I was 8-years-old to the baby ducks I found a home for when I was 10, I have always been passionate about nurturing life. I feel deep empathy for the complexities of others’ pain and am compelled to stand against the context of injustice that causes it. Using this keen understanding of why people suffer, my unique and varied training, rooted ethics, and 25 years of trauma-informed clinical experience, I now help the helpers release what they don't want, recover their energetic bandwidth, and grok a socially conscious life of overflowing joy.
Love is a word that not many of us understand, but Buscaglia explains it so well. When people use the word "love," they express their understanding of love at that moment. There is no universal definition of love. Sometimes teens don’t know if they love themselves because it is not tangible. This book helps them know that they are worthy of that love. Love changed my life when I was in high school. It helped me understand myself and influenced my life purpose: to be kind and in solidarity with people. When I work with teens, they often feel untethered by not having, and not knowing, their purpose. In my book, I teach how important a goal is to feel good about yourself, and setting one is much simpler than you think it is! It helps motivate them to get over their anxiety.
The best parts of my life have come when I was brave: getting married, having children, embarking on a career. The worst parts of my life have been mitigated by being brave: losing friends and relatives, dealing with illness and disability among family members. A huge part of raising my son who has autism was helping him to be brave. I've always admired brave people. Not daring or reckless, but truly brave. I've found that all the great stories include an element of bravery! I wrote my picture book as a way to help young children navigate the path to courage and resilience. I’m also the co-founder of National Be Brave Day.
All kids deal with fears and all parents and caregivers want to shield them from them. But I learned as a mom that I couldn’t shield my kids from hurts. But I could help them develop their own shield—by teaching them how to confront their fears and equipping them with the tools they needed to deal with the inevitable stressors they would encounter in life. My older son, practical and scientific, would have loved this book! In this uplifting, rhyming story, Christina Furnival, a licensed mental health therapist and mom, presents a practical three-step lesson to help kids manage their worries, regain their cool, and strip fear of its power once and for all. I sure wish I had this book 30 years ago!
“Fear Not! helps kids understand their anxiety and provides tools kids can try right away.” ―Tina Payne Bryson, PhD, coauthor of The Whole-Brain Child
How can I help my child overcome their fear and anxiety?
What skills can I teach my child to cope with scary “what if” thoughts?
How can I help them grow more confident when their worries seem so big?
Christina Furnival, a licensed mental health therapist and mom, answers these questions in this empowering and uplifting rhyming story about a young boy who successfully faces his anxiety and fear head-on. In Fear Not!, children will learn…
I’m just an ordinary person who’s struggled with their own habits and compulsions. My fear and anxiety led me to read many self-help books over the last thirty-something years, and a lot of them helped me to firmly believe that if you start your day in the best way you can, then there’s no limit to the things that you can achieve!
Each of the books I’ve recommended has given me simple tools to help me do just that. Ultimately, I know they inspired me to create the Bad Habit Kicker system. I truly believe they can all help others optimize their lives and become the best versions of themselves!
I must have listened to this on audiobook a hundred times in 2000 when I had to drive hundreds of miles a week up and down the UK for my job until I felt as if the author’s words and message were seared into my brain!
It’s written in an easy conversational style, with practical examples from the author’s experience, and every idea in it is simple and easy to use in your own life. This book helped me through a difficult time and made me realise for the first time that I actually wasn’t alone or in any way weird, and that most people struggle with their fears.
To this day, I still tell myself, “I’ll handle it!” when I’m faced with a difficult or scary task!
Internationally renowned author, Susan Jeffers, has helped millions of people around the globe to overcome their fears and heal the pain in their lives. Such fears may include:
Public speaking; Asserting yourself; Making decisions; Intimacy; Changing jobs; Being alone; Ageing; Driving; Losing a loved one; Ending a relationship.
But whatever your anxieties, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway will give you the insight and tools to vastly improve your ability to handle any given situation. You will learn to live your life the way you want - so you can move from a place of pain, paralysis and depression…
As a philosopher, I’m not just interested in solving ‘academic’ problems that arise from philosophical inquiry. I also think philosophy should return to the role it often had in the ancient world, as a tool for helping us navigate the perennial challenges that being human presents us. Much of my own philosophical work has sought to help us figure out how to relate to arguably the biggest challenge we face: that we inevitably die. The books on this list are powerful examples of how philosophy can provide us with an emotional compass!
I enjoy being surprised by philosophical work on emotions. Kurth’s The Anxious Mind is full of unexpected insights into anxiety, an emotion that seems to have little to recommend it. But Kurth manages to persuade readers that we should actually be glad for the presence of anxiety in our lives. He explains how anxiety can enhance our performance and contribute to moral progress both individually and collectively.
An empirically informed, philosophical account of the nature of anxiety and its value for agency, virtue, and decision making.
In The Anxious Mind, Charlie Kurth offers a philosophical account of anxiety in its various forms, investigating its nature and arguing for its value in agency, virtue, and decision making. Folk wisdom tells us that anxiety is unpleasant and painful, and scholarly research seems to provide empirical and philosophical confirmation of this. But Kurth points to anxiety's positive effects: enhancing performance, facilitating social interaction, and even contributing to moral thought and action.
Kurth argues that an empirically informed philosophical account of…
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