100 books like True to Life

By Michael P. Lynch,

Here are 100 books that True to Life fans have personally recommended if you like True to Life. 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 Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

Donald Barclay Author Of Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era

From my list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my career as an academic librarian, I was often asked to teach students to think about the credibility of the information they incorporate into their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. In my teaching and writing, I have struggled to make sense of the complex and nuanced factors that make some information more credible and other information less so. I don’t have all the answers for dealing with problematic information, but I try hard to convince people to think carefully about the information they encounter before accepting any of it as credible or dismissing any of it as non-credible.

Donald's book list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information

Donald Barclay Why did Donald love this book?

I constantly recommend The Data Detective because it serves as an unmatched handbook for making sense of the statistical data to which we are constantly exposed.

What I like about it, besides its lively, readable style, is that the book convincingly and clearly explains 1) why we need statistical data to make informed decisions, 2) the factors that go into producing reliable statistics, 3) the factors that can produce unreliable statistics, and 4) how any statistics, reliable or not, can be misused to deceive us.

The author, Tim Harford, is an economist who writes for the Financial Times and hosts the brilliant podcast Cautionary Tales.

By Tim Harford,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Data Detective as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From “one of the great (greatest?) contemporary popular writers on economics” (Tyler Cowen) comes a smart, lively, and encouraging rethinking of how to use statistics.

Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss…


Book cover of On Bullshit

Donald Barclay Author Of Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era

From my list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my career as an academic librarian, I was often asked to teach students to think about the credibility of the information they incorporate into their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. In my teaching and writing, I have struggled to make sense of the complex and nuanced factors that make some information more credible and other information less so. I don’t have all the answers for dealing with problematic information, but I try hard to convince people to think carefully about the information they encounter before accepting any of it as credible or dismissing any of it as non-credible.

Donald's book list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information

Donald Barclay Why did Donald love this book?

Though written by an academic philosopher, the highly readable On Bullshit weighs in at a breezy eighty pages.

What I love about this book is the way the author differentiates the bullshitter, who attempts to persuade without any regard for the truth, from the liar, who cares about the truth but tries to hide it. Frankfurt goes on to make a strong case for why bullshit is far more dangerous than lying.

In an age where bullshitters get more far attention than they deserve, this is even more relevant than when it was first published in the social-media-free year of 1986.

By Harry G. Frankfurt,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means…


Book cover of The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Topographic Man

Donald Barclay Author Of Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era

From my list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my career as an academic librarian, I was often asked to teach students to think about the credibility of the information they incorporate into their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. In my teaching and writing, I have struggled to make sense of the complex and nuanced factors that make some information more credible and other information less so. I don’t have all the answers for dealing with problematic information, but I try hard to convince people to think carefully about the information they encounter before accepting any of it as credible or dismissing any of it as non-credible.

Donald's book list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information

Donald Barclay Why did Donald love this book?

Because this book was first published in 1962, you might be surprised to learn that it has a lot to tell us about communication in the Digital Age.

McLuhan’s thesis is that, just as moving from a world dominated by oral communication to a world dominated by print changed human cognition, the movement to electronic communication–which, in 1962, primarily meant television–was actively rewiring human cognition.

Reading The Guttenberg Galaxy causes me to marvel at how thoroughly McLuhan understood that a technology that was then only in its infancy was going to change the way people think in profound, sometimes unsettling ways.

By Marshall McLuhan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Gutenberg Galaxy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits

Donald Barclay Author Of Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era

From my list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information.

Why am I passionate about this?

In my career as an academic librarian, I was often asked to teach students to think about the credibility of the information they incorporate into their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. In my teaching and writing, I have struggled to make sense of the complex and nuanced factors that make some information more credible and other information less so. I don’t have all the answers for dealing with problematic information, but I try hard to convince people to think carefully about the information they encounter before accepting any of it as credible or dismissing any of it as non-credible.

Donald's book list on understanding, untangling, and coping with problematic information

Donald Barclay Why did Donald love this book?

I was impressed by author Kent Greenfield’s courage in questioning the near-sacred notion that all of our choices are free. Greenfield is not an enemy of choice, freedom, or liberty, but he understands how popular culture has reduced these complex concepts into not much more than advertising slogans.

A law professor at Boston University, the author uses relatable real-life examples, many of them personal, to illustrate how things that we think of as free choices are not as free as we would like to believe. Greenfield is not a pessimist, and I appreciate his suggestions for thinking more carefully about the extent to which our choices are truly and freely our own. 

By Kent Greenfield,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Myth of Choice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Americans are fixated on the idea of choice. Our political theory is based on the consent of the governed. Our legal system is built upon the argument that people freely make choices and bear responsibility for them. And what slogan could better express the heart of our consumer culture than "Have it your way"?

In this provocative book, Kent Greenfield poses unsettling questions about the choices we make. What if they are more constrained and limited than we like to think? If we have less free will than we realize, what are the implications for us as individuals and for…


Book cover of How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Softcover

Esther K. Bowen Author Of Mind Games

From my list on government oppression and courageous resistance.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, I read stories of courageous women and men who risked their lives for their faith, for their freedom, or for the freedom of others. Many of these stories were dark and brutal. History taught me that governments are capable of atrocities that defy understanding. Fiction stories led me to envision dark futures. But I do not enjoy stories that discourage or depress. Instead, I believe stories should display hope, faithfulness, and sacrifice. I admire the heroes of our history and I seek fiction that speaks these same truths. We need stories that inspire us to stand up, to speak out against injustice, no matter the consequences.

Esther's book list on government oppression and courageous resistance

Esther K. Bowen Why did Esther love this book?

In this short, but incredibly powerful book, Andrews asks questions every citizen should consider. The reader is confronted with questions about truth, freedom, and the price of apathy. This book transformed my understanding of oppression and why people allow it. It is a call to think, to seek truth, and to hold government leaders accountable. It can be read in about twenty minutes.

By Andy Andrews,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Softcover as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How do you get away with the murder of 11 million people? The answer is simple-and disturbing. You lie to them. Learn how you can become an informed, passionate citizen who demands honesty and integrity from your leaders in this updated and expanded edition of the original New York Times bestselling book.

In this updated and expanded nonpartisan New York Times bestselling book, Andy Andrews emphasizes that seeking and discerning the truth is of critical importance, and that believing lies is the most dangerous thing you can do. You'll be challenged to become a more careful student of the past,…


Book cover of The President's Gardens

Alan Weisman Author Of The World Without Us

From my list on fiction on the real challenges our world now faces.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a nonfiction author whose success owes enormously to fiction. It challenges me to portray real people as vividly as characters in novels, and to use narrative and dialogue to keep readers turning the pages. Reading great novelists has taught me to obsessively seek exactly the right words, to fine-tune the cadence of each sentence, and to heed overall structural rhythm; continually, I return to the fount of fiction for language and inspiration. The astonishing novels I’ve shared here are among the most important books I’ve recently read to help grasp the critical times we’re living in. I’m confident you’ll feel the same.

Alan's book list on fiction on the real challenges our world now faces

Alan Weisman Why did Alan love this book?

I’ve just returned from a research trip to Iraq (one of many settings for my next book: stay tuned). I took along two Iraqi novels, The President's Gardens and Daughter of the Tigris (they’re really just one; the first literally ends with the words to be continued) and I was as stirred by reading them as by what I saw there. While we protest Russia’s outrageous rape of Ukraine, we forget the hideous mess that America’s unjustifiable invasion left in Iraq. Even under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was considered the flower of Arab culture, a land overflowing with poetry, music, and art. Today much of it is rubble. Masterfully, Al-Ramli describes the latter with all the breathtaking beauty of the former. This ranks among my most moving reading experiences ever.

By Muhsin Al-Ramli, Luke Leafgren (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The President's Gardens as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

"A contemporary tragedy of epic proportions. No author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting".
Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ.

On the third day of Ramadan, the village wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop.

One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to…


Book cover of Here, Bullet

Barbara Nickless Author Of Blood on the Tracks

From my list on what it is like to go to war and come home.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm an award-winning and bestselling author who teaches creative writing to veterans as part of a collaboration between the Department of Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m also an Air Force brat who grew up around military folk. After traumatic events gave me personal experience with post-traumatic stress disorder, I better understood why veterans don’t talk about their time in war. The books on this list are some of my favorites for capturing the terror of battle and the difficulty of reintegrating into a society that gives little thought to the human cost of war. 

Barbara's book list on what it is like to go to war and come home

Barbara Nickless Why did Barbara love this book?

This collection of poems by an Iraq war veteran opens a door into the crazy, horrifying world of America’s time in Iraq. I used this book while teaching a section on poetry to combat veterans at the local university. For some of these men and women, the poems offered their first glimpse into the power of verse. Turner showed my students how, through the searing beauty of words made into images, it was possible to capture—and thus contain—the horrors of war. As Turner writes:

This is a language made of blood.
It is made of sand and time.
To be spoken, it must be earned.

By Brian Turner,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A first-person account of the Iraq War by a solider-poet, winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award.

Adding his voice to the current debate about the US occupation of Iraq, in poems written in the tradition of such poets as Wilfred Owen, Yusef Komunyakaa (Dien Cai Dau), Bruce Weigl (Song of Napalm) and Alice James’ own Doug Anderson (The Moon Reflected Fire), Iraqi war veteran Brian Turner writes power-fully affecting poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty, and skill. Based on Turner’s yearlong tour in Iraq as an infantry team leader, the poems offer gracefully rendered, unflinching description but,…


Book cover of Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Jeffrey Peter Clarke Author Of The Man Who Sought Eternity

From my list on the time of Gilgamesh.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am Jeff Clarke, author and graphic designer. I have always been interested in origins and beginnings, whether it be the universe, life on Earth, military aviation and ancient societies. I possess a valuable private library of my own and generally prefer to use this rather than on-line sources as the authors’ qualifications are more easily ascertainable. I design the covers for all my novels.

Jeffrey's book list on the time of Gilgamesh

Jeffrey Peter Clarke Why did Jeffrey love this book?

This book, like the others, is an essential reference for anyone researching the subject.

It covers in detail geography, rivers and irrigation, archaeology and building, government and society, religion and myth, language and writing, architecture, and the arts, economy and trade, food and agriculture, arms and warfare, everyday life, customs and society in general.

Getting down to finer details is the strength of this book. A great asset it has to be for the finer points in developing a novel.

By Stephen Bertman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Modern-day archaeological discoveries in the Near East continue to illuminate our understanding of the ancient world, including the many contributions made by the people of Mesopotamia to literature, art, government, and urban life The Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia describes the culture, history, and people of this land, as well as their struggle for survival and happiness, from about 3500 to 500 BCE. Mesopotamia was the home of a succession of
glorious civilizations-Sumeria, Babylonia, and Assyria-which flourished together for more than three millennia. Sumerian mathematicians devised the sixty-minute hour that still rules our lives; Babylonian architects designed the famed…


Book cover of Iraq, 1900 to 1950: A Political, Social and Economic History

Johan Franzen Author Of Pride and Power: A Modern History of Iraq

From my list on Iraqi history.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager in 1991, I watched a coalition of Western powers bombard Iraq into submission. Twelve years later, “regime change” was the agenda. Iraq descended into sectarianism, civil war, and Islamist insurgency. Western depictions had reduced Iraq to an authoritarian state with a megalomaniac leader and no history of its own. These events and the accompanying vilification of Iraq and its people convinced me to study the country’s history. I try to bring nuance and depth to a story so often told superficially. I think history is about giving life to the voices and perspectives of the past. The result, I hope, is an authentic and unbiased portrayal of Iraqi history.

Johan's book list on Iraqi history

Johan Franzen Why did Johan love this book?

Though published long ago, this book does what it says on the tin: it provides a straightforward narrative of Iraq’s political, social, and economic history in the first half of the twentieth century. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Longrigg was an administrator during the British mandate in Iraq and later joined the Iraq Petroleum Company. He was not an unbiased, detached academic analyst, but if you can look past some of his outdated views, you will find an astute observer of Iraqi affairs as they appeared to the British at the time. 

By Stephen Hemsley Longrigg,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Iraq, 1900 to 1950 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Amanda H. Podany Author Of Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East

From my list on the lives of real people in ancient Mesopotamia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian and professor of ancient Mesopotamia. I was born in the UK but have lived in the US for decades, and from childhood I loved ancient history and archaeology (even through a five-year stint as a bass player before and during college). No matter how long the human race exists in future, we have only one shared ancient global past, the remains of which represent a completely non-renewable resource and source of inspiration. There is plenty left to discover, with much evidence already excavated and awaiting interpretation. It’s a joy to analyze and share the words and life-stories of Mesopotamians in my books—in a conversation that stretches across millennia.

Amanda's book list on the lives of real people in ancient Mesopotamia

Amanda H. Podany Why did Amanda love this book?

People often think that we don’t know much about ancient Mesopotamia because it flourished so long ago, but that isn’t true at all. The excavated documents are full of information about real people and their lives. Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat’s book is a great introduction because she has organized the chapters thematically to examine such features as family life and religion (as it was actually practiced), and because she quotes and analyzes obscure and interesting ancient texts. Readers can also explore ancient Mesopotamian government, economy, and intellectual innovations here, but the author always maintains her focus on the people.

By Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The ancient world of Mesopotamia (from Sumer to the subsequent division into Babylonia and Assyria) vividly comes alive in this portrayal of the time period from 3100 bce to the fall of Assyria (612 bce) and Babylon (539 bce). Readers will discover fascinating details about the lives of these people from the society where writing began-taken from the ancients' own quotations and descriptions. A wealth of information is provided on such varied topics as: education; literature; mathematics and science; city vs. country life; family life; and religion. Similarities between daily life in ancient Mesopotamia and modern-day Iraq are also discussed.…


Book cover of The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics
Book cover of On Bullshit
Book cover of The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Topographic Man

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