94 books like What I Thought I Knew

By Alice Eve Cohen,

Here are 94 books that What I Thought I Knew fans have personally recommended if you like What I Thought I Knew. 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 Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Aimee Groth Author Of Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia

From my list on sparking personal and organizational transformation.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a journalist covering the Future of Work and Silicon Valley in the 2010s, I encountered pioneering social entrepreneurs and newly minted tech billionaires whose ideologies attracted millions and have since shaped our culture, economy, and society. I've curated some of the most impactful books that informed my understanding of their ambitions and how work is evolving, as well as the thought leaders who inspired them. Engaging with this content and integrating it over the last decade has transformed my worldview, leading me to a more fulfilling, peaceful, and creative life—but it’s been quite the journey!

Aimee's book list on sparking personal and organizational transformation

Aimee Groth Why did Aimee love this book?

When I first saw Brené Brown’s viral TED talk on vulnerability in the early 2010s, it challenged my understanding of the term and opened a whole new world for me, as it did for millions of others. At the time, I was a senior editor at Business Insider, and Brown’s work became a model that helped me navigate life inside a demanding, fast-paced media startup—and the complex human challenges of being a new manager. In Daring Greatly, she redefines vulnerability as a strength, upending traditional beliefs and reshaping how leadership is understood.

Brown argues that vulnerability is a critical skill for leaders in today’s evolving world of work, where workers crave authenticity, and emotional intelligence and empathy are more effective than outdated command-and-control methods—especially in increasingly dynamic organizations. Her research-backed tools have guided many on personal journeys to greater emotional freedom, just as they did for me.

Years later, I…

By Brené Brown,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked Daring Greatly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**Now on Netflix as The Call to Courage**

'She's so good, Brene Brown, at finding the language to articulate collective feeling' Dolly Alderton

Every time we are faced with change, no matter how great or small, we also face risk. We feel uncertain and exposed. We feel vulnerable. Most of us try to fight those feelings - or feel guilt for feeling them in the first place.

In a powerful new vision Dr Brene Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability, and dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that, in truth, vulnerability is…


Book cover of Real Happiness: A 28-Day Program to Realize the Power of Meditation

Andrew Mellen Author Of Unstuff Your Life!: Kick the Clutter Habit and Completely Organize Your Life for Good

From my list on living a simple, rich, and intentional life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been on a path of self-discovery since adolescence. It was then that I learned that I was responsible for both my safety and my happiness. So, I began seeking out mentors who could guide me on this path. Long before I met the first one in person, I met others through books. I would spend hours at the library immersed in the world of words. And often, an author would mention a book in her/his book, and that would spark curiosity in me—and I hope this list of books sparks curiosity in you, too.

Andrew's book list on living a simple, rich, and intentional life

Andrew Mellen Why did Andrew love this book?

The first book I ever read by Sharon Salzberg was her memoir, Faith. And then, I had the opportunity to study with her at Tibet House in New York City for several years. One of the things that I love so much about Sharon as a teacher is how simple, practical, and approachable she makes meditation. There’s nothing complicated or intimidating in her instruction—whether you’re a beginner or an advanced practitioner, you always feel like you’re practicing with a good friend who is super smart, exceptionally generous, and consistently humble. All of those qualities are immediately accessible and apparent in her book Real Happiness.

She has created a 28-day program that demystifies meditation so you can easily integrate it into your daily activities. And the book also includes guided meditations led by Sharon herself to eliminate any possible resistance to sitting still and breathing. You literally just have…

By Sharon Salzberg,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A New York Times best seller—now revised and updated with new exercises and guided meditations.

“An inviting gateway to the interior territory of profound well-being and wisdom.”—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are

From Sharon Salzberg, a pioneer in the field of meditation and world-renowned teacher acclaimed for her down-to-earth style, Real Happiness is a complete guide to starting and maintaining a meditation practice. Beginning with the simplest breathing and sitting techniques, and based on three key skills—concentration, mindfulness, and lovingkindness—it’s a practice anyone can do and that can transform our lives by bringing us greater resiliency,…


Book cover of Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening

Patrick Ussher Author Of Stoicism & Western Buddhism: A Reflection on Two Philosophical Ways of Life

From my list on modern-day adaptations of Buddhism and Stoicism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve long been interested in what different traditions have to say about how to live our best lives. While a graduate student, I naturally drifted towards studying both Stoicism and Buddhism and wrote my MA dissertation on a comparison of both (which ultimately, much later, became the basis for my book). During my time as a Ph.D. student, I was actively involved in the Modern Stoicism project. As well as running the blog for the project, I was also involved, along with a team of academics and psychotherapists, in creating adaptations of that ancient philosophy for the modern world. I also draw on both philosophies in coping with chronic illness.

Patrick's book list on modern-day adaptations of Buddhism and Stoicism

Patrick Ussher Why did Patrick love this book?

By my nature, I really enjoy polemical writings and controversial thinkers who challenge the status quo. Rightly or wrongly, I wouldn’t typically associate such works with the Buddhist tradition. While it does contain its heretics and firebrands, it is also naturally a tradition that encourages respect for the transmission of teachings from generation to generation.

Batchelor is a Buddhist polemicist and a highly controversial one, at that. In this book, I loved how he really took on many aspects of Buddhism that could be seen as ‘unnecessary ossified relics’ and attempted to present the essential aspects of Buddhism, stripped of any ancient metaphysical worldview.

In my opinion, Buddhism can benefit from more rigorous debate and criticism of itself, and, for me, Batchelor does precisely that. This book is highly thought-provoking stuff.

By Stephen Batchelor,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Buddhism Without Beliefs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Demystifies Buddhism by explaining, without jargon or obscure terminology, what awakening is and how to practise it.


Book cover of Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

Srikumar Rao Author Of Modern Wisdom, Ancient Roots: The Movers and Shakers' Guide to Unstoppable Success

From my list on spiritual dynamite.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am Srikumar Rao – best selling author, TED speaker, and elite coach. I have spent more than five decades studying the teachings of the world’s greatest masters and distilling them into exercises that enable successful individuals to reach entirely new orbits of accomplishment while remaining serene as a Zen monk. My course, Creativity and Personal Mastery, was among the highest-rated and most popular at many of the world’s top business schools and is the only one to have its own alumni association. My work has been covered by major media worldwide and my talks have been viewed by tens of millions on all six continents.

Srikumar's book list on spiritual dynamite

Srikumar Rao Why did Srikumar love this book?

DeMello was a Jesuit priest and a psychologist.

His workshops were legendary and had a deep impact on thousands. His books have touched millions. He was eclectic and open-minded and readily acknowledged the power of spiritual practices from traditions outside the Church.

For this, his books were removed from Catholic bookstores and a warning issued that his writings could mislead young minds. He was passionate about truth and cavalier about dogma.

By Anthony De Mello,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Awareness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

De Mello's spiritual classic remains at the top of the Fount bestsellers more than five years after its original publication.


Book cover of Larry's Party

Mark Morton Author Of The Headmasters

From my list on experiencing the Canadian city of Winnipeg if you can’t actually go there.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an author who’s published historical nonfiction, science fiction, and poetry—all genres that are represented in the five books I’ve recommended! I also lived in Winnipeg between 1993 and 2002 and loved being there. It’s a great city with lots of history, a thriving arts community, two beautiful rivers, lots of diverse cultures, and a determination to undo some of the wrongs that have happened there. (Admittedly, Winnipeg also gets to minus 40 in the winter and has a tad too many mosquitoes in the summer!). But it’s also where I met my amazing wife! ☺

Mark's book list on experiencing the Canadian city of Winnipeg if you can’t actually go there

Mark Morton Why did Mark love this book?

What I adore about this book—which Carol Shields wrote a few years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries—is how it mingles the quotidian and the fanciful and the fantastic.

The quotidian takes the form of the very ordinary details in the life of the titular protagonist’s middle-aged life: The small things that Larry frets about, his ordinary conversations in Winnipeg coffee shops, his very relatable miscommunications, and even his fairly typical penis (there’s an entire chapter called “Larry’s Penis”).

Then there are the fanciful touches—for example, Larry makes garden labyrinths for a living (not a run-of-the-mill profession), and streets that don’t intersect in the real Winnipeg do intersect in the novel.

As for the fantastic, the novel ends with Larry having a vision of how his life might have gone in a happier alternative reality. 

By Carol Shields,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The San Diego Tribune called The Stone Diaries a "universal study of what makes women tick." With Larry's Party Carol Shields has done the same for men. Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony, and tenderness. Larry's Party gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997, that seamlessly flash backward and forward. We follow this young floral designer through two marriages and divorces, and his interactions with his parents, friends, and a son. Throughout, we witness his deepening passion for garden mazes--so…


Book cover of Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form

Uldis Zarins Author Of Anatomy For Sculptors: Understanding the Human Figure

From my list on human anatomy for artists.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a traditional sculptor with more than 25 years of experience. Being a dyslectic student in the 2000s, I developed a systematic approach to translating medical anatomy texts into visual information that I could use while sculpting.  All the anatomy books for artists at the time were text-centered. My reference sketches became quite popular among colleagues. It was clear that visual artists perceive information best when it’s visual, and that is how I got the idea for my first book. Now the Anatomy for Sculptors handbooks are bestsellers among visual artists striving to better understand the human form.

Uldis' book list on human anatomy for artists

Uldis Zarins Why did Uldis love this book?

Eliot Goldfinger’s book is very precise, reliable, and not too lengthy. Its systematic approach reminds me of a medical anatomy book, but it has been adapted for artists. The book is consistent in its depictions of human anatomy, and you will find each anatomical structure depicted from set angles: front, side, top, etc. It’s not always easy to find reliable human anatomy references, but this is one of them.

By Eliot Goldfinger,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Human Anatomy for Artists as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Eliot Goldfinger, a realistic sculptor and instructor of human and animal anatomy, has designed and written a reference work for artists and art students on the visual and descriptive components of human anatomy. The format is simple and accessible; all information about one aspect of a topic is set forth on facing pages. For example, the anterior leg muscle is illustrated in a series of precise anatomical drawings and well-lit photos, with text on origin,
insertion, action, structure, and how it relates to creating surface form directly opposite the pictures. Unique to this book are photographs of a series of…


Book cover of Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness

Kersten T. Hall Author Of The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and How Wool Wove a Forgotten Road to the Double-Helix

From my list on to think differently about the history of science.

Why am I passionate about this?

The discovery of the structure of DNA, the genetic material was one of the biggest milestones in science–but few people realise that a crucial unsung hero in this story was the humble wool fibre. But the Covid pandemic has changed all that and as a result we’ve all become acutely away of both the impact of science on our lives and our need to be more informed about it. Having long ago hung up my white coat and swapped the lab for the library to be a historian of science, I think we need a more honest, authentic understanding of scientific progress rather than the over-simplified accounts so often found in textbooks. 

Kersten's book list on to think differently about the history of science

Kersten T. Hall Why did Kersten love this book?

The discovery of insulin in early 1922 was a medical milestone that has since saved countless lives–my own included. Until this moment, a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes was a certain death sentence. But as diabetes clinician and historian of medicine, Chris Feudtner points out, the success of insulin has distorted historical accounts of diabetes by marginalising the experience of the patient in favour of narratives that focus on the development of medical technology to treat them. And Feudtner’s diagnosis is confined not just to diabetes but to the history of medicine in general. Following a personal epiphany that patients have an existence beyond X-rays and blood tests, Feudtner set out to address this problem by writing a history of diabetes as told from the perspective of patients. He does so magnificently and offers important insights about our relationship with technology that extend well beyond the treatment of diabetes.

By Chris Feudtner,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

One of medicine's most remarkable therapeutic triumphs was the discovery of insulin in 1921. The drug produced astonishing results, rescuing children and adults from the deadly grip of diabetes. But as Chris Feudtner demonstrates, the subsequent transformation of the disease from a fatal condition into a chronic illness is a story of success tinged with irony, a revealing saga that illuminates the complex human consequences of medical intervention.

Bittersweet chronicles this history of diabetes through the compelling perspectives of people who lived with this disease. Drawing on a remarkable body of letters exchanged between patients or their parents and Dr.…


Book cover of The Five Wounds

Alina Grabowski Author Of Women and Children First

From my list on exploring how place shapes community.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer who grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Austin, Texas. Though I haven’t lived in Massachusetts for over a decade now, I find myself drawn back to the state’s coast in my fiction. My novel, Women and Children First, takes place in a fictional town south of Boston called Nashquitten. I’m obsessed with how where we’re from shapes who we become and the ways we use narrative to try and exert control over our lives. 

Alina's book list on exploring how place shapes community

Alina Grabowski Why did Alina love this book?

Las Penas, New Mexico, is the setting for this moving novel that follows a year in the lives of the Padilla family. Valdez Quade creates characters with dazzling depth, and you’ll root for the Padillas as they stumble through twelve months, where everything they know is upended and destabilized.

The way this book portrays community reminds me of a favorite Sally Rooney quote from Normal People: “No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”

By Kirstin Valdez Quade,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.

Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby's first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge:…


Book cover of Down by the River

Pamela Mulloy Author Of As Little As Nothing

From my list on women in history challenging the limitations of gender.

Why am I passionate about this?

I became fascinated with the lives of women around the period of World War Two when I discovered the female aviators of the Air Transport Auxiliary based in England. It wasn’t until I researched the history of reproductive rights after attending the Women’s March in 2017 in Toronto, Canada that I realized the period of the 1930s was a particularly progressive time for women, a time of early feminism. As a novelist I am drawn to the social history and the impact of wars. My first novel explored PTSD, and in this one I’m exploring the lives of women who fought against the gender norms at the time.

Pamela's book list on women in history challenging the limitations of gender

Pamela Mulloy Why did Pamela love this book?

This is a devastating story but O’Brien is a master wordsmith and I was dazzled by the writing while being distressed by the events, that of a young teen in Ireland who gets pregnant in abominable circumstances, then tries to find a way out of it. The church looms large in the novel, and the helplessness this young girl feels is palpable. That she keeps fighting against the forces against her despite the gaslighting is a testament to her strength. Even her one chance to escape is foiled in the most frustrating manner. I’ve been reading about the history of reproductive rights for my own novel, and the stories are never easy. The expected thing to do would be to acquiesce and accept the circumstances, but she chose otherwise.  A beautifully written and necessary book.

By Edna O'Brien,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Down by the River as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Down by the River is a newly reissued novel from Edna O’Brien, the author of Girl—“one of the most celebrated writers in the English language” (NPR’s Weekend Edition).

Set in the author’s native Ireland, a powerful and passionate novel about a young girl who becomes pregnant by her father—a situation made worse when it becomes fodder for the gossip mill of church, state, and the town square.


Book cover of The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law

Nicholas L. Syrett Author Of The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America's Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime

From my list on revealing the unexpected history of abortion in the US.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am fascinated by how gender and sex, characteristics of our beings that we take to be the most intimate and personal, are just as subject to external forces as anything else in history. I have written about the cultivation of masculinity in college fraternities, the history of young people and the age of consent to marriage, and about a same-sex couple who lived publicly as “father and son” in order to be together. My most recent book is a biography of an abortion provider in nineteenth-century America who became the symbol that doctors and lawyers demonized as they worked to make abortion a crime. I am a professor at the University of Kansas. 

Nicholas' book list on revealing the unexpected history of abortion in the US

Nicholas L. Syrett Why did Nicholas love this book?

The word “abortionist” usually conjures up images of dangerous back alleys where untrained men take advantage of women.

In the case of Rickie Solinger’s book, instead, we meet Ruth Barnett, who performed approximately 40,000 abortions in the mid-twentieth century (1918-1968) in Portland, Oregon, without losing a single patient.

What I loved about this book is how Solinger takes us behind the scenes of a thoroughly illegal abortion clinic that still managed to provide expert care to all its patients, even as it sought to evade the law and its enforcers at every turn. 

By Rickie Solinger,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Abortionist as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Prior to Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions occurred in the United States every year. Rickie Solinger uses the story of Ruth Barnett, an abortionist in Portland, Oregon, between 1918 and 1968 to demonstrate that it was the law, not so-called back-alley practitioners, that most endangered women's lives in the years before abortion was legal. Women from all walks of life came to Ruth Barnett to seek abortions. For most of her career she worked in a proper suite of offices, undisturbed by legal authorities. In her years of practice she performed forty thousand abortions and never…


Book cover of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Book cover of Real Happiness: A 28-Day Program to Realize the Power of Meditation
Book cover of Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening

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