Why do children sometimes become overwhelmed by emotions they cannot explain, and what can adults do besides simply demanding that they calm down? Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson’s The Whole-Brain Child presents a set of parenting ideas built around emotional regulation, brain development, integration and connection. What is The Whole-Brain Child about? The […]
Most founders believe they need to build a product. Rob Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test argues that the first thing they actually need to build is reliable knowledge about whether anyone has a problem worth solving. The difficulty is that customers often want to be polite, and polite feedback can be more dangerous than no feedback […]
What if the goal of living longer is not simply to add years, but to understand why aging happens and what can realistically be changed? Lifespan by David Sinclair and Matthew LaPlante presents aging as a biological process that may be more modifiable than people traditionally assume. The book combines molecular biology, evolutionary reasoning and […]
We are often told that exercise is the obvious answer to modern health problems. But Daniel Lieberman’s Exercised asks a more interesting question: why did human beings evolve bodies that need movement, while also evolving minds that often prefer conserving energy? The answer takes us from hunter-gatherer societies and endurance running to walking, aging, pregnancy, […]
Nutrition advice often becomes complicated enough to require spreadsheets, apps and competing theories. Michael Pollan’s Food Rules takes the opposite approach. Instead of constructing another elaborate diet, Pollan asks whether a small number of memorable principles can help people navigate an industrial food environment that often makes unhealthy choices unusually easy. What is Food Rules […]
What if our biggest problem in love is not finding the right person, but learning how to love well? Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving challenges the assumption that love is simply a feeling that happens to us. Attraction can be spontaneous, but mature love is a capacity that requires attention, knowledge, courage, patience and […]
Jainism is often introduced through one wordahimsa, non-violence. But Paul Dundas’s The Jains shows how much larger the tradition is. Jainism combines a rigorous philosophy of reality, an unusually demanding ethical discipline, a distinctive understanding of karma and a long history of communities negotiating how spiritual ideals can be lived in ordinary society. What is […]
What are the oldest questions human beings have asked about consciousness, reality and the self? The Upanishads are not a single book written by one author. They are a collection of philosophical and spiritual texts composed over long periods within the Vedic tradition. Their recurring questions concern ultimate reality, the self, knowledge, death, consciousness and […]
C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters reverses the usual perspective of religious instruction. Instead of a human being receiving advice about temptation, the reader hears from Screwtape, a senior demon writing letters to a younger tempter. The result is a satirical exploration of how destructive habits often enter life not through spectacular evil, but through […]
Alan Watts’s The Way of Zen introduces Zen Buddhism by challenging the assumption that spiritual life is mainly about acquiring better beliefs. Watts presents Zen as a tradition concerned with direct experience, disciplined attention and seeing through habits of thought that make reality appear more fixed and separate than it actually is. The book also […]