Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning combines an account of his imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps with an introduction to logotherapy, the psychological approach he developed around the search for meaning. The book is difficult because its subject is extreme human suffering, but its central philosophical question is remarkably direct: when circumstances remove much […]
The Power of Myth presents Joseph Campbell’s ideas about mythology through conversations with journalist Bill Moyers. Campbell explores myths from different cultures, the hero’s journey, ritual, symbolism, love, death, transformation and the continuing human need for stories that give experience a larger pattern. Why myths matter Campbell treats myth as more than an old story […]
William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience is less interested in proving or disproving religion than in asking a psychological question: what happens inside a person who experiences faith, conversion, doubt, mystical insight, or a sense of communion with something larger than the self? Based on lectures James delivered at the University of Edinburgh, the […]
Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions is a comparative introduction to major religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, along with Indigenous traditions. Smith’s distinctive approach is to take religions seriously as lived systems of meaning rather than reducing them to lists of doctrines or judging them solely by the standards of […]
Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being approaches creativity less as a technical formula and more as a relationship with attention, perception, uncertainty, practice, and the world. Published as a 432-page book, it draws on Rubin’s decades of work with artists and treats creative activity as something that can extend beyond professional artists […]
Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is ostensibly a book about writing, but its deeper subject is the psychological problem of making anything worthwhile. Creative work becomes intimidating when we imagine the finished masterpiece all at once. Lamott’s answer is to reduce the scale of the task until the next piece becomes manageable. The book combines […]
Stephen King’s On Writing is part memoir, part craft guide, and part argument for treating writing as serious work rather than waiting for inspiration to arrive. King combines stories from his life with practical observations about reading, vocabulary, description, dialogue, storytelling, revision, discipline and the emotional difficulty of putting work in front of other people. […]
Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist challenges the romantic idea that originality begins with creating something from nothing. Kleon argues that creative people are always surrounded by influences. The productive response is to study those influences deeply, transform what is learned, combine ideas in unexpected ways, and gradually discover a personal voice. The book is […]
What if the greatest obstacle to creative work is not lack of talent but the invisible force that appears whenever the work starts to matter? Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art gives that force a name: Resistance. He uses it to describe procrastination, distraction, self-doubt, perfectionism and other forms of avoidance that keep people from […]
What happens when a doctor who has spent his life treating critically ill patients suddenly becomes the patient? Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir about medicine, mortality, meaning and the difficult question of how a person should live when time becomes limited. What is When Breath Becomes Air about? Kalanithi was a […]