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This is the blog post where I get to expose people to the creative giants that shaped my brain over the past year. A number of magazines and websites feature the top books published in 2014. This is different. This is a list of the best books that I read, many of which were published in the distant past. This year's theme is impact. Books that required me to stop and jot passages in Evernote notebooks. Authors that evoked a sense of envy, as I dreamed of composing sentences similar in quality.
If you need brain food, know that purchasing all 10 of these books is equivalent to two sushi restaurant dinners. You owe it to yourself to buy a chunk of happiness. With that being said, let me begin with my favorite book this year:
1. The Meaning of Human Existence by E.O. Wilson
From a centrifuge of poetry, science, and boldness, Wilson is delivered to us. He has a chapter on the unimpressive sensory systems of humans and how our limited ability to see, hear, and smell in response to the environment cripples creativity. By adopting the perspective of non-human animals and their distinct sensory apparatuses, we open the doors to new music, poetry, and visual arts. Another chapter expands on the likely features of the first extra-terrestrial that visits Earth. His description is based on everything known about chemistry, biology, and astronomy. He offers an interesting argument that aliens are likely to be more interested in what we accomplish in the humanities than our scientific discoveries. This book is one part awe, for the eco-diversity around us, and one part humility, a reminder that humans are not the pinnacle of evolutionary design. Wilson dives through free will, religion, levels of natural selection that often compete with one another ("individual selection promoted sin while group selection promoted virtue"), and musings on the future. It's a slim volume where each chapter is an essay on a different topic. Don't rush through, enjoy sentences such as this:
Bite into a lemon, fall into bed, recall a departed friend, watch the sun sink beyond the western sea. Each episode comprises mass neuronal activity so elaborate, so little of which as yet been seen, we cannot even conceive it, much less write it down as a repertory of firing cells.
We think we know so much as a species. We don't. This ignorance is not something to bemoan, it is worthy of celebration. Great creations await for those with a propensity for curiosity, gratitude, and determination. Let E.O. Wilson motivate you to be a steward of a better world.
2. The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen
History is best told through stories of interesting characters. Few are as interesting as Sam Zemurray - a poor, Jewish immigrant from Russia who ended his life with more power and wealth than the majority of Central American countries. This is a story about ambition, capitalism, foreign policy, New Orleans, and the good and evil of human nature. You will never look at a banana the same way again. As someone interested in the ability to be whole, embracing the upside of negative emotions and the downside of positive emotions, Zemurray intrigues me. A man whose complexity is captured by the author:
I cant help but feel, after all the talk of America's decline, that we would do well by emulating Sam Zemurray-not the brutality or the conquest, but the righteous anger that sent the striver into the boardroom of laughing elites, waving his proxies, shouting, "You gentleman have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out."
3. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
I am unsure when philosophy became a tedious, pretentious field divorced from reality. Philosophy was originally designed to be a disciplined practice for thinking through the best possible solutions for everyday problems. This book is a return to these roots with stoic philosophers and their philosophies mentoring the reader on how to best manage seemingly disadvantageous situations and how to exploit rewarding situations. Perhaps this is desirable to you:
Start thinking like a radical pragmatist: still ambitious, aggressive, and rooted in ideals, but also imminently practical and guided by the possible. Not on everything you would like to have, not on changing the world right at this moment, but ambitious enough to get everything you need. Don't think small, but make the distinction between the critical and the extra. Think progress, not perfection.
If so, enjoy the ancient lessons of Seneca, Epicetus, and Marcus Aurelius packaged for the challenges of the modern world.
4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
This is a beautifully written account of a woman who might be the most important person in the history of science and medicine. No hyperbole here. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in her early 30s. Before her death, cancerous cells were removed and harvested in the laboratory. To the surprise of every scientist involved, these cells survived and reproduced at rates never before seen. These cells were given to other labs around the world to aid cell research that led to the development of drug treatments for depression, schizophrenia, herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease, and HIV/AIDS, among others. In fact, it is because of Henrietta Lacks and her ever-growing line of "HeLa cells" that Jonas Salk and his colleagues were able to create a polio vaccine. It is because of her cells that we gained sufficient knowledge about how outer space, nuclear technology, and toxins affect the body. Her body inspired a technological revolution that has been ongoing since the 1950s. Every single human living in the Western World is in her debt for something that required the use of these cells.
But there is another layer to this story. It is about racism. It is about medical ethics. It is about the millions of dollars earned on HeLa cells without anything being attributed to or shared with the family of Henrietta Lacks.
Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white. And they did so on the same campus-and at the very same time-that state officials were conducting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies.
And then there is another layer about the author and her 10-year odyssey to write this book. Her only book to date. You....will...not....be....able....to put this book down until its finished.
5. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
Like most people, I viewed Scientology as a ridiculous, cult-ish, self-help community that wasted innocent people's time and money, while somehow being anointed an official religion with tax-exempt status. It's so much worse. Scarier than any fictional horror movie. Money, sex, violence, power, religion, torture, and famous celebrities, the Scientology story has it all. L. Ron Hubbard is freakish. Tom Cruise is freakish. This is the best investigative journalism ever conducted on the bizarre world of scientology. You will simultaneously experience compassion for the victims while remaining bewildered of how anyone is affiliated with this shitstorm.
Don't forget to read the notes on sources at the end and then, get one final taste of scientology with the South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet".
6. Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn
Prior to the inflection point, when he truly became delusional, Manson's story offers an epic testimonial on the nature and nurture of evil. It goes without saying that Manson was a master of influence and persuasion. The details are astounding.
Charlie developed a lifelong defense mechanism he later called the "insane game". In dangerous situations where he could not protect himself in any other way, he would act out to convince potential assailants that he was crazy. Using screeches, grimaces, flapping arms, and other extreme facial expression and gestures, Charlie could often back off aggressors..Charlie Mason always survived.
This is not for the squeamish. It is for anyone interested in the psychology of personality.
7. Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity are Revolutionizing our View of Human Nature by Douglas T. Kenrick
Kenrick is a maverick scientist with amazing storytelling abilities. You will be convinced that theories of human behavior that avoid mention of evolutionary influences are destined to be at best, incomplete, and at worse, unsuccessful. Maslow's hierarchy of human motivation is shredded to pieces. That's the easy part. More impressive is Kenrick's revised pyramid of motivational forces, with evolutionary psychology as the underpinning.
I will be candid and tell you that if you don't like science, you won't enjoy this book as much as me. Besides the content, this is by far the best title of any book I read this year.
8. Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller
Don't let the title fool you. This book is about much more than consumer behavior. This is a book about how evolutionary desires for sex and status influence our behavior - whether it is what we do for a living, what we purchase with our money, and what aspirations are held for our lives. Why do you have to read this book? Because it is provocative. Sexuality partially accounts for why human beings showcase their religious affiliation or demonstrate their creative talents. And then there is this thesis to the book:
Marketing is the most important invention of the past two millennia because it is the only revolution that has ever succeeded in bringing real economic power to the people. It is not just the power to redistribute wealth, to split the social cake into different pieces. Rather, it is the power to make our means of production transform the natural world into a playground for human passions.
You will not agree with everything in here. But you will be forced to contemplate and alter some deeply held assumptions.
9. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
This book received a lot of well-deserved fanfare. After all, the co-founder of Pixar offers concrete advice on how his company handled uncertainty, instability, mistrust, and the invisible forces that prevent people from reaching their potential at work. Consider this book a perfect complement to my evolutionary psychology selections listed above. Even when we are alone, walking down the street, we are influenced by the mere thought of what other people might think if they observed us. This is a treatise on how to create the conditions for optimal performance in an inherently social workplace.
10. The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs
Let me end with a book whose timing is perfect for this moment in history. With the tragedies happening in Ferguson, Cleveland, New York City, and elsewhere, it is worth reading 417 pages about an unheralded Black man whose final contribution is +1 to the death count in Newark, New Jersey. The author was his freshman dorm roommate at Yale University. Expect to be emotionally affected by a story that has no clear heroes or victims. This is the story of what its like to be embedded in the culture of the most dangerous city in America, and come ever so close to surviving and thriving. It is worth remembering that privilege is not a birthright because where we are born is pure luck.
****and finally, thank you to the overwhelming reader response to my own 2014 entry, The upside of your dark side: Why being your whole self - not just your “good” self - drives success and fulfillment, with Robert Biswas-Diener. The reviews on amazon and in the media have made the 2-year journey worthwhile. Looking forward to additional conversations in 2015.*******
here is the list of books to read from 2013
here is the list of books to read from 2012
here is the list of books to read from 2011
here is the list of books to read from 2010
Dr. Todd B. Kashdan is a public speaker, psychologist, and professor of psychology and senior scientist at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University. His new book, The upside of your dark side: Why being your whole self - not just your “good” self - drives success and fulfillment is available from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Booksamillion , Powell's or Indie Bound. If you're interested in speaking engagements or workshops, go to: toddkashdan.com
