(soft music)
- What's up, boys and girls?
Mark Manson here.
People are always asking me, "What are your favorite books?
"What books should I read?
"What are the best books for somebody
"who is in my situation?"
And you know what, today I decided,
we're just gonna knock all these out in one go.
These are 14 of what are, in my opinion,
the best non-fiction books for everybody to read,
and I'm gonna go through all 14 of them,
and I'm gonna give you brief, one-minute summaries
of each of them,
so buckle up, cause here we go.
(intense music)
Book number 1, it's called "The Body Keeps the Score".
It's by Bessel Van Der Kolk
Dr. Van Der Kolk is one of the founding fathers
of trauma research.
I believe he coined the term PTSD.
He's been studying trauma since the mid 1970s.
This book is all about,
not only how trauma affects you psychologically,
how it affects your life,
but as the title would let you know,
how it affects your body, how it affects your neurology,
your physiology, how it affects how you live
and breathe and do things every day,
and on top of that,
he goes through all the different therapeutic practices,
what works, what doesn't,
why it works, when it works, et cetera, et cetera.
So, anything you could ever wanna know about trauma,
this is your guy.
(book hits floor)
Next book, "Paradox of Choice".
Now, if you follow my work for a long time,
you've definitely heard me reference
"The Paradox of Choice."
"The Paradox of Choice" is a simple psychological finding
that is actually incredibly profound.
It's basically this, psychologists found that,
when you are given more choices,
you become less satisfied with whatever you choose.
Now, why does this matter?
Well, this matters because modern life is full
of infinite amounts of choices.
I mean, hell you got on here on YouTube,
there's fuckin' 800 videos
for you to choose from at any given moment.
So any video you choose from,
you're probably always sitting there looking at the sidebar,
being like, "Well, maybe that one's better.
"Maybe that one's better or fuck maybe I'm wasting my time.
"I should be watching this dude instead."
Welcome to life in the 21st century.
we are all subjected to the paradox of choice.
The subtitle here is why more is less.
It is a very strong and profound argument
for why we should simplify our lives,
limit ourselves in various ways.
Check it out.
Did I break something?
(Mark laughs)
The next book is called "The Bank Slate" by Steven Pinker.
It actually came out in the 90s
but it's probably more relevant today than ever before.
"The Blank Slate" is basically this philosophical idea
that comes from John Locke.
And it's this idea that the human mind
is born a blank slate, a clean sheet of paper
and that anything good or bad that arises in our personality
or who we are is due to our influences in our environment
or in the culture.
Now this line of thought has been extremely popular
for centuries and it's taken various forms
back in the 1600s.
It was part of Locke's humanism and empiricism more recently
in the 20th century, it was part of Marxism.
And these days we vaguely refer to this stuff
as like woke culture.
This idea that your identity can be anything
you want it to be.
The only thing that's confining you is societal pressures
and definitions preventing you from being who you wanna be.
Pinker attack this with 600 pages
worth of research and notes
and he basically pointed out that this is an illusion.
It's a fantasy.
Like we would love the idea
that all the bad things about us aren't our fault.
It's evil society that made us that way.
What Pinker shows us is that, no,
genetics play a major, major factor in all of our identities
of all of who we are.
There's only so much you can change of our inherent biology.
And he does this in a very thoughtful way,
a very fair way, very rational way.
I think it's for anybody who's interested
in these sorts of topics.
A lot of the controversies that are going around these days
around gender and sex and race and so on.
This is a must read.
"Getting the Love You Want" by Dr. Harville Hendrix.
Cheesy book title fucking mind blowing content.
Look, anybody who's fucked up in their relationships
which by the way, is all of us, should read this book.
This book basically dives into the psychology
of why our relationships are the way we are.
We've all heard the cliches of like
if you're a boy, you marry your mother
or if you're a girl you fall in love with your father
or whatever.
It always kind of sounds like this.
Woo-woo Hocus Pocus that came from Freud or something.
This book actually breaks down,
why those patterns happen.
And it essentially is, comes down to a thing
that Hendrix calls our love maps.
When we are children, we basically develop mental maps
of how loving relationships operate.
And it's just what we know to be true.
So it makes sense that once we become adults
we naturally gravitate towards others
with similar emotional maps as we do.
Or did I call it love map?
What the fuck did I call them?
Love maps, mental map, whatever.
You get the point, read the book.
"The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker.
I've referenced this book so many times in my own work.
There's a whole section in subtle art.
I'm not giving a fuck about this guy.
This book is absolutely incredible.
Becker's argument is really, really simple
but quite profound.
And it's basically that most of our motivations in life,
most of the things that we find purpose in,
it's because we're terrified of dying.
In fact, we want to deny
or avoid the reality of our own mortality.
And the way we do that is by undertaking massive projects.
Projects that will outlive us.
Whether that's writing a book,
whether it's raising children,
whether it's putting our names on buildings
or creating a project that's gonna change the world.
These are all goals that give us a sense of purpose
but really what that sense of purpose is,
is the ability to forget that we're gonna die.
"Influence" by Robert Cialdini.
If you are at all in marketing, sales, publicity
this is a must read book.
This book is based on decades of psychological research
into how people are persuaded and influenced
to make various decisions.
Whether that is to help somebody
else believe a certain thing or most importantly
to buy a certain product.
And it's actually pretty incredible the amount of triggers
that we have in our psychology that make us susceptible
to making certain decisions.
It's not only is it useful
for any sort of marketing profession
in terms of understanding how to get people to buy things.
But it's also important as a consumer to understand
how you're being manipulated
by all these marketing messages.
"Atomic Habits" by James clear.
This book is everywhere these days
and there's a reason for it.
It's great.
In fact, I think the reason
that this book has stuck around and become so popular
whereas other habits books have kind of drifted
after a while is because James actually really focuses
on what really determines habit change.
And that is understanding the underlying emotions
of our behaviors.
It's not enough to like, just write down a series of goals,
create like a three week action plan or whatever.
Like if that was enough, we would all fucking have six packs
and be like, Ballen out at the beach, but we're not.
So what James understands is
that most behavior is driven emotionally.
And so if you're gonna change those habits
you have to address the emotions underlying them
and change the emotional behavior first
and then the physical behavior follows.
The other really cool thing about this book,
that's really profound is that he really demonstrates
how tons and tons and tons of little actions accumulate
and compound over time kind of the same way
it's like saving 10% of your paycheck
makes you a millionaire by 50 or whatever.
He kind of shows how that's true about your habits as well.
"The Elephant in the Brain" by Robin Hanson.
There are a lot of books I could have picked
to kinda fill this niche.
I picked this one
because I think it's the most readable and enjoyable.
But basically this book is
about how ultimately we're all animals at heart.
We all have very dark base impulses
and a lot of our conscious mind is designed
to rationalize away those base impulses.
So it's like basically like we're all a little bit selfish
and impulsive and overly emotional
but we can't really admit that to ourselves.
So we develop all these kind of belief systems and mindsets
and attitudes that allow us to continue to believe
that we are fully rational, altruistic wonderful being.
This book, dissects all of those that whole network
of attitudes and beliefs to kinda point out,
where we're fooling ourselves.
Nonviolent...
The is this called, "Nonviolent Communication"
by Marshall Rosenberg.
I read this when I was in college.
Look, there's a woo woo warning here.
This book gets a little woo, woo.
He talks about how we can all love each other forever
and ever, and nobody ever has to be hurt ever again.
Obviously that's
but the reason I'm recommending this book
and I've recommended it so many times over the years is
that this book breaks down how much subtext
and meaning is embedded in our language
when we talk about feelings.
So just to give you a simple example,
it's a very, very common statement
that most of us make we say, "You made me feel angry
or, "You made me feel ashamed."
Well, what Rosenberg points out is like, "Wait a second
"nobody made you feel anything."
They did something and as a response,
you decided to feel angry.
That's a very subtle but important difference.
Another example is like, sometimes we'll say like,
"Oh, my day was going great
"but then traffic ruined it for me."
Well, did traffic really ruin your day?
Or could it also have been part of what was going perfect?
There's all these like little subtexts
and meanings that you don't consider
but he breaks it down line by line, gives tons of examples
and even gives you exercises to understand
how the way you're using languages, particularly
around your emotions is perpetuating a lot
of well how you feel.
"Codling of the American Mind" by Jonathan Haidt.
Sorry, Jonathan Haidt.
I met him once.
He got very mad at me for mispronouncing his last name
and Greg Lukainoff, which probably mispronounced that too
but sorry, Greg.
Anyway, this book, it's got a little bit
of that hysterical sky is falling feel to it
but I think it makes some very, very important points
about culture in the last couple generations.
Every generation looks at the younger generation
and is like, "You have it easy.
"You're spoiled.
"You're fucking grateful for nothing.
"Fuck you.
"When I was your age,
"I was like walking the school barefoot in the snow."
But this book actually presents a lot
of psychological research.
And what I like about this book is
that they kinda point out it's like,
"look if the kids are up, it's not the kids' fault.
"It's the parents and teacher's fault."
And so a lot of it looks at how the education system
has changed over the past couple of generations,
how parenting styles have changed
over the past couple generations.
How technology has changed over the past couple generations
and how that is leading to a more mentally
and emotionally fragile population.
And obviously that's bad for everybody.
"So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport.
Cal has a bunch of good books
but this was his first and this is my personal favorite.
The reason I love this one,
those of you who followed my work for a long time,
I write about purpose a lot.
People always have this misguided assumption
that purpose is something you just find,
like it's like you just wake up one day and you're like,
"Oh, I'm supposed to be a Piccolo player
in the local orchestra.
And it's like, boom, lightning struck.
You found your purpose.
Everything solved forever.
What Newport shows very convincingly is
that it actually is the other way around.
You don't find what you're passionate
about and then become great at it.
What happens is you get great at something
and then you become passionate.
Again, kind of referencing the Robin Hansen book
about us being animals and very selfish.
It seems that we tend to fall in love
with things and activities that bring us a lot
of validation that we get to feel superior
and feel like we're better than other people.
Now it doesn't mean that like you have to actually
go be better than people at something to love it.
It just means that you have to feel like you're good at it.
You have to feel like you're competent.
Like you're accomplishing a lot of things.
And that's what gives that sense of passion.
That's what provides us with that infusion of purpose.
And so if you think you're getting it backwards
check it out so good they can't ignore you.
"The Psychology of Money" by Morgan Hausel.
I love this book.
It's hard to sum this book up in just a few sentences
but basically Morgan comes from the finance world.
And it's interesting because a lot in finance is presented
as a science, but the more you learn about finance
the more you realize it's just, it's kind of art.
It's kind of like people just making up
and choosing to believe in certain things,
certain philosophies over other philosophies,
sound familiar, It's humans being human.
But basically he kind of goes
through a lot of popular assumptions about money, wealth
what it's like to be rich,
what you should spend your money on,
and just shows how like nobody knows
what the they're talking about.
One of my favorite moments
in this book is he's got a great line where he says
that people who want to be wealthy
what they actually want is to just spend a lot of money.
And ironically, it's by spending a lot of money
that you're never gonna be wealthy.
David Brooks, "The Second Mountain"
This is a really, really beautifully done book.
It kind of charts a life course.
I think this is a life course
that Brooks himself went through,
and was very profound for him.
And I think that's what makes this book good,
is like you kind of feel how personal it is to him.
But basically Brooks has this little fur
or model that he came up with, which is like
everybody's life has two mountains that they want to climb.
The first mountain is the mountain of worldly success.
You wanna make money or you want to gain prestige
or you wanna build a good career
or be popular at the school dance or whatever,
and that's your first climb
and you hit the top of that mountain
and what inevitably happens is you hit the top
of that mountain and you realize
there's just another gigantic mountain behind it.
And that second mountain is a feeling of purpose.
Is a feeling that like this meant something.
It's one thing to build a successful career
or make a bunch of money.
But then what does that mean?
What's the point?
What are you gonna do with it?
Who are you gonna share it with?
And that's the second mountain.
And to get to that second mountain
you often have to go into a valley of nihilism and despair.
The whole book is kind of an allegory
for this process that people go through in life.
I could relate to a lot of it.
And I think it's a particularly profound book for people
who are in their 30s and 40s are experiencing success
for the first time.
And experiencing that feeling of like,
"What's the point I worked so hard."
Like, "Why, what was this all for??
So check it out.
Last book, the most depressing book democracy for realists.
This is a little bit of a denser book.
It's a little bit more academic, but man,
I hate to brag it to you guys.
But this book is all about how the more democratic
certain cities, states, societies, nations, whatever
the worst choices they make.
It's basically just a bunch of research looking
at like why people are so fucking stupid.
They ultimately make an argument of like,
"Look, authoritarianism is horrible."
But giving all the people a voice
for every decision is also terrible.
And this whole book is just it's hundreds and hundreds
of pages of examples of that.
And so there's gotta be some sort of compromise.
There needs to be some sort of structure
of like where people with expertise and knowledge
and experience, people who are good managers,
good leaders actually make their way to the top.
And authority is kind of delegated to them
basically like what a Republic is supposed to be
but so often ends up not being.
This is one of the most sober and eyeopening books
I've ever read.
It's one of the few books I've ever read
that changed my political views.
And it's something that I think everybody needs
to read and understand not because democracy's bad,
but it's just like, "If we're gonna support it
"we need to be real about it."
So those are my 14 books check 'em out.
And if you want more book recommendations
I've got plenty more on my website, markmanson.net.
And I've got a whole thing in my school.
It's called the Library.
I've got a bunch of specific book recommendations there
for all sorts of different topics.
So be sure to check that out as well.
School.markmanson.net.
I'm getting the outta here.
Go read some books.
(upbeat music)
Now let's assess the damage.
(Mark laughs)
- Sorry guys.
My beautiful books.
I'm sorry.
I think they're okay.
You're gonna be fine, baby.
You're gonna be fine.
Daddy still loves you.