Reading Lists
Building a Deep Life
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart
- , Give and Take
Adam Grant, Think Again
Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in an Age of Indulgence
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
Everything by Cal Newport: Deep Work, Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism especially
- , How to Be a Stoic
- , How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
Seneca, How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management
Siva Vaidyanathan, Anti-social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
History
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe
Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture
Ajay Verghese, The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India
Margaret Walker, India’s Kathak Dance in Historical Perspective
Politics
Ed Burmila, Chaotic Neutral: How Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center
Thomas Frank, The People, No: The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy; Listen, Liberal
Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
- and John Judis, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?
Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
Media
Batya Ungar-Sargon, Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy
- , Hate Inc: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another
Identity
- , Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History
- , The Trouble with Everything: My Journey Into the New Culture Wars
- , Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
- , Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump
- , The End of Race Politics
Jay Caspian Kang, The Loneliest Americans
- , The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time
Susan Neiman, Left is Not Woke
Richard Reeves, Of Boys and Men
Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century American
Debra Soh, The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths About Sex and Identity in Our Society
Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women
- , Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Elite Took Over Identity Politics
Economic Class
Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
- , Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
Richard D. Kahlenberg, Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYISM, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t See
Michael Lind, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite
Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap
George Packer, The Unwinding: The Inner History of the New America
Richard Reeves, Dream Hoarders
Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
Batya Ungar-Sargon, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Men and Women
Philosophy/Religion
Peter Adamson, Classical Philosophy (A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps)
The Platonic Dialogues
Tara Isabella Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
Keya Maitra, The Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction
Michael Sandel, Justice
Aatish Tasseer, The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges
Wendy Doniger, Hindu Myths
Devdutt Pattaniak, Indian Mythology
Social Science/Business
John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Sanjoy Chakravorty, The Other One Percent: Indians in America
David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Thrive in a Specialized World
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society
Scott Galloway, The Algebra of Wealth
Adam Grant, Originals
Darrell Huff, How to Lie With Statistics
Christopher Leonard, The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy
Thomas Piketty, Why Save the Bankers?
Lauren A. Rivera, Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs
Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis-and Themselves
Entertainment/Fiction
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illustions
Kal Penn, You Can’t Be Serious
Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archives Series; Mistborn Trilogy