Mind Expanding Books
Curated list of mind expanding books.
Table of Contents
- Startups and Business
- Philosophy and Psychology
- Autobiographies and Biographies
- History
- Evolution, Science and Medicine
- Logic and Problem Solving
- Politics
- Economics
- Sexuality
- Education
- Writing
- Theater and Film
- Fiction
- Health
- Design
Books
Startups and Business
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
- Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
- Linchpin: Are You Indispensable by Seth Godin
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap And Others Don't by Jim Collins
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
- Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
- David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
- The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Shwartz
- Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson
- The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
- Founders At Work: Stories Of Startups Early Days by Jessica Livingston
- The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
- ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by David Heinemeier Hansson
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
- Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
- Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
- The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz
- The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
- The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau
- Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Kenneth Cukier
- The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh
- Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe
- Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
- The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing : A Guide to Move More Profitable by Thomas Nagle, John Hogan, Joseph Zale
- Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children by John Wood
- The 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding by Laura Ries and Al Ries
- Rich Dad Poor Dad : What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That The Poor And Middle Class Don't by Robert T. Kiyosaki
- Outliers: Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
- The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Thomas Ferriss
- How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be : The 25 Principles of Success by Jack Canfield, Janet Switzer
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
- SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Litt
- Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto by Adam Werbach
- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
- Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change by Louis V Gerstner, Jr
- The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin
- The Innovator's Dilemma by clayton m. christensen
- The Paypal Wars by Eric M. Jackson
- One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com by Richard Brandt
- Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
- The Curse of the Mogul by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, Ava Seave
- The Accidental Billionaires : The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich
- Lean In : Women, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
- High Output Management by Andy Grove
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Philosophy And Psychology
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- What the Dog Saw: and other adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Fine Art of Small Talk: How To Start a Conversation, Keep It Going, Build Networking Skills -- and Leave a Positive Impression by Debra Fine
- Gifs of Immperfection by Brene Brown
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
- Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
- The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic by Dan Ariely
- Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid by Robert J Sternberg
- Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life by Shakti Gawain
- In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan
- Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life: Winifred Gallagher by Winifred Gallagher
- You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene
- Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average by Joseph T. Hallinan
- Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku
- Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
- Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Others by Sherry Turkle
- Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities by Dean Radin
- Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy by William Barrett
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business by Charles Duhigg
- The Concise 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
- Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone
- The Ethical Brain: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas by Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You: Sam Gosling by Sam Gosling
- The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker
- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
- The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present by Eric Kandel
- A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink
- Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis by Eric Berne.
- How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic by Madsen Pirie
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, David Chadwick
- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch
- This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking by John Brockman
- Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett
- Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy by Michael Bruce, Steven Barbone
- The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
- The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy : With Illustrations by Matthew Stewart
- Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
- Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson
- Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized by James Ladyman, Don Ross, et al
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern by Douglas Hofstadter
- Education and the Significance of Life by Krishnamurti
- Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell
- The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size by Tor Norretranders
- Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence by David Perkins
- Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller
- The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maurice Cranston
- Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny! by Anthony Robbins
- Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
Autobiographies and Biographies
- Elon Musk: Inventing the Future by Ashlee Vance
- My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- Wings of Fire by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
- An Autobiography: Toward Freedom by Jawaharlal Nehru
- The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
- Freedom in Exile by Dalai Lama XIV
- Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson
- My Life and My Work by Henry Ford
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
- Madame Curie: A Biography by Marie Curie
- iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It by Steve Wozniak
- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
- Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick
- An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
- Losing My Virginity: The Autobiography by Richard Branson
History
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
- Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru
- The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James
- The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet by David Kahn
- The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.) by Matt Ridley
- One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs
- The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton
- Civilization: The West and the Rest: Niall Ferguson by Niall Ferguson
- The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin
- From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present by Jacques Barzun
- The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu
- The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
- Guns, Germs, And Steel : The Fates Of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond
- Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future by Ian Morrisage
- Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II by Madhusree Mukerjee
- The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate by Robert D. Kaplan
- God Created The Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History by Stephen Hawking
- The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
- El Tiempo Entre Costuras (The Time Between Seams / The Time In Between) by María Dueñas
- Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground by Kevin Poulson
- Spycraft Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, Henry R. Schlesinger
Science and Medicine
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition by Thomas S. Kuhn
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
- The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
- A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
- Asimov's New Guide to Science by Isaac Asimov
- The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain by Terrence W. Deacon
- The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by Gregory Cochran, Henry Harpending
- Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity by Dean Keith
- At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity by Stuart Kauffman
- The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler
- Heaven in a Chip: Fuzzy Visions of Society and Science in the Digital Age by Bart Kosko
- The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us by Noson S. Yanofsky
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense by Jonathan D. Moreno
- Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives by David Sloan Wilson
- Darwin's Dangerous Idea Daniel C. Dennett
- The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a Complex World by Elkhonon Goldberg
- Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham
- The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex by Murray Gell-Mann
- Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind by Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
- How to Find a Habitable Planet by James kasting
- Scientific Genius: A Psychology of Science Dean Keith Simonton
- The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene Richard Dawkins
- Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee
- Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence by Hans Moravec.
- The Little Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Duane Bibby, Gerald J. Sussman
- Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World by Kevin Kelly
- The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Futureby Kevin Kelly
- Tomorrowland: Our Staggering Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact by Steven Kotler
Logic and Problem Solving
- What Is the Name of This Book?: The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles by Raymond M. Smullyan
- How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method by George Polya
- Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge by William Poundstone
- A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) by Barbara Oakley
Politics
- Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict by Michael Klare
- The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Bryan Caplan
- Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel
- Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann, Mark Halperin
- The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama
- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
Economics
- The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't by Nate Silver
- The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk
- Origin of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker
- Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart by Ian Ayres by Ian Ayres
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
- 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
- The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
- Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
- A Farewell to Alms : A Brief Economic History of the World: A Brief Economic History of the World by Gregory Clark
- The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier
- Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis by James Rickards
- Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell
- Every Shot Counts: Using the Revolutionary Strokes Gained Approach to Improve Your Golf Performance and Strategy by Mark Broadie
Sexuality
- Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern by Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha
- The Sex Myth by Brooke Magnanti
- The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities by Dossie Easton, Catherine A. Liszt.
Education
- The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin
- How Children Fail by John Holt
- Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture by Kirsten Olson, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Parker J. Palmer
- Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood by A. S. Neill, Albert Lamb
- Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas by Seymour A. Papert
- Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist by John Brockman
- Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman, Charles Weingartner
Writing
- Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim by Stephen Sondheim
- Clear and Simple as the Truth by Francis-Noël Thomas, Mark Turner
- The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Theater and Film
- In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing by Walter Murch
- Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone
- A Practical Handbook for the Actor by Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previtio, Scott Zigler, David Mamet
- The Actor and the Target by Declan Donnellan
- How to Stop Acting by Harold Guskin
- Different Every Night: Putting the play on stage and keeping it fresh by Mike Alfreds
- Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director's Chair by Frank Hauser, Russell Reich
Shakespeare
- Thinking Shakespeare: A How-to Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable With the Bard by Barry Edelstein.
- Hamlet in Purgatory by Stephen Greenblatt
- Hamlet and Revenge by Eleanor Prosser
- Shakespeare's Metrical Art George T. Wright
Fiction
Classics
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino and William Weaver
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Steppenwolf: A Novel by Hermann Hesse, Basil Creighton
- The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, Richard and Clara Winston
- The Wall: (Intimacy) and Other Stories by Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander
- The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
- Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
- Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
- Letters From The Earth by Mark Twain
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gregory Rabassa
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
- Watership Down: A Novel by Richard Adams
- Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- Germinal by Emile Zola
- J'accuse by Emile Zola
- Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
- Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac
- Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Candide by Voltaire
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- De L'esprit Des Lois by Montesquieu
- Lettres persanes by Montesquieu
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- The Director by David Ignatius
Fantasy
- Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
- Discworld by Terry Pratchett
- The Broken Empire by Mark Lawrence
- A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
- The City & The City by China Mieville
- His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- The Chronicles of Narnia by Clive Staples Lewis
- The Dark Tower by Stephen King
Historical Fiction
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder and Paulette Moller
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
- Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
- The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Humor
- I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell by Tucker Max
Mystery
- The Eight by Katherine Neville
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Memory Man by David Baldacci
- The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Science Fiction
- The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
- Ender's Game - Saga by Orson Scott Card
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk
- The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Horror
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Maurice Hindle
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Miscellaneous
- The Bone People by Keri Hulme
- Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
- The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
- Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter
- Future Crimes by Marc Goodman
- Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer and August Cole
Health
- 8 Weeks to Optimum Health by Andrew Weil
- Convict Conditioning by Paul Wade
- Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek, Steve Friedman
Design
- Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel
- Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
License
To the extent possible under law, Vishnu Ks has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.