The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

Ernest Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

Originally published in 1993, this gem explores what’s arguably the most important dimension of what it means to be human — our inherent imperfection — and the many ways in which we violate it daily, delivering a constellation of wisdom and practical insight on how to live in a way that enables, rather than disempowers, our humanity.

Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind

Jeremy W. Hayward

“Western civilization’s science and technology bring society tremendous benefit. Yet, due to highly developed technology, we also have more anxiety and more fear. I always feel that mental development and material development must be well-balanced, so that together they may make a more human world. If we lose human values and human beings become part of a machine, there is no freedom from pain and pleasure. Without freedom from pain and pleasure, it is very difficult to demarcate between right and wrong. The subjects of pain and pleasure naturally involve feeling, mind, and consciousness.”

The Dalai Lama and leading Western scientists explore the essence of mind.

Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone

Eric Klinenberg

“Despite its prevalence, living alone is one of the least discussed and, consequently, most poorly understood issues of our time.”

Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired

Till Roenneberg

“Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. (He would have scoffed at Einstein, then, who was known to require ten hours of sleep for optimal performance.)

But science indicates otherwise.

German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg debunks the social stigma around late risers and shows the biological roots of “night owls” and “early birds.”

The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

In 1916, Freud took the stage in Vienna in front of an audience that had gathered to hear the eighteenth of his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, and proceeded to canonize himself by staking his place in the history of humanity alongside Copernicus and Darwin, the former having solved geocentrism, the latter anthropocentrism, and Freud himself, allegedly, egocentrism. He likened the criticism psychoanalysis, “his” “science,” was receiving to that Copernicus and Darwin faced when their theories first confronted the status quo. Over the century that followed, Freud’s legacy penetrated society and went on to underpin the making of consumer culture. But understanding the story, the complete story, of how Freud became Freud hinges on understanding the story’s very storiness.

Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives

Dean Buonomano

“It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition — and come with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing gives out and then that — ‘Bugs’ — as such little faults and difficulties are called.” ~ Thomas Edison

In Brain Bugs, Dean Buonomano argues that who we are as individuals and as a society is defined not only by the astonishing capabilities of the brain, but also by its flaws and limitations.

Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)

Christopher Hitchens

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others.”

The Hitch condenses years’ worth of his advice “to the young and the restless” into a series of letters written as if to just one of them — a form borrowed from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise

George Prochnik

‘Sound imposes a narrative on you, and it’s always someone else’s narrative.’

A fascinating journey into the origin and cultural evolution of silence.

Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser

William Irwin

Seventeen contemporary thinkers to examine the Lewis Carroll classic through the lens of philosophy, exploring subjects as diverse as drugs, dreams, logic, gender, perception, escapism, and what the Red Queen can teach us about nuclear strategy.

Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

Daniel C. Dennett

As philosopher Dan Dennett turns 70, a look back at his collected wisdom on consciousness, memes, luck, existence, and other facets of the human condition.

Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

Sebastian Seung

MIT Professor of Computational Neuroscience Sebastian Seung proposes a new model for understanding the totality of selfhood, one based the emerging science of connectomics — a kind of neuroscience of the future that seeks to map and understand the brain much like genomics has mapped the genome

Imagine: How Creativity Works

Jonah Lehrer

“Creativity shouldn’t be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn’t be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other ‘creative types.’ The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.”

Jonah Lehrer on how creativity really works and why most of the assumptions we hold about it aren’t just wrong but also detrimental to our own capacity to create.

Ideas And Opinions

Albert Einstein

The definitive collection of the great thinker’s essays on everything from science and religion to government to human nature, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

C G Jung

“…the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

In the spring of 1957, at the age of 84, legendary psychiatrist Carl Jung set out to tell his life’s story. He embarked upon a series of conversations with his colleague and friend, Aniela Jaffe, which he used as the basis for the text. At times, so powerful was his drive for expression that he wrote entire chapters by hand. He continued to work on the manuscript until shortly before his death in 1967. The result was Memories, Dreams, Reflections — a fascinating peek behind the curtain of Jung’s mind, revealing a wonderland of wisdom, experience, and self-reflection.

Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer tells the story of how a handful of iconic creators each discovered an essential truth about the mind long before modern science was able to label and pinpoint it — for instance, George Eliot detected neuroplasticity, Gertrude Stein uncovered the deep structure of language, Cézanne fathomed how vision works, and Proust demonstrated the imperfections of memory.

At the heart of the message is what Lehrer calls a “fourth culture” that empowers us to “freely transplant knowledge between the sciences and the humanities, and focus on connecting the reductionist fact to our actual experience.”