Welcome to Big Think Books, your direct line to the books and ideas that shape our world. I’m Kevin Dickinson, and here are some great reads to check out this month.

List it. List it good!

This month, The Guardian released its list of the 100 Best Novels Ever Published in English, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I somehow find the exercise fun and also a complete waste of time. And I don’t think anyone involved was aiming for either.

To compile the list, the British daily polled more than 170 authors, critics, and academics and asked them to rank their 10 favorite novels. A quick tally of the results, and you have the definitive list of the objectively best novels ever written in English.

Except, of course, not really. Literature isn’t science, and the editors make no claims that their list is. They aim to battle Netflix and our “dwindling attention spans” by helping the adults who “say they never read” rediscover the pleasure in books, though they admit, many of the recommendations aren’t “for the literary faint-hearted.” But the cynic in me sees another purpose: to ignite emotions and generate posts and shares across our click-based economy from creators desperate for quick-hit content. (So … touché.)

That’s not my issue, nor do I disagree much with the list. With one exception*, I would enthusiastically recommend every book on it that I have read, and word on campus is that the many I haven’t are brilliant too. I also respect the writers and experts whose opinions were polled.

My gripe is that the list provides little sense of why these books offer such valuable experiences. Each entry I sampled — no, I didn’t read all 100 — followed the same formula: a short history, a smattering of themes, and some re-heated version of the phrase, “It changed literature forever.” That’s it. There’s little understanding of why those polled cherish these books. Was it the lyrical prose, timeless social commentary, or honest exploration of our kaleidoscopic internal lives? I don’t know.

Instead of treating each novel as a unique expression, idiosyncratic to its author, the list flattens these works through a popularity filter — a high school vibe not helped by the top spots going to the canon’s usual cool kids and a clique-ish headline wondering “Who’s in, who’s out [...].”

That said, the editors chose to share each respondent’s individual list, and here’s a gossipy tea I am happy to sip. I was thrilled to learn that R.F. Kuang seemed the only respondent who loved The Name of the Rose as much as I do, but puzzled that nobody gave Kurt Vonnegut or John Steinbeck much love. Few provided the reasons for their selections, sadly, but if you are familiar with a particular author, it’s fun to see what novels they hold dear.

The diversity between these lists is also a lovely reminder that the pursuit and celebration of great literature can be as much a personal expression as the novels themselves.

Speaking of book lists, you’ll find this month’s recommendations below. Are these the best May had to offer? I have no way of knowing; I didn’t perform a single tally. I simply found each one fun, interesting, or insightful in its own way — and I will provide my reasons, along with a sample of the book for you to enjoy.

Keep reading,
Kevin

*The exception, if you’re curious, is Ulysses (#3). Whenever anyone tells me how amazing an experience it was, I always detect that telltale shimmer of Stockholm syndrome in their dilated pupils.

1. In a Good Place: How the Spaces Where We Live, Work, and Play Can Help Us Thrive

by Leidy Klotz

I’ve always kept my home environment a certain way: clutter is minimal, my furniture is organized for easy flow, and my decor is both calming and inspiring. But if you asked me if there was some philosophy underlying these choices, my answer would be a blank stare. I’ve never put much thought into it. It just felt right.

Lucky for me, sometimes a book comes along that neatly encapsulates a vague feeling in a coherent thought, and Klotz’s book is one such for me. In it, Klotz explains how our spaces secretly display our values, help (or hinder) our ability to connect with others, and dictate how we move through the world. His practical advice is also thoughtful — sometimes amounting to how simply moving your desk can give you a greater sense of freedom.

2. The Unfragile Mind: A Physician’s Call for Restoring Hope and Humanity to Mental Health Care

by Gavin Francis

We’ve made great strides in supporting mental health since I was a kid. But with the massive uptick in disorders and prescriptions in recent years, is it possible we’ve shifted from overlooking to overdiagnosing?

Francis fears we have. His latest book argues that our current diagnostic frameworks are too broad and imply a degree of certainty we can’t justify given the nuances of any one person’s mental world. Drawing on his experiences as a general practitioner, he argues for a more comprehensive, curious, and individualized approach to mental health.

Thoughtfully written with a sense of profound care for the subject and its subtleties, the book is a humble request for us to take a breath and reassess what we know, what we don’t know, and how we can help those silently suffering in ways that are more holistic than a simple diagnostic label.

3. Cold-Blooded Murder: Reptiles and Amphibians on the Brink of Extinction

by Craig Stanford

In another life, I received a degree in zoology or wildlife biology because I find animals eternally fascinating. Thankfully, books like these allow me to indulge in that alternative timeline at my leisure.

Stanford’s love of “herps” is catching. He dedicates each of the book’s six sections to an order (or suborder) of reptiles and amphibians. These look at the ethology and natural history of various species, often tied together with anecdotes of Stanford’s personal encounters with them. Equal parts fun and erudite, the book is also a call to protect these fascinating creatures that are going extinct more rapidly than other animal groups.

4. The Creature’s Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care

by Elizabeth Preston

See above, only Preston expands her view from one class to parenting across the animal kingdom. Her book looks at the diverse range of parenting strategies among our fellow species — some humorous, others unsettling, and others weirdly relatable — to reveal lessons about parenting, human-style.

I love the individual vignettes of animal life, but my favorite part is the book’s ultimate message: Through her gentle tone and conversational style, Preston reminds us that “parenting is hard” isn’t so much a platitude as it is a natural law.

5. What Science Says About Astrology

by Carlos Orsi

You can answer the implicit question in this book’s title with three words: Astrology is bunkum. Done. Why then do I recommend you take the time to read an entire book on the subject? Because astrology is a perfect vehicle for learning how science approaches knowledge gathering and truth-finding.

Orsi isn’t a mean-spirited debunker. He appreciates astrology’s place in history as one of our first attempts to understand the natural world. But by breaking down why this “prototype” doesn’t measure up, he also shows readers how the methods of science do help us learn about the world by curbing magical thinking and weeding out biases. The result is a book that does far more than its short length would suggest and does it well.

6. Private Power and Democracy’s Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy

by Mordecai Kurz

Democracy has been having a rough go of it lately, especially in the U.S. One may suppose these challenges stem from tribalism and the culture wars, but Kurz, the Joan M. Kenney Professor of Economics, emeritus at Stanford University, suggests a different answer: technology and the U.S.’s free-market policy.

Over the last four decades, Kurz contends, these forces have created an economic and social reality that has benefited a select few at the cost of a working-class majority, leading to a coalition blending populist reactionaries with America’s more unsavory philosophies. While the writing style leans toward the academic, without being overly dry, Kurz does an excellent job of taking readers through the history and research underpinning his argument. Well worth consideration.

Kevin Dickinson is the books editor at Big Think. He holds a master’s in English and writing, and in addition to Big Think, his work has appeared in RealClearScience, Pop Matters, the Writer Magazine, and the Washington Post.

by Tim Brinkhof

Many of world literature’s most unlikable protagonists start unlikeable and end unlikeable. From the very beginning of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is clear that the titular Gray is a narcissist who’ll do anything to inflate his already monstrous ego. The same goes for Humbert Humbert from Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita, a pedophile with a silver tongue who conjures up excuses for his inexcusable actions.

But these characters form only the tip of the iceberg. A different yet equally interesting species of unlikable protagonist is the protagonist who starts off sympathetic but becomes more and more unsympathetic as the story develops. Though they appear similar, this type of character is not to be confused with other archetypes such as the tragic hero or antihero. The former (Oedipus, Hamlet) are good people who make bad decisions due to fate or circumstance, while antiheroes (Jack Sparrow, Batman) are morally ambiguous individuals who, in spite of their flaws, possess notable heroic qualities.

Each of these archetypes serves a distinct narrative purpose. Tragic heroes demonstrate that even the best of us can be brought low by unavoidable destiny. Antiheroes teach us, in the simplest of terms, that not all heroes wear capes. Protagonists who seem likable and then turn out unlikeable — let’s call them turncloaks for the sake of ease — can illuminate the dark side of seemingly positive qualities and characteristics. Because turncloaks deceptively win our support in the early chapters, we tend to follow them down whatever dark and twisted path they end up taking, even when we’d rather not. Below are five examples of such paths.

The Underground Man from Notes from Underground

The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky had a knack for taking his characters on journeys that change them beyond recognition. The arrogant Rodion Raskolnikov we meet at the start of Crime and Punishment, for instance, is nothing like the repentant soul we find in the final passages. However, few Dostoevskian turncloaks are as compelling as the Underground Man, the protagonist of his 1864 novella Notes from Underground.

Written as a response to the utopian fiction that consumed Russia’s intelligentsia at the time, Notes from Underground is a mirror that reflects the ugliest, most pitiful aspects of humanity back at us. The Underground Man is a man torn apart by contradictions. He is incredibly proud, yet deeply insecure. He loathes his colleagues but also longs for their respect and acceptance. He is simultaneously convinced of his own worthlessness and angry with the world for failing to recognize his unlimited potential. He is quite possibly the most relatable character ever written.

At first, this relatability makes the otherwise insufferable Underground Man come across as comical, even endearing. It’s hard to read through sections where he overanalyzes his relations with a coworker, turning the tiniest interactions into an existential crisis, and not recognize a part of yourself in him. The same goes for a scene where he attends a party he both does and doesn’t want to be at. Sitting in a corner, sipping a drink, he alternates between judging others for not including them in their conversation and berating himself for wanting to be included in the first place. But as Notes from Underground progresses, his behavior turns from funny to pathetic to downright despicable. Giving credibility to the story’s opening lines, “I am a sick man…I am an angry man…I am an unattractive man,” the Underground Man, having been kicked out of the party, goes as far as to tell a young prostitute that she can come live with him, only to turn her away when she shows up at his doorstep.

Rácz from Rivers of Babylon

Rivers of Babylon, written in 1991 by the Slovak author Peter Pišťanek, tells the story of a young, simple-minded, and broad-shouldered ex-soldier called Rácz who leaves his impoverished village in the Slovakian countryside to work as the stoker of a hotel in Bratislava. There, he gradually gets caught up in the criminal underworld that hijacked the country’s privatization following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Rácz reluctantly accepts the job so he can earn the money he needs to marry his childhood love. Once in Bratislava, where he acquires a taste for money and power, his aspirations change. Instead of returning to the countryside, he becomes involved with and eventually establishes himself as the tyrannical boss of the illicit currency exchange business operating out of the hotel lobby. Forgetting all about his engagement, he starts dating a dancer who moonlights as a prostitute, then abandons her when she is no longer of use to him. He imprisons two immigrants in the hotel’s boiler room to do his dirty work for him. By the end of the novel, having become one of the most powerful mafia bosses in all of Slovakia, he sets his eyes on the mayorship of Bratislava. Pišťanek does not philosophize, but his message is clear: The big city did not “corrupt” Rácz so much as it brought out his true character.

Rácz has been interpreted as a foil to Vladimír Mečiar, a real-life politician who served as Slovakia’s prime minister between 1990 and 1998 and was heavily criticized for his autocratic tendencies, strongman persona, and ties to organized crime. Balkan Insight fittingly described Mečiar’s time in power as reading “like a cheap thriller” that saw Slovakia turn from just another Soviet satellite into a “black hole in the heart of Europe,” a description that would not feel out of place if printed on the jacket of Rivers of Babylon.

Eugène de Rastignac from Father Goriot

Eugène de Rastignac is a recurring character in La Comédie humaine, a series of interconnected novels and short stories by the French writer Honoré de Balzac that take place in and around post-revolutionary Paris. The protagonist of Father Goriot, Rastignac arrives in the capital a poor and sheltered nobleman eager to carve out a place for himself in high society.

But social mobility in this dog-eat-dog environment comes at a high price, one the benevolent Rastignac is initially unwilling to pay. Staying in an affordable boarding house, he nobly refuses an offer from one of its seedy residents — a con artist called Vautrin — to seduce an impressionable socialite, opting to rely instead on his own charisma. Throughout the Comédie humaine, Balzac contrasts Rastignac’s relatively principled personality to that of another climber, Lucien de Rubempré, who accepts Vautrin’s help only to suffer the consequences.

That’s not to say Rastignac is portrayed as a saintly figure. Far from it: Throughout Father Goriot, the nobleman learns that to get ahead, he too must compromise on his ideals. He does so by pursuing a relationship with Delphine, daughter of the titular Goriot, a successful vermicelli maker who forced himself into poverty after passing all of his hard-earned wealth into the hands of his spoiled, neglectful children. When the abandoned Goriot lies dying, it is Rastignac, not Delphine, who stays by his side and attends his funeral. Although Balzac casts Rastignac in a positive light, he concludes Father Goriot on a pessimistic note: with the protagonist turning his back on the old man’s grave and heading back into the city, into the arms of Delphine.

Paul Atreides from Dune

Frank Herbert’s science-fiction epic Dune tricks readers into thinking that its protagonist, Paul Atreides, is a straightforward hero: a ruse that is further reinforced by the casting of Timothée Chalamet in the recent film adaptation. But although Paul’s journey may follow the conventional “hero’s journey” story arc as outlined by Joseph Campbell, moving from life to death to rebirth, Paul is not the messianic figure the Fremen tribe of Arrakis believes him to be.

Upending age-old narrative traditions, Paul’s heroism takes a sinister turn when Herbert reveals that the Bene Gesserit, an Illuminati-like secretive order of psychic matriarchs, has long been conditioning the Fremen to expect the arrival of a messiah, or mahdi, in their native tongue.

Paul, similarly caught in the Bene Gesserit’s web, finds himself losing control of the religious order he was supposed to lead. As emperor of the galaxy, he is told he must follow the “Golden Path,” a potential future that, through countless sacrifices great and small, allegedly ensures the survival of mankind. Herbert never explains what the Path is supposed to save mankind from, and throughout the Dune books, he hints that other, less destructive paths could well lead to the same outcome. Ultimately, Paul’s ascension to the imperial throne is not the happily-ever-after ending that, say, Aragorn’s crowning represents in The Lord of the Rings. Instead, it’s an allegory to real-world history in which kings and prophets use religion as a means to justify their actions.

by Tim Brinkhof

“The bittersweet memory of that day, eighteen years ago, had never left him. It was the second time he had been sold in his short lifetime, reduced to nothing more than a name and number scratched on a wax tablet, and still no one came to save him. He sometimes saw Poppaea in the streets. He always made sure to avoid her eye.”

This moment is from The Lost Voices of Pompeii, a new book that follows seven historical figures in the hours leading up to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Contrary to what its novelistic style suggests, it is a work of history, not historical fiction. Its author, the historian and archeologist Jess Venner, relies on an increasingly popular research method known as critical fabulation to bring the ruins of Pompeii to life.

As she discussed with Big Think, Lost Voices uses critical fabulation to dispel many common myths surrounding the world-famous Italian city and its inhabitants.

Giving a voice to the voiceless

Put simply, critical fabulation is the practice of using evidence to speculate about historical events for which we have few written records. Coined by cultural historian Saidiya Hartman in her 2008 essay “Venus in Two Acts,” which confronts the impossibility of truly understanding the lives of enslaved Black women in the U.S. with things like personal diaries and official documents alone, the methodology helps uncover the voices of people whom history has rendered voiceless.

“The strength of this approach,” Venner writes in her introduction, “lies in its refusal to treat gaps in the evidence as dead ends. Instead, it regards absence as a productive space, one in which we can explore historically grounded possibilities, and reconstruct plausible scenarios using our common sense as fellow human beings, rather than simply acknowledging the loss.”

In other words, critical fabulation “allows the historian to restore complexity, agency, and emotional depth to those who were historically marginalized or flattened by dominant narratives.”

One such individual featured in Lost Voices is Petrinus, an enslaved person. The only known record of his existence is a transaction in which he and another slave served as collateral. However, general knowledge about slavery in the early Roman Empire allows Venner to imagine how Petrinus might have spent the day of the eruption. The story follows Petrinus as he buys ingredients for a banquet held to bolster the electoral campaign of his master, a local politician named Caius Cuspius Pansa. At the banquet, Pansa makes a show of his generosity by emancipating Petrinus in front of his guests — an act which, though empowering, also leaves the freedman in need of a new job and place to sleep.

Initially met with resistance due to concerns about accuracy and bias, critical fabulation is becoming more accepted in the academic world.

“One reason for this,” Venner tells Big Think, “is that historians are also increasingly moving away from merely reconstructing past events in favor of examining the sensory, lived experience of historical figures. Instead of saying, ‘Here’s a wall with an old painting on it,’ they’re interested in learning how people from the past would have seen and related to that wall painting.”

A cataclysm revisited

Pompeii’s historical popularity and prominent role in popular culture have given rise to more than a few misconceptions. One is that the eruption happened so suddenly that it instantly froze the town and its people in time.

“The eruption didn’t happen in seconds,” Venner clarifies. “It took over 24 hours, meaning there was a lot of time for people to escape.” Only around 10% of the city’s population — up to 20,000, including the enslaved — is thought to have perished. The rest were forced to resettle elsewhere, becoming “refugees within their own country.”

There is also some confusion about the town’s condition. While it’s true that layers of volcanic ash helped preserve evidence that may have otherwise been lost, the city wasn’t in particularly great shape at the time of its demise.

“Earthquakes had been taking place in the region for at least 17 years,” Venner points out. “A huge one almost completely destroyed the entire town, and it was still recovering when Vesuvius erupted.”

Even the date of the eruption itself may not be what we think. The earliest reference to the event, a letter from Pliny the Younger written two decades later, marks Pompeii’s final day as August 24. However, Venner and other scholars believe the eruption may have taken place months later. The discovery of fresh pomegranates and other fruits harvested from September onwards, not to mention the fact that several households appeared to have been firing up their braziers before the evacuation, suggests the eruption may have taken place as late as October, when the weather was growing colder.

Pompeii vs Rome

Perhaps the greatest misconception about Pompeii is that the town played an insignificant role in Roman history, its inhabitants existing disconnected from events in the imperial capital. In truth, Pompeii found itself at the forefront of Roman politics on several occasions, most notably during the so-called Social Wars, when municipalities across Italy rebelled against Rome after the Senate repeatedly refused to extend citizenship rights beyond the inhabitants of the Eternal City.

Pompeii was one of the first towns to take up arms, and one of the last to put them down, continuing the fight even after the Senate promised to grant citizenship to those who surrendered. Ultimately, the Pompeians faced off against none other than Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the general who, in the wake of all this civil strife, declared himself dictator of the Republic, paving the way for Julius Caesar.

“Traces of the battle,” Venner writes, “are still visible today: holes left by Sulla’s ballistae [stone-throwing artillery] can be seen in the city walls.”

As punishment for their insubordination, Pompeii rejoined the Republic not as an ally but a colony. Colonizers moved into the city, taking over the wealth and power of the city’s old elite.

“Public buildings were Romanized, Latin replaced Oscan as the dominant language. Some local families managed to retain their status, but many were deposed, their land confiscated and redistributed to the veterans of Sulla’s army,” Venner adds.

How often do you think about the Roman Empire?

We don’t know ancient Rome as well as we think we do. Surrounded by countless history books — not to mention beloved media properties like Rome and Gladiator — it’s easy to forget that an estimated 99% of ancient texts have not survived into the present. Those that have survived were written almost exclusively by members of the upper class, often decades or centuries after the events they detail, and always with ulterior motives. Were emperors Nero and Caligula really crazed tyrants, or were they slandered by historians hoping to delegitimize their rule? Did Livia, wife of Augustus, really poison several imperial heirs, or was her character assassinated by Romans critical of changing gender norms?

In Livia’s case, Venner thinks the former. “Augustus wanted to center Roman society around an ideal Roman family, with a man at the head, and a matron behind him running the household,” she explains. After his long reign, there were fewer laws preventing women from reaching positions like those of Julia Felix, a wealthy widow in charge of her own affairs and finances, and one of the characters in Lost Voices. “By the time Vesuvius erupted, women had already been able to own property for some time. And while they technically needed to have a male guardian to help run things, most historians — myself included — think this role was largely a formality.” The aforementioned transaction, with the enslaved Petrinus as collateral, was signed between two women. No guardian mentioned.

Unlike written sources, archeological evidence does not purposely omit, mislead, or discriminate. Though its scattered ruins may not always point to clear and obvious conclusions, Pompeii provides a direct connection to the past, unmitigated by the motivations and prejudices of people. “There’s a bit of graffiti near the amphitheater where someone wrote they love a certain person,” Venner tells us, offering one example of this connection. “Then someone else wrote a reply saying something along the lines of ‘No, she doesn’t love you, she loves me.’”

She also points to excavations at a nearby private garden, which likely recorded a family’s final moments before the eruption began. “You could see the ash where they’d cooked their last meal and offered some food to the gods. Toys lay on the ground, probably exactly where the children had dropped them, along with a woman’s hairpin that had probably fallen out accidentally.”

Many other clues, pieced together through critical fabulation, resurrect the ancient town in a way that a written document never could.

“Pompeii is often remembered as a dead city,” Venner says, “but we need to think of it as a living one. Otherwise, we’ll just keep talking about it as a place that is, and always has been, dead.”

by Kevin Dickinson

“Is she your mother or your sister?” A seemingly innocent question, perhaps even a flattering one under the right circumstances. Such circumstances, though, were not found in Auschwitz.

Josef Mengele asked Edith Eva Eger this question when she first arrived at the concentration camp in 1944. An SS officer and physician, Mengele would go on to earn himself the nickname “the Angel of Death” for the atrocities he performed under the Reich’s auspices. Eger had yet to learn of his monstrous reputation or the horrors that awaited her. She also didn’t realize that only one answer would protect her mother. She only knew that she was a scared, confused 16-year-old girl.

“Mother,” she answered truthfully.

Her mother was directed to a line of Jewish women on Mengele’s left. Eger and her sister, Magda, to the one on his right. Neither would see their mother again.

Auschwitz took the lives of an estimated 1.1 million people, among them Eger’s mother, father, and her young beau, Eric. She and Magda endured the hellish conditions for months before being led on death marches to other camps by Nazi forces desperate to evade the encroaching U.S. and Russian forces. They were rescued by U.S. troops at Gunskirchen a year after their imprisonment. There, Eger had been left for dead among the bodies of other victims — emaciated, back broken, and body wasted by pleurisy, pneumonia, and typhoid fever.

She survived and was nursed back to health, but while her body recovered, it would take decades before she would escape the prison of guilt and denial she had built inside her mind.

The prison of the mind

Today, Eger is 97 years old. She enjoys life in sunny La Jolla, California, and during our conversation, she wears vibrant oranges and yellows to match the natural beauty surrounding her. In her early fifties, she earned her PhD in psychology, specializing in post-traumatic stress. She also raised a family and has written two books on her experiences during the Holocaust, The Choice (2017) and The Ballerina of Auschwitz (2024).

She is as far from the horrors of Auschwitz as it is possible to travel in a lifetime, but the road to La Jolla was long and far from straightforward. “It was close to 20 years until I finally admitted to people that my classroom was Auschwitz,” Eger tells Big Think.

After the Holocaust, neither Eger nor her sister talked about that grueling year. They chose instead to suppress the pain and ignore the memories, but despite their efforts, the experiences managed to bleed out of them. When confronted with images from the Holocaust, Eger would become physically ill, and even seemingly innocuous and everyday sights or sounds could trigger crippling flashbacks.

In The Choice, Eger describes a time when she was riding the bus to her factory job after immigrating to the U.S. She boarded, sat, and waited for a ticket collector to come by, as was customary in her European homeland. When the bus driver confronted her, yelling to either buy a ticket or get off, she fell to the ground, shaking with fear.

After moving to El Paso with her husband, Béla, Eger began studying psychology at the University of Texas. The career choice led her not only to help others reconcile with their crushing pasts but also to recognize the need to confront her own.

“I have talked to many, many survivors who were able to function well and be able to have families, and they don’t live in the past. You remember the past, and you can even do many things that you learned [with it]. But you’re not there,” Eger says.

Her studies and conversations led her to a crucial lesson on trauma’s influence over the mind: It’s not what happens to you; it’s what you do with it. It’s a lesson Eger has passed on through her clinical practices, in her books, and to her family.

Please allow me to clarify: Neither Eger nor I is saying to forget the Holocaust’s many atrocities. Eger endured its barbarous inhumanity first-hand. She watched as some captives, broken and disconsolate, chose to walk into the electrified fences surrounding the camps. Others lost themselves to the despair.

In a heartbreaking story recounted by Eger, a fellow prisoner named Anna convinced herself that they would be liberated by Christmas 1944. “All Christmas Day, she pauses to listen,” Eger writes in The Ballerina of Auschwitz, “to lift her eyes to the farthest line of fence, breath fogging the air around her head, a smile on her chapped lips. But our liberators don’t come. The next morning, Anna is dead.”

Such Holocaust stories are heartbreaking and numerous, and it would be an injustice to its victims to forget. However, what’s often missing from our telling of the Holocaust, Eger’s grandson, Jordan Engle, pointed out during our interview, is what happened after 1945 — the stories of the people who chose not to let this suffering define them but to use it, learn from it, and pursue their life’s meaning in spite of it.

Eger personifies this aspect of the Holocaust: “I am free. It’s a lot of effort to be free from the prison that is in your mind, and the key is in your pocket.”

The key in your pocket

While the shape of any one person’s key will be unique, Eger believes a vital notch is learning to accept your authentic self. For her, that meant recognizing that she was victimized at Auschwitz, but she was not a victim. Those experiences would be an indelible part of her life, but they didn’t define her identity or life story. Rather than pretend they didn’t happen or let them control her thoughts, she would choose how to think about and live with those experiences. For her, that meant using them to help others and better understand the best and worst of what it means to be human.

“I want people to know that no one can replace them,” Eger says. “Maybe [someone else] looks like you. Maybe they talk like you, but there is just one of you here.”

Another notch in the key is an adherence to kindness. While Eger’s memoirs don’t shy away from the atrocities of the Holocaust, they shed light on the small acts of grace and mercy that helped people endure. Eger sharing a loaf of bread she had tucked away with others. A kind word that raised another’s spirit for a moment. A guard who looked the other way when a prisoner broke the rules.

Such acts not only helped many survive; they showed Eger the shared humanity that bound everyone who experienced Auschwitz together, a recognition that ultimately led her to forgive her tormentors. As she expresses in her writings, she realizes that the Nazis themselves had been brainwashed. Their rigid thinking and identities made them prisoners of their minds, too, and that prison ultimately destroyed them.

“I shook my fist at God before I got to this [point]. And I’m still not done,” Eger says. “I’m still in the process of hopefully being free from my own prison, which is in my mind, and the key is in my pocket. I know it’s there. I just have to reach for it.”

Only you can choose to be free

In 1990, Eger returned to Auschwitz. When asked why, she says simply, “To experience it one more time and wonder, ‘How did I survive?’”

When she went, the wrought-iron words Arbeit macht frei (“Work sets you free”) still hung over the entrance to “the world’s biggest cemetery.” The first of many false promises meant to keep Auschwitz’s victims complaisant in the face of their looming deaths. But the lie that haunted Eger on her return was the one told to her by Mengele: “You’ll see your mother very soon.”

For decades, Eger wondered if she had condemned her mother. She chastised herself for her naiveté and questioned how it might have been different if she had simply lied. But the important choice, she came to realize, was not the one made when she was “hungry and terrified […] surrounded by dogs and guns and uncertainty.”

Instead, she writes, the choice that matters is the one she makes now. The choice to accept herself; the choice to be imperfect and even so be happy; the choice to stop questioning why she survived and commit herself to the truly freeing work of serving others and making the world a better place.

“I didn’t run away from the past,” Eger says. “I did a lot. I’m still doing a lot. As long as I live, I’m going to work. I don’t believe in any kind of retirement.”

Welcome to Big Think Books, your direct line to the books and ideas that shape our world. I’m Kevin Dickinson, and here are some great reads to check out this month.

The lessons learned on mother’s knee

Growing up, my mother had an unspoken rule: There would always be money for books. This was a big deal for me. While we weren’t poor, it was still the kind of household where the parents got a little edgy toward the end of the month. Toys and video games? Those had to wait for a birthday or for my meager allowance to vest into a rare moment of financial freedom. But books? We’ll see what we can do.

I attribute my lifelong love of reading to my mother*, who not only made books accessible but also an enjoyable, not just a required, part of my life.

She read to me every night and introduced chapter books early, so I could enjoy adventures in Narnia and the spooks of Goosebumps well before I could venture out on my own. I always had a bookshelf (never a TV) in my room, and I filled it with the stories and subjects that mattered to me. Bringing home a Scholastic Book Order form felt like a mini-Christmas sprinkled randomly into the year. And if a book really wasn’t possible — just one of those edgy months — there was always a walk to the library.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because, as you may have heard, reading for pleasure isn’t as popular as it once was. Studies and polls continue to show that more Americans are reading fewer books than they did just a decade ago. The potential causes are many: digital distractions, mental fatigue, busyness, reading more for work than for fun, but mostly digital distractions.

No judgment. Even as a professional book guy, these things zap my reading time more than I’d like. But through her example, my mother taught me how to keep reading at the forefront of my life: Make books a central part of my relationships.

Growing up, she always expressed interest in what I was reading. She borrowed books from me and recommended them to me. And we always had conversations about them. Now that I’m a parent, I’m making every effort to make books an integral part of my relationship with my son. (Though, with how fast he goes through them, my to-read pile has reached truly unstable heights.)

If, like me, your mother nurtured a love of reading in you, then be sure to thank her this Mother’s Day. Please also take the time to share a book with a friend, loved one, or your mother. In that spirit, here are eight books we think are worth checking out and discussing. As always, if you’re interested, you can click the link to enjoy a preview on Big Think.

Keep reading,
Kevin

*P.S. My father deserves credit here, too, but he’ll have to wait till June to get his kudos (as the holiday gods decreed).

1. The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It

by Arindrajit Dube

I’ve mentioned it in this newsletter before, but one of my favorite things is when a book allows me to see the world through an expert’s eyes. Since I am not an economist, this book fits the bill perfectly.

In it, Dube explores why wages for much of the workforce have stagnated even while the economy overall continues to grow. He dispels common myths, exposes unfair practices, and suggests ways to reverse the trend. If you want to understand wages beyond the usual talking point — or, like me, you have a thing for graphs — this book is one you should consider spending time with.

2. Thinking Sideways: How to Think Like a Chess Player and Win at Life

by Jennifer Shahade

“Chess is a metaphor for life.” I have no idea who first said this famous quote, but I have a hunch that Shahade has taken the idea to heart more than anyone. Her new book is all about the life lessons we can learn from chess. Despite what the subtitle claims, her message isn’t about winning the game of life. Not really. It’s more about learning how to recognize the “moves” available to you so you don’t feel trapped playing the same game as everyone else.

As a bonus, the book is full of interesting stories from the chess world — did you know the longest game of chess lasted more than 20 hours and took 269 moves? It makes what might otherwise be a typical self-help book fun and unique.

3. Ignorance: What We Do Not Know, Cannot Know, Must Not Know, and Refuse to Know

by George G. Szpiro

Books don’t typically celebrate ignorance. Quite the opposite, actually. While Szpiro’s latest may not be a celebration of ignorance, the books does want to show us the many things we can learn thanks to it.

From cosmic questions to mathematical proofs and philosophical quandaries, each chapter examines some facet of reality humanity remains ignorant of — whether that’s because it is impossible for us to know or because we simply choose not to know it. While no chapter dives particularly deep into its subject matter, its buffet-style approach to human knowledge and Szpiro’s straightforward style help you appreciate all we’ve learned as a species and how much we still have to discover together.

4. The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom

by Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff

One of the odd paradoxes of modern life: We seem to have more speech than ever before, yet more people seem to complain that freedom of speech is under attack. Mchangama and Kosseff fall in with the latter camp, and they make a good case.

One of the things I appreciated about the book was that it doesn’t simply look at the present moment and clutch its pearls. It considers the historical lead-up to our present, from free speech’s global post-war expansion to the different ways authoritarian regimes and liberal democracies have tried to suppress speech.

Will all free-speech advocates rally around the authors’ cries? Probably not. But readers who value free speech will nonetheless find the questions they raised alongside their trenchant examination to be worth earnest consideration.

5. Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain

by Masud Husain

“Who am I? What makes me me?” These questions forever fascinate people because they focus on our favorite subject of all: us. Husain, a cognitive neuroscientist, investigates questions surrounding the brain and identity through the stories of his patients. Their stories lie at the heart of the book, making it feel less like a textbook and more like a series of discoveries the reader makes alongside the author.

Yes, I know this book came out last year, but I missed it then, so I’m taking the opportunity to highlight it now that it’s out in paperback. If you missed it too, it’s definitely worth checking out.

6. Jan Morris: A Life

by Sara Wheeler

Jan Morris lived a fascinating life. A historian and travel writer, she is best known for writing the Pax Britannica trilogy about the British Empire and as the journalist who broke the news of the first ascent of Mount Everest. Morris was also born James Humphry before transitioning in the 1960s.

Then again, a fascinating life is a prerequisite for a biography. What I specifically appreciate about Wheeler’s approach is how it celebrates Morris through her accomplishments and her struggles. Wheeler is not in the business of trying to make her subject fit some neat, didactic message. This is a biography that looks head-on at the contradictions and complications inherent in any life, and it’s all the better for it.

7. Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents

by Valerie Fridland

Fridland’s Like, Literally, Dude was one of my favorite books in 2023, and her latest will definitely be one of my favorites this year. What can I say? I’m a word nerd, and Fridland has a gift for revealing the provocative qualities of language that we interact with every day, but seldom pay attention to.

Here, she tackles accents: Why we have them, how they developed, and why we feel about them the way we do. Through this lens, she reveals why the language we use, and how we use it, is such a personal and powerful part of our lives. Highly recommended!

8. Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed

by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff

I don’t understand Elon Musk. I can’t fathom why he does the things he does, or why people treat him like he’s either the messiah or mecha-Hitler. Given that, it’s probably obvious why I picked up Slobodian and Tarnoff’s book.

The authors look at the historical forces that shaped Musk into a man who believes in building a technological utopia while fervently fighting to roll back the humanist progress of the past half-century. These fused, yet ultimately incompatible, beliefs form what the authors call Muskism (read: Fordism for the 21st century).

After reading the book, do I understand Elon Musk better? No. That man will forever be an enigma to me. But I do have a deeper appreciation for the social and cultural forces behind him and what that could mean for the times we find ourselves in.

Kevin Dickinson is the books editor at Big Think. He holds a master’s in English and writing, and in addition to Big Think, his work has appeared in RealClearScience, Pop Matters, the Writer Magazine, and the Washington Post.

by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

There’s a feeling I love almost more than anything: the feeling of sinking into a good book while the world around me fades away. My breathing slows, my shoulders drop, and the mental chatter in the back of my mind goes quiet.

What’s happening in those moments goes far deeper than entertainment or education, and we seem to sense this instinctively. Reading is relaxing, and many people do it as a counterbalance to our overstimulated age.

But what exactly is happening when we read? What’s going on beneath the surface that makes reading a book feel so restorative?

The answer lies in how reading changes our neurochemistry in real time. Reading isn’t just about decoding words on a page. It’s a complex neurochemical process that affects everything from our heart rate to our hormone levels.

The neurobiology of reading

Reading uses some of the oldest circuitry in the human brain. For most of our evolutionary history, we were readers — just not of books. We read animal tracks in mud, storm patterns in clouds, danger signals in the rustle of leaves. Our ancestors who could decode these natural patterns survived; those who couldn’t often didn’t.

This ancient pattern-recognition system is what we access every time we open a book. Since written language only emerged about 5,000 years ago — recent in evolutionary terms — our brains haven’t had time to evolve dedicated reading circuits. Instead, we’ve repurposed the neural networks that once kept our ancestors alive in the wild. Neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene calls this the “neuronal recycling hypothesis.”

When you read, your brain’s visual system recognizes letter shapes and transforms them into words. Language networks map those words to meanings stored in memory. Attention systems keep you focused on the narrative thread while memory systems integrate new information with existing knowledge. Multiple brain regions work together in coordinated activity.

This process shifts your entire nervous system into a different state. Unlike the fragmented attention that digital media demands, reading requires sustained focus on a single stream of information.

Your brain processes fictional experiences as low-stakes rehearsals for actual life.

This focused attention actively shifts your autonomic nervous system from the sympathetic “fight-or-flight” state toward the parasympathetic “rest-and-digest” state. As this happens, you experience measurable physiological changes: your heart rate slows, your breathing deepens and becomes more regular, and your muscle tension decreases.

When we read fiction, something even more specific occurs. Brain imaging shows that reading about experiences activates many of the same neural regions as actually having those experiences. Encounter a description of running through a forest, and your motor cortex activates as if you’re moving. Read about a character’s emotional pain, and brain regions involved in empathy and emotional processing respond as if witnessing real events.

This simulation gives rise to “embodied reading” where stories provide practice for real-world scenarios. Your brain processes fictional experiences as low-stakes rehearsals for actual life, building neural pathways that can be activated when similar situations arise beyond the page.

5 ways to make reading more restorative

If you’d like to go beyond simply picking up any book at any time (although that’s a great start), you can deliberately enhance reading’s calming effects by applying simple strategies.

1. Read a mix of content. While nonfiction engages analytical brain networks, fiction allows you to fully disengage from active problem-solving, and the imagination it requires provides the most complete break from stress and worry.

2. Time your reading strategically. While you can enjoy the benefits of reading at any time, strategic timing can amplify them. For instance, reading before bed prepares your brain for sleep by reducing stress hormones and activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Whenever you read, make sure to give yourself enough time to become absorbed — you don’t want to be rushing through pages.

3. Create reading rituals. Establishing a regular reading routine — the same location, the same time of day, perhaps the same pre-reading routine — and making it feel like a special treat will help ensure you keep making space for reading and consistently access its benefits.

4. Match your reading to your mental state. If you’re feeling anxious, complex literary fiction might feel overwhelming. Start with something lighter. As your nervous system settles, you can move toward more challenging material that engages different brain networks in new ways.

5. Follow your curiosity. The stress-reducing benefits of reading depend on full absorption rather than forced attention. If you’re not connecting with a book, put it down and pick up something you feel genuinely curious about.

Reading represents one of our most sophisticated yet accessible tools for nervous system regulation. In an age of constant stimulation and fragmented attention, books offer something incredibly valuable: an activity that simultaneously stimulates your brain and calms your body.

So the next time you settle in with a good book, know that you’re doing something your brain evolved to do exceptionally well — and giving your nervous system exactly what it needs to reset and recharge.

This article is part of Big Think’s monthly issue Biology’s New Era.

by Scotty Hendricks

Authors write novels for many reasons. Anthony Burgess, of A Clockwork Orange fame, was once described as a man “always on a money-fishing expedition.” Ernest Vincent Wright wrote Gadsby, a novel that avoids using the letter E, as a self-imposed challenge. Joan Didion processed her grief following the sudden death of her husband in her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking.

The books on this list were basically written as propaganda. Their authors devised them to advance a particular ideology or party line, with the hope that readers would be persuaded to take up the cause. We’ll dive into why they were written, what ideology they promoted, and how effective they were at achieving their goals.

Before that, we should note that we aren’t using the term propaganda in a moral or artistic sense. We’re instead using it to describe works that place heavy emphasis on influencing readers through symbolism and emotional appeals. Whether they are narrative masterpieces or utter dreck, whether they conform to reality or distort it beyond recognition, and whether we agree or disagree isn’t the point. For these authors, the top priority was to maintain the agenda while shifting public opinion.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)

Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.

The little book that started a great war, Uncle Tom’s Cabin explores the horrors of slavery in the 19^th-century United States. The novel centers on a group of enslaved people initially on a plantation in Kentucky as they attempt to survive the wretched conditions they find themselves in. Some try to escape to the Northern free states, while others are sold further and further down the river. Some die valiantly, some survive, but none escapes unscathed.

In many ways, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is as much counterpropaganda as it is propaganda. The antebellum South and slavery apologists went to great lengths to portray slavery as a benign, even benevolent, institution — one ordained by God and that was ultimately beneficial to the enslaved. Stowe’s novel shattered this illusion for many Americans. The story drew on accounts written by former slaves, but rather than a straight retelling, Stowe heightened the emotional appeal to sermon-like levels—she once claimed she had a “vocation to preach on paper.” She also infused the novel with religious symbolism. The eponymous Uncle Tom, for example, is a Christ-like figure who suffers greatly despite his immense kindness and unyielding faith.

Stowe wrote the novel in direct response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required officials to arrest people suspected of escaping slavery and punish anyone found aiding them. Originally published it as a serial in an anti-slavery newspaper, the book went on to become one of the most read in 19th-century America. In fact, it proved so effective at illustrating the odious reality of slavery that counter-counterpropaganda was produced in the form of anti-Tom novels and plays. These tried to mimic Stowe’s storytelling but distorted the message toward a pro-slavery agenda.

Over the past 150 years, Uncle Tom’s Cabin has garnered its share of criticism for how it depicts Black people — the title character’s name has become something of a slur, and many of the characters are stereotypical by today’s standards. James Baldwin thought it was a “very bad novel,” one that relied too much on “self-righteous, virtuous sentimentality” from Stowe, whom he called less a novelist than an “impassioned pamphleteer.” Nonetheless, its legacy as part of the 19th-century abolitionist movement endures.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)

Chicago will be ours!

The Jungle is the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant to the United States who works in the Chicago stockyards. He and his family came to America with dreams of a better life, only to encounter every misfortune that could befall a working-class family in early-20th-century Chicago.

His situation improves only after he encounters members of the Socialist Party, who offer him support and a sense of agency. The novel ends at a rally where participants cheer the coming socialist control of the city.

To write The Jungle, Sinclair, a muckraking reporter, spent several weeks working in stockyards and slaughterhouses to collect information on the conditions he found there. Initially rejected for being too shocking to publish, the book was eventually serialized in Appeal to Reason, a socialist newspaper. The first hardbound copies even featured the Socialist Party’s logo.

The novel wasn’t quite as effective as Sinclair might have hoped. It garnered some positive reviews and massive sales. Jack London, a fellow socialist, even deemed it “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.” But while Sinclair wanted people to focus on the plight of workers, most readers — including President Theodore Roosevelt — were more concerned with the depictions of the filthy slaughterhouses. The public became incensed over impurities in the food supply — even if Sinclair’s depiction of human meat accidentally making it into sausages was never confirmed.

Sinclair mused that he “aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” As a committed democratic socialist, he favored abolishing capitalism and the wage-labor system in favor of a more cooperative system. His depictions of life for the Chicago proletariat are designed to make the reader feel, not just know, that some workers’ lives were miserable under turn-of-the-century capitalism.

Later in life, he would run for governor of California on the socialist End Poverty In California (EPIC) platform. Given the radical nature of his platform and the nationalization of businesses hit hard by the depression, which would then be given to the unemployed workers to operate as co-ops, his earning 37% of the vote proved a respectable showing.

The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck (1942)

No little appetite or pain, no carelessness or meanness in him escaped her; no thought or dream or longing in him ever reached her. And yet several times in her life she had seen the stars.

Written specifically to encourage resistance movements during WWII, The Moon Is Down tells the story of the occupation of a Northern European city by an unnamed army at war with both Britain and Russia. Feel free to guess who that might be.

The story follows the citizens of the unnamed coastal town under occupation. Colonel Lanser, the invading forces’ leader, establishes fascist control over the town, which the people find more and more unbearable over time. After the execution of one of their own, the townspeople are roused to resistance. They sabotage the machinery and railway lines that the invading army relies on. Eventually, Allied forces begin airdropping supplies, including explosives, for the freedom fighters. But as the invaders’ fear grows, so too do their oppressive tactics.

Of all the books on this list, The Moon Is Down is the most obviously propaganda. The symbolism is less an abstract wink at a deeper meaning and more a knowing nudge. At one point, the fascist forces literally establish their base of operations in the home of the town’s democratically elected mayor. Many of the characters give speeches on democracy, freedom, and the unconquerable human spirit — concepts that would obviously have immense emotional appeal during World War II.

For that reason, Steinbeck’s book was smuggled into Nazi-controlled Europe for distribution among occupied peoples in hopes of fermenting a continued resistance. While it is difficult to tell if the book served that purpose effectively, it did earn Steinbeck the King Haakon VII’s Freedom Cross for outstanding service to Norway during wartime.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957)

Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking.

Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus. The massive novel weighs in at more than 1,000 pages — over half a million words — meaning this overview will, by necessity, be cursory.

In a near-future, semi-dystopian United States, businesses are regulated to death, society is becoming less functional, and the successful are hounded by the unproductive masses. Against this backdrop, innovative businessmen and scientists have started to go missing. One daring industrialist, Dagny Taggart, seeks not only to endure in a world that both relies on and resents her, but also to learn what is becoming of some of her vanishing associates.

She eventually comes across others who share her capitalist worldview in an increasingly socialist world, and heaps of discussion over the merits of free markets and acting out of “rational self-interest” follow.

Atlas Shrugged is unapologetic propaganda for Rand’s Objectivist worldview. While Rand illustrated her ideas in several branches of philosophy, her political and ethical stances — namely her love of capitalism and ethical egoism — tend to attract the most attention. The novel clearly shows what she thinks happens when people are unable to pursue their own self-interest, and her take on the fate of unfree societies.

The book even includes a 40-page monologue on the virtues of Rand’s worldview, which the character of John Galt offers his full-throated endorsement. The section makes little attempt to disguise its status as an author filibuster. Rand herself was open about how the text was “to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them.”

The plot occasionally verges on the absurd in order to do this. For instance, the vanishing industrialists must have managed every aspect of their corporate empires themselves, given how poorly their companies fare without them — that or they were poor delegators with abysmal records for hiring competent managers.

The novel has sold well over the decades, but has generally collected mixed reviews. While academic writers have avoided Rand’s work in favor of other authors, her ideas have served as the nucleus of a school of thought. They also served as the foundation for the video game Bioshock, though the game is less enthusiastic about Objectivism than Rand is.

by Ross Pomeroy

“Who owns intelligence?”

Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University, has grappled with this question of late. Who gets to be the arbiter of what intelligence is and who, or what, has it?

More than a century ago, psychometricians staked their claim by proposing the almighty g, or general intelligence. They measured it with IQ tests, which assess cognitive abilities such as verbal reasoning, working memory, and visual-spatial skills. Eventually, psychometricians convinced much of Western society that, through IQ, they were the arbiters of intelligence.

While the IQ test has been used nobly — to identify students in need of extra help with reading or writing, for example — it has also been used to deterministically sort people into groups and write off others entirely. Seeing injustice justified with IQ, educators grew increasingly fed up with the indicator in the second half of the 20th century. Such a narrow definition of intelligence simply didn’t comport with the range of cognitive abilities teachers observed in their students.

In this milieu, one buzzing with rebellious suspicion of the tyrannical IQ, Gardner wrote Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983). In the book, he proposed, based on evidence from many different disciplines and sources, that the human mind is best described in terms of faculties. He further argued that humans possess at least seven distinct computational capacities, or intelligences, activated by information from a variety of senses, operating separately or in concert. (He subsequently added an eighth.)

These intelligences are:

• Linguistic-Verbal. Proficiency with words, languages, writing, and speaking.

• Logical-Mathematical. Skill in analyzing problems, detecting patterns, and reasoning.

• Spatial-Visual. Ability to manipulate and visualize images, shapes, and 3D space.

• Bodily-Kinesthetic. Expertise in using one’s body (think dancers or mimes).

• Musical. Ability to recognize and produce rhythm, pitch, and timbre.

• Interpersonal. Capacity to understand, detect, and respond appropriately to the moods and motivations of others.

• Intrapersonal. Recognizing one’s own feelings and being introspective about them.

• Naturalistic. Skill in understanding the natural world and identifying its denizens.

When the book hit the shelves, Gardner figured Frames of Mind would be read by members of the general public interested in psychology. He didn’t think it would become a bestseller, nor did he set out to knock IQ off its lofty pedestal. He certainly had no idea it would alter the trajectory of his life. But it undeniably did.

Educators latched onto Gardner’s theory in what Boston College educational psychology professor Scott Seider described as a “grassroots uprising.” Gardner was invited to speak at educational conferences across the world. Curricula gradually shifted toward more varied, active, and creative instructional methods. Rote memorization was deprioritized, while engagement was encouraged.

The response from the scientific community was less effusive. Most psychologists simply ignored the book. A handful attacked it, labeling the theory pseudoscience or a “neuromyth.” Its harshest critics continue to insist that there’s no clear neural evidence for distinct, multiple intelligences (MI); the theory is not readily testable (in the way IQ is); and MI’s offshoot teaching strategies are inappropriately studied (even outright harmful).

Gardner doesn’t mind responding “thoughtfully to thoughtful criticisms.” He has countered that there is evidence from neuroscience supporting MI theory; the critics misunderstand or straw-man the theory; and while he has never himself proposed educational paradigms based on MI theory, those that have cropped up seem to be well-liked and effective. He also admits that the MI theory does not lend itself easily to testing through “paper-and-pencil assessments or a one-shot experiment.” It is instead “repeatedly assessed and re-formulated as new empirical findings from a variety of disciplines are analyzed and integrated.” In other words, it is a living theory based on evolving evidence.

More than four decades and hundreds of thousands of copies later, Frames of Mind and its landmark theory remain the subject of sometimes heated debate, but Gardner is content with how his groundbreaking views of intelligence landed and who found it valuable. His theory might receive only begrudging mention in psychology textbooks, but it is used, directly and indirectly, in classrooms worldwide.

“I’ve lost the battle with psychometricians, but I’ve won the war with the rest of the world,” he told Big Think in an interview.

This month, Frames of Mind will be reissued for the fourth time. Its reappearance on the literary scene comes at a time when younger generations, who may be naive to MI theory, are searching for new ways to be defined. IQ’s claim over intelligence has decidedly waned, and novel intelligences are emerging.

“The discussion about intelligence is in a totally different place now,” Gardner said.

Now 82, Gardner reflected on how MI theory helped expand educators’ toolboxes, flourishing into a variety of fascinating forms. One he is particularly fond of was created by an educator in Manila. She gives prizes to students who are strong in certain intelligences, and even greater prizes to pupils who use their intelligences for good.

“The idea to combine intelligence with a positive use of it is a profound one,” Gardner said.

He also contemplated lessons learned from writing his memoir, “tracing his evolution from bookish child to eager college student to disengaged graduate student to Harvard professor.”

“It was only in writing my memoir that I realized that my own mind is what I call a ‘synthesizing’ mind,” Gardner said. “That’s one who takes lots and lots of information and tries to organize it and reorganize it in ways that make sense to me and hopefully others as well.”

A synthesizing mind, he adds, differs from a purely analytical mind, which excels at delving deep into a select few topics, and from a creative mind, which seeks to chart new paths. As with intelligences, every mind has different strengths, but in the age of information overload, synthesizing can be a crucial skill.

“If you want to know who’s going to do well in school, give them an IQ test. If you want to know who’s going to be a good synthesizer, send them to Laos for a month,” he joked.

Something else Gardner learned from writing his memoir: “As you get older, what you had for breakfast fades from memory, but almost any little thing that you run into or you read about evokes something that you hadn’t thought about for decades.”

Beyond multiple intelligences, Gardner has become involved with what it means to be a good person. He’s a member of The Good Project at Harvard, which seeks to promote “excellence, engagement, and ethics in education, preparing people to become good workers and good citizens who contribute to the overall well-being of society.”

As Gardner told Big Think, he believes that in a foreseeable future, when much of education’s standard curriculum will be handled by artificial intelligence, educational institutions will instead “deal with citizenship and work, rather than how smart you are or how much you know.”

Speaking of AI, in the freshly written preface of the reissue of Frames of Mind, Gardner addresses the technology. He thinks the burden of proof now falls on those who deny that large language models understand. In his estimation, they already demonstrate at least four of MI theory’s eight intelligences: musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and naturalistic.

“If we have broadened the tent of intellect to include a variety of plant and animal species, we need to honor neural nets as well,” he wrote.

There may soon come a time when artificial intelligence essentially controls our lives, when it won’t matter what we think about how intelligent LLMs truly are. Dethroned as masters of Earth, it will become resoundingly clear that we were never the true arbiters of intelligence. Educators didn’t own it. Psychometricians didn’t own it. And as Gardner would humbly admit, he certainly doesn’t.

“Why us?” Gardner said. “So far, we’ve set up the criteria for intelligence, but what if dolphins got to do it? What if ChatGPT or Claude got to do it?”

By theorizing multiple intelligences all those years ago, Gardner helped open that door, and he’s as curious as anyone else to see who or what walks through it in the next 40 years.

Welcome to Big Think Books, your direct line to the books and ideas that shape our world. I’m Kevin Dickinson, and here are some great reads to check out this month.

The information scenic byway

One of my first professional gigs was writing an article for Writer’s Digest. It examined a handful of misunderstood writing rules and then proceeded to set the record straight. I spent hours writing and rewriting the short article and was more anxious — jittery, honestly — for my copy to arrive in the mail than the check.

I’ve worked on thousands of articles since. I would have difficulty finding most without Google’s help; some are probably forever lost. But I know exactly where my copy of that issue is and much of my earlier work, too. The reason isn’t entirely nostalgic: Over my career, writing has shifted from physical media with an online presence to a primarily digital one.

I’m not complaining. I get paid to read books and write about them; any such complaint would, and should, be met with an eye roll. I only bring it up because Big Think recently began publishing a quarterly print magazine, and I got the chance to work on our latest issue. This return to print helped me realize something: The medium not only shapes the message but also the value we derive from the craft.

Because algorithms reward high-volume posting, online writers typically pursue a strategy of move fast, publish now, edit later. Such speed demands shorter articles that repurpose repeated information and canned phrases under different headlines. The prose doesn’t have to be thoughtfully constructed, just good enough to stay relevant in search engines.

I try to write against these incentives, but I’ll admit they have seeped into my process. Once an article is written, any fanfare is vaporous. I take a breath, check the metrics a few days later, but I’m already off to the next thing. I have to be. The information superhighway offers no off-ramps for scenic views.

Working in print changes this. You have to be methodical because you can’t edit later. There is no algorithm to impress either, only the need to entice your reader to read and keep reading. Then there’s the tactile joy of seeing your work take shape into something you can hold.

The printed word reminds you that writing is craft, not content. Something similar can be said for paintings and movies.

Now, I’m not saying that digital media has hollowed out our society or destroyed art or whatnot. It has its place. My pitch this month is simply for us, as readers and writers, to make more room for the physical word. Don’t rely as much on letting the algorithm serve you whatever it may. Seek out something you’ll look forward to receiving every month and enjoy the anticipation.

I would obviously love it if you became a Big Think member, and if you do by April 26, you'll be added to our mailing list and receive the latest print issue.* It’s full of stories about resilience and its many forms. If not, that’s okay. Find the magazine that speaks to you, or join a book club, or support your local newspaper (if your community still has one). Heck, go to the bookstore and pick something unique off the shelf. Need some inspiration while you’re there? I’ve got eight fascinating books for you to consider below.

Keep reading,
Kevin

*Shipping is available to the US only.

1. Separation of Powers: How to Preserve Liberty in Troubled Times

by Cass Sunstein

A prolific author, Sunstein is perhaps best known for his books unpacking the nuances of human decision-making, such as Nudge and Noise. But the Harvard legal scholar has also written several books discussing the history and philosophy underpinning American law.

Like last year’s On Liberalism, this is a short but powerful defense of its subject and a warning of what Americans stand to lose should the powers of governance gather around a single institution or individual. A great book for readers like me who need a refresher on the subject, as well as those looking to deepen their knowledge.

2. No Friend of This House

by Natalie Haynes

I first read Euripides’ Medea in high school, and it blew me away. Broken vows, a hero brought low, innocents brutally murdered for the betrayal of others. For such eloquent ancients, their story was totally metal. In my revisits since, I’m always struck by how readers interpret it so differently — adding the play to a graduate seminar is like throwing a Molotov cocktail onto the syllabus.

Haynes’s latest provides yet another way to view the familiar story anew. While Medea was never sidelined and far from silenced, Haynes still finds plenty of unspoken assumptions to reexamine in this endlessly fascinating tale.

3. The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family’s Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution

by Charlotte Brooks

In the first of the not-my-typical-genre picks, Brooks chronicles the lives of the Moys siblings, children of Chinese immigrants to the United States. The book is a history at its heart, but what really captured me was its narrative style. Brooks approaches the material as a generational saga.

The reader follows the children’s inner struggles as they work hard to build lives between East and West, tradition and modernity, the native and the foreign. Some succeed, others fail, but their stories are full of compassion and reveal the important nuance we lose when we lean on simple stories about who we are and where we come from.

4. Emergence: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of the Mind

by David Sussillo

Speaking of my not-so-typical genres, I’m not much for memoirs. Biographies, sure, but I’ve always felt navel-gazing is best saved for alone time. There are exceptions though, and Emergence is one.

What drew me to Sussillo’s book was how his work as a neuroscientist and computer researcher informs his story. Like the brains and AIs he studies, Sussillo views life as a form of emergence, or the result of complex patterns arising from simple parts. His own story is built from seemingly modest moments that would prove substantial.

Sussillo writes in a conversational tone that even makes the math approachable, but his is no easy success story. There is plenty of tragedy, but rather than shy away, he explores it honestly and with good-heartedness.

5. Tell Me Where It Hurts: The New Science of Pain and How to Heal

by Rachel Zoffness

Most of us live our lives avoiding pain whenever possible. It’s understandable; pain sucks. But in that avoidance, we can also the lessons our pain is teaching us about how to heal and just pop a pill.

Zoffness’s book argues we need to reexamine pain to understand it as a pathology in its own right. Rather than only focusing on its physical symptoms, we also need to consider pain’s social and psychological underpinnings — both of which can either make pain worse or act as a balm. Zoffness’s ultimate message: While pain isn’t all in the head, we can still use our heads better to solve it.

6. Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West

by Bart Ehrman

Ehrman is one of my favorite scholars writing books on Biblical history for a popular audience. His style is accessible and affable, and while he takes stands that are contrarian to a more faith-based reading of the Bible, he never comes across as insulting. After finishing one of his books, you not only better understand the intricacies of the Bible — my vote for history’s most important book — but also how Biblical historians approach their work.

Love Thy Stranger is no exception, except maybe in Ehrman’s larger scope. Adding ancient philosophy and our evolving social contract to the Biblical mix, this book presents a fascinating, bold claim that’s worth consideration.

7. How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries

by David George Haskell

There’s something innately pleasing about flowers. They adorn our gardens and decorate our homes. We present them as tokens of love and congratulations. And they seem to have universal appeal as social symbols.

After reading Haskell’s new book, you’ll come to revere plants as more than the world’s window dressing. In chapters on the magnolia, rose, tea plant, and even seagrass, he reveals how flowers formed a keystone relationship in our evolution and, to this day, shape our ecologies and civilizations. Whether you find Haskell’s prose lyrical or (ahem) flowery will depend, but either way, it is a wonderfully fun read.

8. True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color — from Azure to Zinc Pink

by Kory Stamper

What do the words puce, cerise, amaranth, murrey, and gridelin have in common? Yes, they are all colors — the title gave that one away. More specifically, they are hues of red, with that last one defined as “redder, lighter, and stronger than raisin.”

A lexicographer, Stamper investigates how colors got their names and who exactly decides where to draw the definitional line between gridelin and raisin. For a word nerd like me, this book is a candy store of delicious facts, but Stamper also discusses the science, psychology, and history of her subject, making it an inviting read for a whole spectrum of interests.

Kevin Dickinson is the books editor at Big Think. He holds a master’s in English and writing, and in addition to Big Think, his work has appeared in RealClearScience, Pop Matters, the Writer Magazine, and the Washington Post.

by Tim Brinkhof

A man awakes in some kind of lab, his body riddled with tubes and wires. Nearby, a robot asks him what two plus two is. He can’t remember his name, where he is, or how he got here. At least he knows two plus two is four.

Actually, he knows a lot more than that. Walking around the lab, he finds a test tube and a stopwatch. Using the stopwatch to time how long it takes for the test tube to fall to the floor, he calculates that the gravity is stronger than on Earth. He reasons he must be in outer space. Some more tests reveal he’s not just in space but another solar system — one several light-years away from Earth, further than any human or space probe has ever ventured.

Gradually, his returning memories fill in the gaps. He is Ryland Grace. He’s an expert on speculative astrobiology, turned junior high school science teacher. He’s on a spaceship headed for the star Tau Ceti, and he’s part of a last-ditch, one-chance mission to save humanity from an extinction event.

This is the start of Project Hail Mary, a 2021 science fiction novel by software engineer turned bestselling author Andy Weir. Weir burst onto the sci-fi scene with his first book, The Martian, a tale about an astronaut stranded on the Red Planet. If you aren’t familiar with the book, you may be familiar with its critically acclaimed 2015 film adaptation starring Matt Damon.

Project Hail Mary has now been given the silver-screen treatment, too. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and with Ryan Gosling in the lead role, Project Hail Mary has received critical praise for its humor and heart. But it’s the science that steals the show.

See, the novel is what is called “hard science fiction,” a category of the genre that’s particularly concerned with technical detail and scientific accuracy. In Dune or Star Wars, two examples of “soft science fiction,” you don’t learn how many of the futuristic devices, vehicles, and weapons actually work. The characters press a button, and the machines do whatever the plot needs them to. Even when you do learn how they work, descriptions of kyber crystals and psychedelic space travel are no more scientifically accurate than tales of dragons or rings to rule them all.

Not so in Project Hail Mary. Where Luke Skywalker and Paul Atreides face off against Sith Lords and giant sand worms, Grace struggles with fuel conservation, equipment sterilization, and atmospheric pressure. To some readers, these topics may sound boring, but in the right hands, hard science fiction can prove as gripping and immersive as the best stories in any genre.

In many ways, Weir tells Big Think in an email interview, the challenge of writing hard sci-fi isn’t too dissimilar from teaching a high school science class. Whether you’re trying to tell an engaging story or inspire rowdy teens, you’re wrestling with the same question: How do I make this stuff interesting to people who aren’t fellow nerds?

Down to a science

You’d think the trickiest part of writing hard science fiction would be explaining the science. Too much explanation, and your story risks reading like a textbook. Too little, and only graduate students will be able to follow along. It’s a balancing act — not in the least because it requires equal doses of scientific knowledge and creative writing skills — but Weir isn’t too worried about the exposition in his novels. The way he sees it, it’s not about what you say but how you say it.

“I’ve found that the audience will forgive any amount of exposition as long as you make them laugh while learning it,” he tells Big Think.

This is certainly true in Project Hail Mary, where Grace delivers the scientific know-how as if he were teaching his students. Befitting the “cool” teacher vibe, he knows how to hold your attention: His delivery is animated, his passion for science infectious, and his humor a mix of snarky and corny — if occasionally cringeworthy — that can’t help but grow on you. Whatever the day’s lesson, Grace finds a way to make it absorbing.

A greater challenge for the hard sci-fi writer is perhaps the demand for logical consistency. In soft sci-fi, authors can bend or outright ignore the laws of physics and other sciences so long as it serves the story. Hard science fiction doesn’t often afford that luxury. In this category, accuracy is sacred and the rules, once established, are unbreakable. For such stories to work, each contradiction has to be hammered out, variables accounted for, and plot holes filled and covered with grass.

For instance, a potential plot hole Weir needed to address in Project Hail Mary was the absence of artificial intelligence. He knew he didn’t want to put an AI on Grace’s spaceship because, if he did, Grace wouldn’t need to solve any problems. He could just ask the computer and wait for the answers. Still, Weir couldn’t leave this absence unaddressed. We live in a world with AI already; why wouldn’t the characters in his sci-fi story have access to the tech? The justification he eventually came up with is simple but convincing: The organizers of Grace’s mission decide to use only tried-and-tested technology; AI, a relatively new development, was deemed too hazardous.

Soft sci-fi writing also tends to start with a story and invent the necessary science as it goes; for hard sci-fi, it’s often the other way around. In Weir’s case, the seed that would sprout into Project Hail Mary wasn’t Grace’s character or mission. It was the technology powering his spaceship.

It all starts with the science. Everything works around that.

“I wanted humanity to have a mass-conversion fuel,” Weir says, referring to a type of fuel that would theoretically allow for interstellar space travel. “And not in a thousand years, but right now. A mad scientist inventing it seemed like too much of a stretch. I considered the fuel coming from a crashed alien ship, but then how would we make more of it? Finally, I thought of fuel in the form of an organism we could breed and harvest.”

With this central concept established, each new plot point flowed from the previous one — not unlike how an unsolved mathematical equation already contains its own solution. “I asked myself, ‘Why would a life-form like this evolve?’” The question led him to the idea of Astrophage: a kind of space mold that feeds on stars, powering them down and causing climate disaster on Earth-like planets.

But while Weir will play with his own scientific inventions, he tries to keep them to a minimum. This helps ensure his stories remain logically consistent. “Once you start making up physics,” he explains, “you have to make up more when edge cases come up. In Project Hail Mary, you really have to drill down to the quantum level to find violations of the laws of physics.”

As a result of this commitment, these stories tend to take on a life of their own. What happens next will be dictated as much by the author’s understanding of the scientific concepts they have chosen to explore as by their imaginations.

Grace is sent to Tau Ceti because it’s the only star in the observable Universe not infected by Astrophage. Why is Tau Ceti not infected? Because it’s home to Astrophage’s natural predator: amoeba-like organisms Grace dubs “Taumoeba.” Why did Taumoeba not spread across the galaxy along with Astrophage? Because it, unlike Astrophage, the species cannot survive in atmospheres different from the one in which it evolved. Inventive? Definitely. But also firmly rooted in our understanding of the Universe’s physical laws.

“It all starts with the science,” he adds. “Everything works around that.”

Not your grandfather’s two-legged aliens

The best hard sci-fi is engaging and immersive, not in spite of its commitment to scientific credibility but precisely because of it. The less a story asks you to suspend your belief, the more compelling the obstacles become, and every victory feels earned.

In many space stories, characters can steer a spaceship or perform an extravehicular activity (aka “spacewalking”) as easily as they brush their teeth or tie their shoelaces. But in hard sci-fi stories like Weir’s, where dangers and complications aren’t easily brushed aside, such activities are filled with suspense. For amnesiac Grace, even using his spaceship’s user interface is a puzzle to solve.

This also allows hard sci-fi writers to breathe new life into tired tropes. Science fiction is littered with aliens that are basically Los Angeles natives with prismatic skin conditions. They breathe oxygen, are bipedal, and speak English courtesy of their universal translators. Hard sci-fi, meanwhile, leans into the fact that life evolving on other planets, under different conditions, and across different stretches of time will almost certainly take on forms so different from ours that comprehending them would be like imagining a new color.

“I didn’t want [my alien] to be comfortable in our atmosphere or to look like a human with forehead bumps,” Weir says of Grace’s alien companion. (Yes, he runs into a sentient alien, and it’s one of the best parts of the book.) “I wanted an absolutely alien alien.”

Of course, scientific credibility isn’t worth much if the story doesn’t keep readers engaged. On that level, Project Hail Mary reads like a mystery thriller. Like Sherlock Holmes or Benoit Blanc, Grace relies on reasoning to uncover the truth — only, in his case, billions of lives depend on his deductions. On another level, the novel almost resembles a philosophical treatise celebrating the power of human reason. Yes, Grace uses a variety of gadgets and gizmos to save Earth, but ultimately it’s his own brainpower that does most of the heavy lifting. Aristotle would surely approve.

But while hard sci-fi may place more emphasis on its internal logic, coherence and consistency are important to any story — no matter the genre. When the fantasy TV show Game of Thrones approached its grand finale in 2019, many fans took issue with how the story began ignoring its own parameters and precepts. Journeys that used to take entire seasons were being covered in single episodes, characters survived predicaments that once meant surefire death, and previously relevant factors like supplies, infrastructure, and alliances no longer mattered.

The lesson is that without internal logic, any story will lose its believability and, with it, its appeal.

“As a reader, the only thing that matters to me is consistency,” Weir says. “If a story has a spaceship that can go faster than the speed of light, it shouldn’t take you a week to get from Earth to Mars.”

by Henry Eliot

You haven’t been home in 10 long years. You’re exhausted, battle-scarred, and desperate to see your family. At last, a fair wind is at your back, and you stand on the deck of a bounding longship, sails set for home. For days you have strained your eyes against the horizon and now your native land appears. Closer and closer it comes. You can see the familiar flames of the harvest stubble fires. You recognize the cries of the shore birds and the scent of the pine trees. Finally you can relax. You haven’t slept for a week. You allow yourself to close your eyes … and you awake to a howling storm with no land in sight. You’ve been blown hundreds of miles away.

This, of course, is what happens to Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. After 10 years of fighting at Troy, Odysseus gets within touching distance of Ithaca, only for his men to open the Aeolian bag and release its unfavorable winds. Thrown disastrously off course, it takes him another 10 years to get back to his wife and son. Towards the end of his journey, he recalls that heartbreaking moment of disappointment:

“I awoke, and knew not whether to throw myself into the sea or to live on and make the best of it; but I bore it.”

Odysseus is a model of resilience, bearing trial after trial on his epic journey home — and so is his wife, Penelope, who remains in Ithaca, patiently resisting an entourage of would-be suitors. For 20 long years she trusts, against all hope, that her husband will return.

We are at a moment in history when resilience is a particularly desirable quality. As humane values and common decencies are threatened around the world by reactionary politics and nationalist rhetoric, we are faced, like Odysseus and Penelope, with a choice: Do we despair, or do we “make the best of it”? Can we persist and trust, even if hope is scarce?

As individuals, we can sometimes feel powerless, but an easily accessible source of strength is literature. “Fiction,” the author George Saunders says, “is a kind of compassion-generating machine.” When we read, we are transported to other times and other places: We see the world through other eyes, and we expand our understanding of what it means to be human. We can seek reassurance in stories, and we can also be stirred to action.

Do we despair, or do we “make the best of it”? Can we persist and trust, even if hope is scarce?

Literature offers many models of resilience — from Robinson Crusoe, who survives 28 years on his desert island, to Candide, who endures flogging, war, and earthquakes. There’s the Count of Monte Cristo, who waits 14 years before taking his delicious revenge, and Jo March, who overcomes social constraints and emotional heartbreak to become an author. But perhaps the most fascinating example of literary resilience is the tale of Patient Griselda. The Clerk in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tells Griselda’s story like this:

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Walter, the marquis of Saluzzo, marries Griselda, a local peasant girl, and makes her promise to obey his every wish. When Griselda gives birth to a baby girl, Walter tests her loyalty by having the baby seized and taken away, apparently to be killed. Griselda, true to her promise, makes no complaint. Some years later, she gives birth to a boy, and Walter has him seized too. Griselda bears it patiently. Not content with these proofs, however, a few years later Walter decides on a final test: He presents Griselda with a forged papal annulment of their marriage and informs her that he intends to remarry. He then brings their two grown-up children back from Bologna, where they have been raised in secret, and presents their daughter as his new wife-to-be. He tells Griselda to arrange the wedding feast, which she does, asking only that he be less cruel to his next wife. Moved to tears, Walter reveals the truth; Griselda swoons, revives, and embraces her children; and they all live happily ever after.

This tale is clearly a monstrous depiction of unhinged psychological abuse and self-destructive passivity. Yet, the first remarkable thing about it is how popular it was in 14th-century Europe, as demonstrated by the fact that the three greatest poets of the age all wrote their own versions: Chaucer, writing in English in the 1380s, was translating Petrarch’s Historia Griseldis, written in Latin in the 1370s, which was itself a retelling of the final, climactic tale in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, written in Italian in 1350.

For Petrarch, Griselda exemplifies the medieval female ideal of “constancy,” which may explain the story’s widespread popularity, at the time, among a largely male readership. The other two poets seem less comfortable with presenting an abusive relationship as a moral exemplar. Boccaccio has his narrator, Dioneo, worry about Walter’s “senseless brutality.” Chaucer is even less equivocal. He includes two epilogues, one from the Clerk, who describes Griselda’s trials as “inportable” (“unendurable”), and one in which Chaucer himself incites wives to speak their minds: “Lat noon humilitee youre tonge naile” (“Let not humility nail your tongue”).

Another remarkable thing about this story is how long it has endured. Thomas Dekker, the Elizabethan dramatist, collaborated on a stage adaptation of Patient Grissel (1599) — from which, incidentally, Paul McCartney took the lyrics for the song “Golden Slumbers.” Charles Perrault, the French author of fairy tales, wrote Griseldis (1691). The story has been adapted into operas by Scarlatti, Bononcini, Vivaldi, and Massenet, and Griselda’s influence can be indirectly felt in works ranging from William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (c.1611) to Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) and even Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005).

But most remarkable of all are the ways that Griselda’s story has been reimagined by women writers over the years. As early as 1405, Christine de Pizan included Griselda in her Book of the City of Ladies, subtly reframing the story as a demonstration of the female capacity for patience rather than as a model to be replicated. In The Modern Griselda (1804), Maria Edgeworth reverses the roles: Beautiful Mrs. Granby repeatedly tests her husband’s love until their marriage collapses. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) can be read as an anti-Griselda story: Jane’s marriage to Rochester parallels Griselda’s, but Jane demands respect and dignity.

“I am no bird,” she famously declares, “and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”

In the opening scene of Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls (1982), Griselda herself sits down in a restaurant with other historical and fictional women, but in comparison to the others’ tales of adversity, her “constancy” starts to imply complicity in her own abuse. Recently and most radically, Margaret Atwood’s short story “Impatient Griselda” (2020) is narrated by an alien and features twin sisters — Patient Griselda and Impatient Griselda — who club together to cut Walter’s throat and devour him.

So if, in this strange time, you are seeking a role model of resilience, I recommend reading The Odyssey, Robinson Crusoe, or Jane Eyre. But if you want to get angry, if you want to be inspired to creative action, if you want to join a 700-year-old debate, then read one of the strangest, most enduring, most resilient stories in the history of literature: the tale of Patient Griselda.

by Jasna Hodžić

Partway through our conversation about his new book Good Writing: How to Improve Your Sentences, Neal Allen lost his train of thought. He turned toward his wife and co-author, Anne Lamott. The two riffed briefly, their faces slightly angled away from their computer and from me.

“It will come back,” Lamott said.

He nodded briefly and repeated: “It will come back.”

And it did. “Oh!” Allen said, facing the screen, and off we went.

It was a small exchange, the kind you might expect from a married couple, but I jotted it down anyway, sensing it may prove significant. As we talked, the two continued to finish each other’s thoughts, nudging one another forward, even setting the record straight. (At one point, Lamott said Allen introduced his 36 “writing rules” on their second date. Allen reminded her: “In the book, you say it was the fourth or fifth.”)

I realized that their back-and-forth mirrored Good Writing’s structure, but in an improvised miniature. The premise of the book is straightforward: one by one, Allen goes through the 36 writing rules he’s picked up across his decades-long career. He offers a concise, sharp, and entertaining explanation. Afterwards, he hands the proceedings over to Lamott, and she hits the ground running.

“It’s Neal’s book,” Lamott said when I asked how the partnership came about. “But when he told me he was going to publish his rules, I thought, perhaps a little bitterly, ‘Hey, I know something about writing, too.’” So, she annotated each rule.

“It was just fun. Sometimes I agree with him or amplify what he’s saying with an example. Other times, I am there to tell the reader, ‘Oh, he’s so overeducated, don’t even bother with that. Instead, try this.’ And so we found ourselves naturally in these roles of stickler and den mother.”

Allen added, “I’m an explainer, and then Anne offers the catharsis.”

Some of the 36 rules will be familiar to writers: Use strong verbs, prefer the active voice, and drop crutch words (like very). Others are hard-won, the product of a mind that has been at the craft long enough to notice the patterns that aren’t immediately obvious. As a more novice writer, I benefited from Allen’s experience. As I read and reread certain rules, a lightbulb would flicker on in the back of my mind, and I suddenly saw how to improve passages from my own work.

But what kept me reading Good Writing wasn’t the rules themselves, useful as they are. The real pleasure is, well, the writing and in joining Allen and Lamott’s conversation.

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The stickler and the den mother

I’ll admit I was nervous, even a little giddy, to speak with Lamott. Her 1994 classic, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, occupies a special place in the hearts of those who willingly spend hours fashioning sentences, one after another, on the page. It has steadied many through their “shitty first drafts,” nudged them back to their desks, and offered companionship in a craft that can feel isolating — and, at times, prompt serious doubts about whether you should have paid closer attention during your high school career fair.

Lamott described herself to me as “the nice auntie who just loves to listen to you and tell you not to give up.” This self-portrait may be humble, but the affection is real. Any new book on writing bearing Lamott’s name arrives, inevitably, under Bird by Bird’s shadow.

Allen, on the other hand, I had to look up. A longtime journalist and nonfiction author, he describes himself in the book as a “hack writer,” an equally modest description, if in a stricter uncle kind of way. He is methodical, attentive, and clearly invested in craft.

It’s the pairing of a widely read literary figure and a meticulous working writer — who happen to know each other well — that allows Good Writing to stand on its own rather than echo Bird by Bird.

Allen’s long career in journalism shows in his instinct for clarity and discipline, the habits of someone accustomed to working under tight deadlines. Lamott, whose work moves between memoir and fiction, is more willing to bend a rule in the service of voice. Both allow themselves digressions that are funny, pointed, and thought-provoking. The result is a productive tension that gives the book its pulse: a friendly sparring match between precision and play where neither case ultimately wins. Instead, the reader sees the multiple ways a rule might live on the page.

After a few chapters, I began to anticipate the exchange. I respect Allen and eagerly await his next rule. But I stick around for Lamott, curious about what her charming perspective will add. On the page, as in our conversation, they sharpen one another and fill in each other’s gaps. The book’s authority comes from that dialogue.

Everything returns to the sentence

While Allen and Lamott’s perspectives give the book its rhythm, its focus is the sentence, and the authors are certainly not shy about their obsession. The book’s subtitle is, after all, How to Improve Your Sentences, not your plot, publishing prospects, or even writing more generally.

At first, I found this scope surprisingly narrow. A novel, even a long article, is architectural. It unfolds across arcing scenes or arguments. Can we really reduce the craft to the sheen of individual sentences?

“I first heard the idea that ‘the unit of fiction writing is the sentence’ 45 years ago, during a workshop with Marilynne Robinson,” Allen said. The idea stayed with him and guided his writing for decades. “My job is the sentence, and secondarily the paragraph or flow, and only thirdly the content of what I have learned or am learning,” he writes in Good Writing’s introduction.

They do concede that the principle may feel most urgent for fiction writers, who will delight at — even expect — an elegant sentence in a novel or short story. Still, the sentence-first approach, they insist, is available to anyone who isn’t only concerned with the meaning, cares about the aesthetic of writing, and above all, wants to keep their reader turning the page. In conversation, Allen and Lamott spoke fondly of those non-fiction writers whose prose manages to inform and sing at the same time, such as Barbara Tuchman and Paul Theroux.

Rule #32, “Layer Your Sentences,” is their clearest articulation of the philosophy. A strong sentence, Allen argues, has more than one job. It has to convey meaning, yes, but also carry rhythm, harmony, plot, subtext, and whatever else the moment demands.

Cut the fluff

It’s tempting to think that paying attention to the sentence means ornamenting it. Allen and Lamott anticipate this misunderstanding and swat it away early. Rule #5, “Don’t Show Off,” felt like the authors turning a spotlight directly on my bad habit — one, I suspect, many writers struggle with.

“Get rid of anything that stands out or exists only because it shows everyone how good you are with words,” Allen writes. Devotion to the sentence, he and Lamott argue, means finding the most honest way to get your meaning across. Usually this practice demands restraint, even if the urge is to scatter tinsel over every line.

Under the pretense of the interview, while really just fishing for personal advice, I asked how a writer can tell when a sentence is fluffy.

“If it sounds literary, it isn’t,” Lamott said.

“Damn it,” I thought, not because I disagreed, but because she cut straight to the truth I never wanted to confront. After all, I like the way my tinsel sparkles. Then, a moment later, another “Damn.” Lamott’s phrasing, and my reaction, had proved the point.

Finding the shape

The more we talked, the more the sentence-first philosophy began to click.

In my public-facing science writing, I often begin with something readers know little about and that isn’t inherently interesting: whether that’s invertebrate emotions, aspen biology, or the latest gossip on those promiscuous Neanderthals. My job is to write in such a way that the reader grows curious enough to read one sentence, and then another, and another, until – voilà – they’ve reached the end.

In fiction, I move the same way. Only now, I don’t have a topic to guide me, and often I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I used to believe this was a flaw. I now suspect it’s simply the work itself. Sooner or later, meaning emerges sentence by sentence.

That’s when I started to see Good Writing’s real gift: giving language to the Spidey-Sense decisions I can tap into but never quite explain. Without that frame, a successful writing day can feel like magic or luck — and by extension, beyond my control.

Still, I worry about another problem: a string of good sentences without much connective tissue. How do you turn strong but fragmented lines into something with a defined shape?

“You sit with the material,” Lamott said. “Sentence by sentence, you make the transitions clear. It’s the gift of practice and the second draft. The rhythm will reveal itself to you.”

Allen’s other rules help the writer get there, even if they don’t seem devoted to the sentence specifically. Some zoom in to the word level: “Use Strong Verbs,” “Prefer Anglo-Saxon words,” and “Know Your Words Inside and Out.” Others pull back to the scale of dialogue, structure, and even practice: “Trust Your Voice,” “Write the Hard Stuff,” and, of course, “Finish the Damn Thing.”

Strong verbs sharpen a sentence. Trusting the reader trims needless words. Writing the hard stuff is about finding what you want to say, which leads to better sentences. Everything returns to the line.

The only actual rule: Keep the reader reading —

Even before the reader arrives at Rule #1, Lamott and Allen re-frame them as “tips.” In other words, they are meant to be broken. If that isn’t clear enough, Rule #34 spells it out: “Break the Rules.”

But an unspoken gospel lingers throughout the book. The authors don’t frame it as a rule — perhaps because all the others are in service of it — but it’s there: Keep the reader reading. To follow this gospel, they suggest, requires knowing your audience, your motivations, and when to chuck the rulebook and go rogue.

In that case, why have rules at all?

Because, they argue, rules create discipline. As Lamott writes, “discipline, in my experience, is what leads to freedom.” Practice the rules enough, and you gain the fluency to break them with intention.

Rules also help you keep chugging along and get what you need out of the process. Writing, Allen told me, is a way to get over things. “It’s not so you can begin your exploration of it, but so you can complete your exploration of it. Any framework that makes it easier in the long run helps me move on to the next thing I want to do.”

Once I realized the hierarchy — reader (and writer) first, rules second — the rules felt less like constraints. I began to imagine them as Tetris pieces floating in front of me: I grab one, examine it, and flip it on its side or even upside down until it fits the larger puzzle.

As long as the reader stays with you, the scaffolding can shift. The work only has to stand on its own.

— and keep the writer writing

Thirty-six rules may sound excessive, but that excess is perhaps why the book came to light.

“Plenty of writers have their rules,” Allen said. “Hemingway had his four. Leonard had his ten. Atwood has hers. The reason I wrote this book is that there are really many more than that.”

Many of the principles we try to live by arrive as aphorisms that are memorable, compact, and true. They’re the quotes we tape across our monitors but find difficult to put into practice. What Allen and Lamott offer is something more sustaining: a fuller set of tools for building a practice (with plenty of quotable lines for pleasure).

I suspect the pair don’t care much if you don’t agree with the rules, but they do care whether someone who feels the pull to write keeps at it. If the writer’s gospel is to keep the reader reading, then its companion commandment is: Keep writing.

For this writer, the book and our conversation brought back something like an old, familiar pull, and a swift kick in the heart.

That evening, I dusted off an old story that I’d abandoned a few months ago. I re-read it and, predictably, I grew exasperated. Then, I flipped to the back of Good Writing, where a cheat sheet summarizes each rule in a tidy sentence.

Instead of wading knee-deep into the jungle, blinded by my overgrown sentences, I set out armed with 36 small, sharp machetes and began hacking away. With a small stutter of surprise, I cleared enough space to see the faint path I’d been walking on all along.

Why even bother?

The elephant in the writing room, at least for me, is the automated writers hovering in the background: ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever large language model you prefer.

Why struggle over sentences when a machine can absorb all the rules, never tire, and produce something passable, maybe even excellent, in seconds? Why seek out editors if you can prompt an algorithm? Hell, why write at all?

Lamott told me that once a friend handed her a phone with ChatGPT open. Lamott asked it to generate quotes in her voice.

“They were funnier than mine. They sounded exactly like me,” she said. “AI can write me, but I can write me, too, and I am writing for myself. I am writing to discover the truth and the heart and the soul of me, life, and the people I love most.”

She shared a similar sentiment on editing. “AI can edit people well. It just gave Neal a brilliant editorial summary, but so can someone else, and there’s a fundamental act that AI can’t replicate. Your own beingness, your creative self, is handing your work over to another creative being.”

That said, they’re certainly not anti-technology. They’re even releasing a companion app to Good Writing that points out places where a rule might apply, though it stops short of rewriting for you. Either way, for them, the work itself — slow, imperfect, occasionally aggravating, and deeply human — is the point.

Keep good company

Good Writing’s closing rule has nothing to do with mechanics: Show your work to someone else, or, as they put it, “Worship (Talented) Editors.”

Editors, Allen and Lamott say, help with blind spots. Unsurprisingly, they are each other’s first reader. “We know each other’s blind spots, and call each other out on our bullshit,” Lamott said — their marriage apparently surviving the vulnerable exposure of early drafts.

“Nobody wants you to be a writer,” Lamott added. “Particularly a fiction writer. So beyond getting good editing, it’s good to have other human beings around doing the same thing, reminding you that you’re not crazy.”

It’s ideal to have a writing partner, an editor, or trusted friends. But in the long stretches of solitude, Lamott and Allen become that company. They don’t quite spell it out (Okay, Lamott may. Repeatedly. With gusto.), but it hums in every chapter: Writing is worth it, and you’re not crazy for wanting to do it — or, if you are, we are too.

As we wrapped up, they showed the same easy warmth that comes across on the page and encouraged me to email if I had questions.

“We answer better in writing, anyway.”

by Tim Brinkhof

“There is nothing in the world more powerful than a good story,” Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage, declares in the infamously lackluster finale of Game of Thrones. It sounds cliché, but in Westeros, it’s true.

The books the TV show is based on are called A Song of Ice and Fire, not “a history” or “an account.” Throughout the novels, characters tell stories to persuade, intimidate, and outmaneuver each other. Many live and die convinced that random chance is divine providence. Even political power, the axis around which the entire plot revolves, is a narrative — “a shadow on the wall,” as Varys the spymaster puts it.

Storytelling plays an equally important role in our world, Kevin Ashton argues in his new book, The Story of Stories. In fact, stories may play an even more important role as, unlike the citizens of Westeros, we have modern technology at our disposal.

“I wanted to write a book about how the smartphone changed the world,” Ashton, a tech pioneer and co-founder of MIT’s Auto-ID Lab, tells Big Think, “but the more I researched, the clearer it became that phones were actually the latest step in this evolution of storytelling technology that stretches all the way back to prehistoric times.”

Tracing the evolution of storytelling from hunter-gatherer campfires and medieval printing presses to VR and AI, Ashton identifies a number of developments that can be expected to carry on into the future, among them the increasing difficulty of distinguishing fact from fiction. Crucially, these developments in storytelling are not limited to the books we read, the films we see, or the video games we play. They shape and reshape nearly every aspect of society.

“Much of our present turmoil,” Ashton warns, “is the inevitable result of technology increasing the seismicity of stories.”

According to Ashton, the story of stories results from the interplay between a constant and a variable. The variable is technology: how stories are produced, preserved, distributed, and accessed. The constant is human nature: our largely unchanged biology and brain structure that renders us reliant on stories to make sense of ourselves and the world we live in — even when those tales turn out to be misleading, overly simplistic, or outright dangerous. As stories will only become more potent and powerful, Ashton adds, our well-being depends on understanding how they’re told.

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The evolution of storytelling

Ashton has identified four important developments in the evolution of storytelling. The first is that each new storytelling technology expands the audience. When all we had was orality, audiences were limited to the number of people who could huddle around a campfire to hear the storyteller. Writing systems enabled stories to travel farther and be preserved for repeat tellings. Today, Ashton notes, content on Facebook is often only a few shares away from reaching a “substantial fraction of the world’s population.”

Storytelling technologies have also allowed us to tell increasingly realistic, believable stories. “If you look at, say, the Norse sagas from 500 and 600 CE,” Ashton says, “it’s all very stylized — full of gods, magic, and other things that couldn’t really happen. Today, there’s a convincing illusion of realism. Computer-generated special effects and especially generative AI are starting to challenge our ability to know whether we are seeing something real or something imagined and fabricated.”

This illusion of realism will only become more convincing as the technology evolves. Large language models, such as ChatGPT, have passed Turing tests. Meanwhile, virtual modeling and, albeit to a lesser extent, humanoid robotics are slowly breaking through the uncanny valley — our instinctive distrust of things that look and act almost like human beings but not quite.

“At some point, the images we see on TV or on our laptops will appear three-dimensional,” Ashton says. “They’ll be of such a high resolution, our brains literally won’t be able to tell the difference between what we see on a screen, and what we see when we look out the window.”

Until now, the illusion of realism created by storytelling technologies has been limited to just two of our senses: sight and sound. However, if technologies achieve a direct and meaningful connection with the brain, storytellers may gain the ability to simulate touch, smell, and taste.

Speaking of access, the third development Ashton identified is the ability to tell increasingly believable stories that are available to more and more people. History offers plenty of examples here, such as the printing press removing long-standing social and economic barriers to authorship. But the most convincing are taking place right now. The growing prominence of independent filmmaking and game development shows that creatives don’t need giant teams or huge budgets to make entertainment that reach millions of people. With new tools like generative AI, it may not be long before the power to tell a story as immersive as a Hollywood blockbuster resides with a single person.

The last development is also the most concerning. As the power of stories and our ability to tell them expand, so does the role they play in our lives. Back when most of humanity lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, people learned primarily through direct experience. As societies grew more complex and people specialized into different roles and professions, they learned less through doing than through being told by others. Today, Ashton writes, the vast majority of what we know, we’ve learned through stories — stories told by our parents, friends, movies, newspapers, and social media users. A century on, this imbalance may be even more extreme.

Death by stories

The internet of things, a term Ashton coined in the late 1990s to describe how everyday devices embedded with sensors would connect the real world with its virtual counterpart, has given us useful and fairly uncontroversial applications — think satnav, earthquake alarms, and package tracking. But it’s also given companies like Meta and Google unprecedented insight into our behavior, tastes, and even our physical movement. This information can be shared without our awareness or express consent and is used by companies to interact with us in ways we aren’t always comfortable with.

The evolution of storytelling is similarly a two-sided coin: For every benefit, there’s a danger.

The growing reach of storytellers allows stories to travel throughout the world, but also facilitates the spread of misinformation. Just as many don’t know where the food they eat comes from or how it was processed, we are often ignorant of the sources of our information, as well as their potential biases and ulterior motivations. Reach also affects the quantity and quality of storytelling. The rise of social media, where anyone can share up-to-the-minute news, has gutted professional journalism, with Ashton noting that Facebook’s first 15 years saw the U.S. publishing industry shrink by more than 60%.

Increasingly realistic and believable storytelling can make for highly immersive entertainment, but it also makes us more vulnerable to exploitation. Stories prey on our emotions, not our rationality, and in many cases, the former takes precedence over the latter.

“We’ve evolved to survive, not to find the truth,” Ashton says. “One of the first written stories we know of is Sumerian religious propaganda. Religious writing in general asks you to believe something without much evidence, and our tendency to do just that is the foundation of storytelling.”

From the larger-than-life statues of Caesar Augustus to the films of Leni Riefenstahl, those in power have always relied on stories to color reality in their own image. What’s changed, Ashton says, are the ease, efficiency, and efficacy with which they’re able to do so. Today, Donald Trump can shape beliefs with a single tweet.

The more our knowledge of the world is rooted in others’ stories, the more control they have over our lives. Ashton argues that more than ever, stories exert a real, tangible force. In a chapter titled “Death by a Thousand Stories,” he describes in detail the events leading up to the death of an American man who refused to get vaccinated against COVID. His death, and the deaths of many others who were convinced to remain unvaccinated, might be as much owing to the narratives they were told as to the virus itself.

Setting the story straight

Concerns over the dangers of stories are nothing new. As Ashton points out, the story we tell about new storytelling technologies has remained fairly consistent across history. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates worries that books, unlike oral traditions, will make people more forgetful. Meanwhile, in the early 1900s, people feared broadcast radio would wrinkle their skin, dry up the sky, and even cause flooding by breaking up clouds.

Every innovation brings with it a myriad of fears, many of which are eventually disproven and reduced to conspiracy theories. But some, such as the polarizing effects of social media, hold up to scrutiny and should be taken seriously. Ultimately, many of the dangers of storytelling technologies arise not from the technologies themselves, but from the aspects of human nature they prey upon.

“It’s hardwired into us, and so the technology that succeeds is the technology that best exploits this,” Ashton says.

While regulation and ethical guidelines can mitigate some of the potential damage from bad-faith storytellers, it’s equally important that we, their audience, learn to protect ourselves. In Story of Stories, Ashton calls for a combination of critical thinking and media literacy.

“The first thing you need to understand is that almost everything anybody tells you is, at its core, a story,” he says. “There’s no such thing as a completely objective or neutral story. Every story is selective; it has an agenda. It’s somebody trying to transfer their experience or belief to you. When they tell you something you yourself want to believe in, that’s when you have to be most skeptical of all.”

This goes for the technologies we use as well. “You don’t need to understand the technical details of how generative AI works,” Ashton says, “but it helps to keep in mind who made them and why. The fact that a model like ChatGPT is available for free should inform how you assess the stories it tells you.”

Welcome to Big Think Books, your direct line to the books and ideas that shape our world. I’m Kevin Dickinson, and here are some great reads to check out this month.

Like a reader doing a math problem

One of the great joys of reading is experiencing the world through someone else’s eyes. I’m hardly the first person to make this observation. Here’s Joyce Carol Oates’ rendition:

“It is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin; another’s voices; another’s soul. [...] That, by way of a book, we have the ability to transcend what is immediate, what is merely personal, and to enter a consciousness not known to us, in some cases distinctly alien.”

I kept returning to Oates’ words because two books I read this month brought me into that most distinctly alien of consciousnesses: the mathematician’s.

I don’t dislike math. Growing up, I consistently scored higher in math classes and on standardized tests than I did in reading and writing. The subject simply never ripened into anything more than abstract puzzles to be solved. The immediate world I travel through speaks to me in the language of narrative, psychology, and, well, language.

Think Like a Mathematician and The Laws of Thought allowed me to slip into a mind in which theorems, fractals, and prime numbers aren’t just puzzle pieces. They are the things that breathe life into the world. It was a lovely way to spend my evenings — even if the cognitive culture shock never wore off.

My time in those minds was brief, and every morning, I’d wake up, yet again, in my own skin. No matter how many mathematics books I read, the alien has never translated into the intimate. That’s okay. Like Oates, I am thankful we can perform this mental alchemy at all.

This month, I also explored the new age of dating with The Intimate Animal and slipped into the A-Type personalities of Wall Street brokers with Wired on Wall Street. You can check out all of these and more below, and if a particular consciousness calls to you, you can give it a go by clicking the link to preview on Big Think.

Keep reading,
Kevin

1. Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment

by Daniel Coyle

We tend to think of happiness in terms of personal needs and projects, and while that’s not entirely wrong, it ignores the “ecosystem of relationships” that also has a pronounced effect on our lives.

Coyle’s latest examines that ecosystem, and I especially enjoyed his first-hand accounts of how diverse communities — from a local Nutcracker ballet to the miners trapped in a Chilean mine for 69 days — create meaning by building the relationships that shape the future for the better.

2. How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day

by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

I’ll be honest: I think designers can get overzealous in prescribing design thinking as a solution to, well, name a problem. I still have to give the nod to Burnett and Evans. Even as only a metaphor, the idea of designing your life to align with your unique needs and purpose is powerful. And the authors do a great job of blending this idea well with solid advice from the field of psychology. Well worth checking out.

3. Think Like a Mathematician: Simple Tools for Complex Everyday Problems

by Junaid Mubeen

As I mentioned, I enjoy math and recognize its importance to much of the modern world, from the internet to architecture. Even so, I don’t think of math often in my day-to-day life.

Mubeen’s book challenges me there. It shows what the world looks like to a mathematician and reveals the life lessons in such seemingly abstract concepts as gradients, axioms, and fractals. A refreshing way to think about concepts that initially seemed divorced from math, such as love and happenstance.

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4. The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love

by Justin R. Garcia

I met the love of my life when I was 18, and we’ve been together ever since. Even 24 wonderful years later, there’s a lot about love and intimacy I don’t know or understand. Why do some chance meetings lead to lifelong commitments while others flounder after the second date? Why do we continue to lust even after we’ve found love?

Garcia looks to science to help answer questions like these, but what I appreciate about the book is that he doesn’t try to distill the “messy and beautiful” complexity of intimacy into a one-size-fits-all approach.

5. The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind

by Tom Griffiths

Every student knows that scientists have used mathematics to explain the laws of nature to wonderful effect. The laws of thought? Not as appreciated. This book presents readers with the history of how we have formalized the stuff of thought into the language of math.

Griffiths does a fantastic job of explaining these mathematical principles for a general readership. I’m also a sucker for books that share the stories of brilliant thinkers who, while not lost to history, certainly don’t receive their due outside a specific field. Many such thinkers find their way into Griffiths’s story.

6. Wired on Wall Street: The Rise and Fall of Tipper X, one of the FBI’s Most Prolific Informants

by Tom Hardin

Hardin wore a wire for the FBI during Operation Perfect Hedge, an investigation into insider trading on Wall Street. His efforts helped the FBI gather the information it needed to bring 20 cases against white-collar criminals. Hardin’s book tells this story from his perspective.

While the true crime aspect is thrilling, what drew me in was the insights it provided into the mindset of many people who work in the finance sector — another mindset far removed from my own.

Kevin Dickinson is the books editor at Big Think. He holds a master’s in English and writing, and in addition to Big Think, his work has appeared in RealClearScience, Pop Matters, the Writer Magazine, and the Washington Post.

By Ross Pomeroy

In Andy Weir’s bestselling novel The Martian, foul-mouthed protagonist Mark Watney “sciences the shit” out of his circumstances to survive being stranded on Mars. The result is an engrossing work of science fiction, particularly captivating for its apparent realism. Watney ekes out an existence by eating potatoes sowed in Martian soil fertilized by his own feces. He shelters from the frigid conditions in his above-ground habitation unit, huddling around a repurposed, radiating nuclear battery.

Watney’s survivalist experience isn’t exactly an advertisement from the Red Planet’s tourist board, but it does romanticize space settlement, showcasing humanity’s ability to heroically persist beyond our “blue marble.” Readers are left with the sense that living on Mars is not just possible, but probable.

In reality, Watney’s experience would have been far, far more uncomfortable.

We now know a “toxic cocktail” of oxidants, iron oxides, and perchlorates permeate the Martian soil and would make growing plants exceedingly difficult. Watney might have been able to harvest a few stunted potatoes, but they would hardly be nourishing, likely leaving him weakened and emaciated. Moreover, his habitat should have been built below ground rather than above it. With no functional magnetosphere, Mars’ surface radiation is nearly as intense as in deep space, and the paper-thin atmosphere provides little protection from even minuscule meteorites. Watney would have been forced to live like an ant.

These blunt truths about dwelling on Mars are a few of the many fascinating buzzkills about space settlement that biologist, professor, and science communicator Scott Solomon provides in his new book, Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds.

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As Solomon observes, humanity is tantalizingly close to becoming an interplanetary species. Tech titans like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are staking vast fortunes on making it happen within our lifetimes. But before humans step out into the Solar System with plans to stay, it’s vital that we understand what awaits us. Solomon has spent years striving to fill that knowledge gap, making his book both timely and important. It also clashes with the public perception of space settlement built through more than a century of science fiction.

Blinded by science fiction

Depictions of space settlement have evolved in step with scientific and popular knowledge of the cosmos. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars (1912) tells the story of John Carter, a Civil War soldier mysteriously transported to a Mars inhabited by aliens who dwell along the desert world’s life-giving canals. At the time, much of the public misperceived early astronomical observations of grooves on Mars as Martian-built canals and assumed a great civilization had built them.

Eighty years later, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (1992–96) chronicled the settlement and terraforming of the fourth planet from the Sun by space colonists — the fictional events of which begin this year. Terraforming — the process of modifying a planet’s atmosphere, temperature, surface, and ecology to be habitable — is looking less and less feasible the more scientists research it. Barring some unforeseen technological leap, to terraform Mars, we’d need to nuke the planet hundreds if not thousands of times to trigger a greenhouse effect and build up an atmosphere. Oh, and we’d have to repeatedly bombard it even as we live there because solar winds would continually leech away the atmosphere.

More recently, James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series (2011) introduced readers to a future set in the 24th century where humanity has expanded throughout the Solar System, and Mars is an independent, militaristic power. One unrealistic aspect of this fictional universe is that the humans spread across the Solar System are too similar. Though they are depicted as morphologically adapting to their disparate living circumstances, Solomon, an expert in evolutionary biology, estimates that if humans truly branched out like that, we would “evolve, adapt, and speciate everywhere we go,” perhaps in relatively short order.

“I estimate we could see noticeable evolutionary changes after as little as four or five generations, with more significant changes occurring after ten or more,” Solomon writes. “We’re still talking hundreds of years, which may seem slow in the context of a human lifetime. But for evolution, that’s the blink of an eye.”

Reality check: Settling space would suck

Broadly, science fiction has shown that settlement of space will be easier and more glamorous than how it will play out in reality. The genre, Solomon notes, often employs highly-implausible plot devices to avoid dealing with the annoying aspects of living in space. Shields protect us from radiation, which degrades pretty much every tissue in the human body. Artificial gravity wards against the dangers of microgravity, including bone loss, muscle wasting, heart weakening, and eye destabilization. Warp drives, hyperdrives, and other fantastical propulsion devices minimize the mind-boggling scale of space down to a morning commute. No need for months, years, or decades of tedious space travel; characters can visit a new planet every week!

Stories set on Mars have been particularly prone to flowery portrayals, Solomon tells Big Think: “As our understanding of what Mars is actually like has changed, depictions of Mars in science fiction have changed as well, but they’ve in some ways been slower to do so. We haven’t caught up with what a harsh place Mars really is.”

A few works of sci-fi do showcase the painful realities of colonizing space, Solomon points out. Somewhat counterintuitively, one is H.G. Wells’ classic The War of the Worlds (1898). While the invading Martians and their tall, terrifying, laser-toting tripods are undeniably fantasy, the fact that they were undone by Earth’s disease-causing microbes is not. As Solomon detailed in his book, future Martian colonists, separated by distance and generations, would almost certainly develop vastly different immune systems shaped by their native environment, leaving them extremely vulnerable to foreign pathogens. Even if they could travel back to Earth, the trip might prove to be deadly after they arrived.

Another prescient work is The Space Between Us (2017). Though panned by critics and ignored by the public, the movie shows the struggles of a boy born on Mars to one of the first colonists. As a teenager, he attempts to return to the planet of his parents; however, raised on a world with much lower gravity and atmospheric pressures, his skeleton and heart cannot withstand the conditions on Earth.

Technological hurdles, but also ethical

The immense hardships of space settlement and its potential pitfalls actually become more pressing as the technology advances. Solomon thinks we could have boots on the Martian ground within the next ten years and settlement efforts by the end of the century. But while many technological hurdles of living away from Earth long-term remain to be overcome — food production, health challenges, fuel systems, and so on — Solomon says the real roadblock isn’t technological. It’s ethical.

Knowing what we know about the hardships and how we’ve colonized lands in the past, are we ready to step out into the Solar System and stay there?

One of the biggest ethical concerns surrounds reproduction. We currently have no clue whether having children in space is biologically feasible. Microgravity could make childbirth even more hazardous than it already is, and radiation could mutate the sensitive cells of developing embryos. After birth, life will be no less unforgiving, and it may not be possible for families to seek haven on Earth. Is it right to subject the children of future space colonists to such conditions?

We haven’t caught up with what a harsh place Mars really is.

“It’s one thing for an adult to understand the risks and agree to take those on for themselves. It’s another thing to bring a child into the world in a situation that is potentially very dangerous,” Solomon says.

Another ethical dilemma is neatly encapsulated with a timeless science-fiction debate: Star Wars vs. Star Trek. Would space settlement play out more like Star Trek, where we venture out relatively mindfully, or like Star Wars, replete with conflict and totalitarianism?

“If we expand beyond Earth, do we expand in a peaceful way to better understand the cosmos or do we go out with an eye towards taking over and extracting resources and ultimately having lots of conflict?” Solomon asks.

If history is any guide, Solomon fears we will unfortunately follow the Star Wars path. Moreover, until we learn how to live with each other in peace on our own planet, he’s not sure we’re ready as a species to settle Mars — or anywhere else in the Solar System for that matter.

Given Solomon’s extensive research and ethical reservations about space settlement, we had to ask: If given the option to be one of the first humans to live on the Red Planet, would he? His answer was an unequivocal no.

“I would love to go to Mars,” he says, “but I am not ready to sign up for a one-way trip to Mars.”

By Guy P. Harrison

Great science fiction transcends mere entertainment. This genre reveals, predicts, warns, educates, and inspires unlike anything else. Many of its best stories are infused with just enough credibility and possibility to spark serious thinking on real issues. A thoughtful survey of great sci-fi quotes from the last few centuries readily demonstrates this and feels like a fantastic voyage through humankind’s greatest ideas, worst fears, and highest hopes.

My 2024 book, Damn You, Entropy! 1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes, is the book I worked on between other books. Without conscious consent or the original goal of a book, my lifelong love of science fiction and career as a journalist and author conspired to turn me into an obsessive curator of science-fiction gems. I imagine the finished product as a literary Dyson sphere that harnesses intellectual energy from novels, short stories, films, and television series.

Setting aside the mad-scientist villain trope, science-fiction writers have given tremendous respect and praise for real science and scientific thinking. In only a handful of well-crafted words, many writers have illuminated scientific principles, amplified important knowledge, and promoted positive feelings about science.

• “Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?” — Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation, 1988 novel

• “The ship of theory could set sail on tides of mathematical grandeur and hope alone, but only data could fill its sails.” — Gregory Benford, Cosm, 1998 novel

• “For all its beauty, honesty, and effectiveness at improving the human condition, science demands a terrible price — that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.” — David Brin, Existence, 2012 novel

• “Science is an attempt to remove our emotions and ego from reality.” — Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars, 2018 novel

• “They’re not my truths. They belong to science.” — David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, “The Emperor’s Peace,” 2021 episode of Foundation

• “One thing about a science: it works.” — Chad Oliver, “The Imperfect Machine,” 1955 short story

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The genre has never been a blind cheerleader for science, however. Many writers have attempted to show through stories that, wonderful and productive as it is, science is not everything. Art, for example, is a key component of our humanity and some excellent writers have suggested that we may need it as much as science.

• “Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.” — Stanislaw Lem, “King Globares and the Sages,” 1965 short story

• “As civilization advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.” — Matt Haig, The Humans, 2013 novel

• “There are few better ways to get to know how a species thinks than to learn their art.” — Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit, 2016 novel

Many science-fiction characters explore space, travel time, and encounter aliens — while still in the grip of the human condition. This makes the genre particularly well-suited to address deep philosophical and psychological themes.

• “We’re only different from the bacteria because we are able to ask what the hell this is all about. Not answer, just ask.” — Carolyn Ives, “Umbernight,” 2018 short story

• “What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We are forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood.” — Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel, 1954 novel

• “Will the mountains remain unmoved, and streams still keep a downward course towards the vast abyss; will the tides rise and fall, and the winds fan universal nature; will beasts pasture, birds fly, and fishes swim, when man, the lord, possessor, perceiver, and recorder of all these things, has passed away, as though he had never been?” — Mary Shelley, The Last Man, 1826 novel

• “Why are we born needing impossible things? Why is it that we all have things we need to live that simply do not exist in the universe? A purpose in life. Unconditional love? Our emotional needs met? Ha.” — Elizabeth Bear, Machine, 2020 novel

Many science-fiction stories, old and new, contain relevant warnings about societies sliding into madness and self-destruction after reason had eroded or been sacrificed in the name of comforting delusions and compelling lies. As one who has written many books and articles about the urgent need for improved critical thinking in contemporary society, I appreciate the many science-fiction writers who have called on us to become a more rational species.

• “His mind could be his salvation, as it had been his damnation.” — Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man, 1956 novel

• “If Earth was ever to be saved, its people would have to be taught to believe in reason.” — Robert Zubrin, The Holy Land, 2003 novel

• “You’re not even consciously aware of the world until your brain has filtered and censored and hammered it down into a mush of self-serving Darwinian dogma. The cataracts on your eyes are four billion years thick; it’s amazing you can see anything at all.” — Peter Watts, “Kindred,” 2018 short story

• “Hope clouds observation.” — Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 novel

• “It’s always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed, 1974 novel

• “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” — Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 1979 novel

• “It’s a strange thing: We humans pride ourselves on being ruled by reason, yet with human civilization at stake, we chose ideology and ignorance.” — James Lawrence Powell, The 2084 Report: A Novel of the Great Warming, 2011 novel

• “In this age of enlightenment, the soothsayer and astrologer flourish. As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth.” — Philip Jose Farmer, Riders of the Purple Wage, 1967 novel

• “We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.” — Aldous Huxley, Island, 1962 novel

Science is our most effective tool or process for discovering and understanding reality. It also enables us to create technologies with godlike powers. Unfortunately, this carries the risk of placing too much trust in scientists and too much reliance on technology. The question of who gets to control and benefit most from deadly, invasive, or dehumanizing technology is a common theme in science fiction.

• “When a population is dependent on a machine, they are hostages of the men who tend the machines.” — Robert A. Heinlein, “The Roads Must Roll,” 1940 short story

• “Aren’t these the people who taught us how to annihilate ourselves? I tell you, my friends, science is too important to be left to the scientists.” — Carl Sagan, Contact, 1985 novel

• “It has undoubtedly occurred to you, as to all thinking people of your day, that the scientists have done a particularly abominable job of dispensing the tools they have devised. Like careless and indifferent workmen they have tossed the products of their craft to gibbering apes and baboons.” — Raymond F. Jones, This Island Earth, 1952 novel

On the other hand, prominent astronomer Fred Hoyle wrote a science-fiction novel in the 1950s that contained the suggestion that scientists don’t have enough power.

• “Has it ever occurred to you, Geoff, that in spite of all the changes wrought by science — by our control over inanimate energy, that is to say — we still preserve the same old social order of precedence? Politicians at the top, then the military, and the real brains at the bottom.” — Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud, 1957 novel

Outside of the apocalyptic visions it paints so well, one of science fiction’s greatest powers is the ability to give us hope. Numerous stories have presented optimistic outcomes for humanity. Issac Asimov’s Foundation novels, the H. G. Wells’ film Things to Come, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, Andy Weir’s resilient never-surrender individuals in The Martian and Project Hail Mary, Matt Haig’s The Humans, David Brin’s Uplift novels and many more great works tell us that we and our young civilization can not only survive but just might thrive deep into the future.

• “We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become.” — Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents, 1998 novel

• “It is possible to build a rational and humane culture completely free from the threat of supernatural restraints.” — Arthur C. Clarke, The Songs of Distant Earth, 1986 novel

• “But Earth would never die, for there was a part of Earth in every man and woman who would go forth into space, part of Earth’s courage, part of Earth’s ideals, part of Earth’s dreams.” — Clifford D. Simak, Empire, 1951 novel

• “It’s possible that man may lose knowledge, life, his planets and sun — but there’s still plenty of hope. We’re not finished yet.” — John W. Campbell, The Black Star Passes, 1953 novel

• “Now I don’t pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love, when every day is just a struggle to survive. But I do insist that you do survive. Because the days and the years ahead are worth living for.” — Harlan Ellison, D. C. Fontana, and Gene L. Coon, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” 1967 episode of Star Trek

This article was originally published in July 2024 on Big Think.

By Jasna Hodžić

The path to mastery is endless. With discipline and effort, you can deepen your knowledge of a subject or improve at a skill, but you’ll never reach a resolution. There will always be more to learn and room for improvement.

This is especially true if what you’re trying to master is broad and foundational, like effective communication or time management. These life skills are worth devoting yourself to — they shape how you live and move through the world — but because they are so broad, a lot of people have ideas about how to improve them, and it’s hard to know whose ideas deserve your attention.

With that in mind, this article highlights seven books that offer timeless guidance on improving foundational life skills from people who have dedicated themselves to mastering them. These titles are must-reads for anyone interested in developing these skills or simply orienting themselves toward mastery with what Adam Grant, one of the featured authors, calls “confident humility”: faith in your ability, tempered by the earned doubt that keeps you learning.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion by Marshall Rosenberg (1999)

Life skill: Communication

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” This quote by 13th-century poet Rumi appears midway through psychologist Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication. It neatly captures the book’s goal of teaching readers how to communicate in ways that minimize blame and maximize compassion and connection.

Rosenberg’s core claim is simple: Humans naturally enjoy giving and receiving compassion, but our capacity to engage humanely is disrupted by how we’ve been taught to communicate, which often includes placing blame, drawing comparisons, and making moral judgments. He developed his “nonviolent communication process” to help us speak and listen in ways that meet our needs while fostering compassion.

Nonviolent Communication is organized around four components:

• Observing without judging.

• Naming feelings rather than opinions.

• Identifying which of your unmet needs are causing those feelings.

• Using positive language to make clear, concrete requests for what may help meet those needs.

For each component, Rosenberg provides examples of language that supports connection and language that shuts it down. He also gives equal weight to listening, especially learning to hear the need beneath anger, blame, or pain. Near the end of the book, he turns the process inward, showing the connection between compassionate self-talk and effective communication with others.

Originally published in 1999, Nonviolent Communication remains one of the most widely recommended books on communication because it speaks to something almost everyone struggles with: expressing themselves clearly without creating distance or conflict. Rosenberg is careful to note that this doesn’t require abandoning values or discernment, but recognizing that beneath every expression — skillful, clumsy, or even hurtful — is an unmet need. Learning to speak and listen from that place can fundamentally change how people relate to one another.

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman (1995)

Life skill: Emotional intelligence

The Latin Homo sapiens translates to “wise man,” but is often interpreted as “the thinking species.” Modern society has fully embraced the label, placing enormous value on intellect and IQ. But according to psychologist Daniel Goleman, this characterization is incomplete and misleading. Anyone who has made an impulsive decision in a moment of intense emotion knows that feelings shape our choices just as much as rational thought. Yet while sharpening intellect remains a core focus of formal education, we tend to neglect emotional intelligence (EQ), the ability to recognize, manage, and work with emotions.

In Emotional Intelligence, Goleman argues that neglecting to teach EQ has carried a cost. Many people lack the skills needed to manage their emotions, empathize with others, and resolve conflicts. Instead, we get impulsive reactions, strained relationships, and breakdowns in everyday civility. Emotions themselves, he stresses, aren’t the problem. In fact, they hold essential wisdom that the rational mind alone can’t access. The challenge is learning how to manage our emotional lives intelligently.

To help readers meet that challenge, Goleman aims to “make sense of the senseless” by defining EQ and organizing it into five domains: self-awareness, emotional regulation, motivation, empathy, and relationship management. People with higher EQ, he shows, recover more quickly from distress, relate better to others, and make clearer decisions under pressure.

Grounded in neuroscience and enriched by philosophy and real-world examples, Goleman’s book speaks to both the head and the heart of his readers. His ideas have endured for 30 years because they address a timeless human challenge, which Goleman illustrates with this quote from Aristotle: “to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way.” Emotional Intelligence remains influential because it treats this ancient ideal as a learnable skill.

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Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (2021)

Life skill: Time management

The premise behind Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks is refreshingly blunt: You’re not going to get everything done, so stop organizing your life around the fantasy that you will. The title comes from a simple calculation: If you die at age 80, you’ll have lived for just over 4,000 weeks. It sounds like a lot until you sit with it.

The “mortals” that Burkeman addresses in the book’s title are those of us who have grown more stressed and more exhausted as we cling to the idea that with the right system, mindset, or app, we’ll finally feel on top of things. In reality, efforts to optimize often increase anxiety and turn people into servants of what Burkeman calls an “idealized future self” — that calm, fulfilled version of you who will supposedly enjoy the benefits of your current grind.

Instead of chasing efficiency, Burkeman asks us to embrace the reality that every choice excludes countless other options. Fear of missing out? No need to fear; you will miss out. Rather than resisting, he suggests using it to your advantage. Let limits clarify what matters, and remember that productivity isn’t a moral virtue. It’s a tool. To put these ideas into practice, Burkeman recommends strategies like working from intentionally small to-do lists and practicing “strategic underachievement” (deciding in advance where not to excel).

This book changed how I think about time. After reading it, I dropped goals from my to-do list — not just for a few days, but for months or years. It’s so impactful because Burkeman expresses a truth many of us already feel but haven’t articulated: A meaningful life isn’t about doing everything, but about deciding what to prioritize and what you’re willing to neglect. His sharp, funny, and unexpectedly comforting voice makes the book a joy to read and turns what could feel grim into something liberating.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant (2021)

Life skill: Learning

In Think Again, organizational psychologist Adam Grant argues that the most essential skill for learning isn’t intelligence, but the ability to rethink. To learn, he says, we must also be willing to unlearn. The problem is that rethinking often forces us to confront our assumptions and beliefs, and the process can make us “feel as if we’re losing part of ourselves.” Still, Grant insists it’s worth it. The ability to think again is useful on a personal level as it can potentially lead to greater success at work, stronger relationships, and fewer regrets. Mental flexibility is also essential to navigating our polarized, fast-moving modern world, which is shaped by constant new information (and misinformation). With this framing, Think Again becomes an invitation not just to learn how to unlearn, but to help others do the same.

Drawing on psychology and behavioral science, Grant shows how people slip into rigid mental modes that prioritize defending identity over discovering truth. He proposes making flexibility, not consistency, central to one’s identity and adopting a scientific mindset: search for truth and treat being wrong as a marvel of exploration, rather than a threat to yourself. This mindset can apply to relationships, too. Grant explains how readers can improve their listening skills (it’s not about talking less), learn to debate like it’s a dance rather than a battle, and reap the benefits of surrounding themselves with a “challenge network” of thoughtful critics.

Grant is first and foremost a researcher, and he grounds his claims with scientific evidence. But he’s also an exceptional communicator, with a rare ability to translate rigorous research into ideas people can actually use. Think Again is both practical and fun to read — but if you’re still not convinced, Grant says he’s open to rethinking the whole premise.

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel (2020)

Life skill: Money management

In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel argues that being financially savvy has less to do with how smart you are and far more to do with how you behave. Financial outcomes, he suggests, are shaped not just by math or spreadsheets, but by emotion, history, incentives, luck, and the stories people tell themselves about risk and reward.

Rather than offering formulas or tactics, Housel uses short, vivid stories to show why “no one is crazy” when it comes to money — people simply act based on their lived experiences. Two equally intelligent people, raised in different circumstances, can make radically different financial decisions, each of which can feel perfectly reasonable to them. This lens helps explain everything from investing mistakes and overspending to why some people quietly build wealth while others blow money in ways that, from the outside, look spectacularly dumb.

While exploring concepts like risk, greed, and sufficiency, the book returns to a central theme: Managing money is, first and foremost, a psychological skill. It reframes wealth as what you don’t see, emphasizes the importance of room for error, and repeatedly links financial success to patience, humility, and long-term thinking. Housel doesn’t tell you what to do with your money so much as he changes how you think about it, revealing insights that feel obvious only after you’ve finished reading them.

The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life by J.L. Collins (2016)

Life skill: Money management

J.L. Collins’ The Simple Path to Wealth began as a series of letters to his daughter, who, unlike him, wanted her finances to work for her but had no interest in obsessing over them. Eventually, he realized most people feel the same way.

This book is his message to the rest of us: Finances don’t need to be complicated to lead to wealth. But what exactly is “wealth”? For Collins, it isn’t necessarily early retirement. It’s financial freedom or, as he famously puts it, having “FU money.” Collins may not own a Mercedes, but he has something better: freedom from worry and the ability to say “FU” to work he doesn’t find fulfilling.

The book lives up to its title by describing a truly simple path: spend less than you earn; invest the surplus in low-cost, broad-market index funds; and avoid debt. Collins explains each step clearly — especially investing — and backs his advice with math so basic it’s hard to argue against. He shows why this approach works and why alternatives like market timing are far less reliable, joking that they’re about as likely to pay off as breeding unicorns. He’s also candid about risk. The real danger, he argues, isn’t the market — it’s our own psychology. Investing is simple but emotionally difficult. Watching your portfolio drop is part of the deal.

Along the way, Collins covers topics like taxes, healthcare, and bonds in plain English and a sharp, witty voice — reading the book feels like getting advice from a wise, slightly irreverent uncle on the front porch. The Simple Path to Wealth is an easy read with lasting impact. You’ll learn a lot, and you won’t need to spend the rest of your life thinking about money to put what you learn into action, which is exactly the point.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (1994)

Life skill: Creativity

Bird by Bird is Anne Lamott’s attempt to condense her creative writing course into a book, giving readers access to what she says is “almost every single thing I know about writing.” But the reader quickly discovers that, for Lamott, writing is a way of moving through the world. It’s about paying attention, telling the truth, and finding your way with humor and heart. When she talks about writing, she’s also talking about navigating life.

So, yes, Lamott covers the nuts and bolts of writing: plot, dialogue, revision, and writer’s block. She also addresses the realities of publication: agents, rejection, bad reviews, and the emotional whiplash of putting work into the world. But what makes Bird by Bird so singular is how often and elegantly Lamott shifts from advice about writing to advice about life.

“If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal,” she writes. “Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable. Risk being unliked.” That’s not just advice for writers.

Lamott’s unique voice bleeds through every page. She’s both self-deprecating and wise, and you get the sense that no one else could have written a single sentence in this book. On one page, I’d be moved. On the next, I’d find myself laughing out loud picturing her “rocking like a huge autistic child” while battling writer’s block. Bird by Bird is generous, charming, and quietly piercing. It’s not only for writers and creatives, but also anyone who wants to live with purpose, listen to their intuition, and keep going one word, or bird, at a time (I’ll leave the mystery of the title to Lamott to explain).

The article is part of Big Think’s Pursuit of Mastery special issue, which you can read here.

Welcome to Big Think Books, your direct line to the books and ideas that shape our world. I’m Kevin Dickinson, and here are some great reads to check out this month.

Every little bit self-helps

‘Tis the season for New Year’s resolutions, and that means publishers are rolling out the self-improvement books, giving readers a lot to choose from as we begin 2026. This puts me in a bind for my monthly recommended-reads newsletter, as I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the genre.

On the one hand, we all have things in our lives we’d like to improve. Reading the right book at the right time can help. For me, these have included Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, and Ethan Kross’s Shift.

But I’ve read a bunch of self-improvement books in my line of work, and I can count the number that have transformed my life on my hands, with fingers to spare. The genre tends to oversimplify complex problems, prey on our vulnerabilities and inner perfectionists, and lean on shaky (if not outright pseudo-) science. It has an annoying habit of overpromising, as well.

So my aim wasn’t to search for the books I believe will lead to lasting change in every reader’s life; after all, the book that inspires me may not be the one that inspires you. I instead looked for those with solid scientific backing and aimed to help us reexamine the aspects of our lives we may take for granted — whether that’s the mind-body connection, our emotional welfare, or wellness more generally.

If one of these books speaks to you, click the link to preview it on Big Think.

Not in the mood for self-improvement? No problem. I’ve got recommendations for you too, including a book on the mysterious Spinosaurus. Trust me, your inner 10-year-old will love it.

Keep reading,
Kevin

1. The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal

by Chris Moore

Guilt feels horrible, but that doesn’t mean it’s a horrible feeling. It’s actually a sign that you maintain a healthy emotional life and aren’t a complete psychopath. (Congrats!)

According to Moore, humans evolved this emotion to inform us when we need to make amends, strengthen relationships, or grow in our lives. I think something similar can be said for many negative emotions, and Moore’s book makes a strong case for utilizing rather than avoiding this particularly potent one.

2. Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long Covid

by Emily Mendenhall

I’ve been spoiled by modern, one-size-fits-all medicine. I get my vaccines, pop the occasional antibiotic, and I’m usually good to go. Chronic illnesses, however, typically involve multiple intersecting problems unique to the individual patient, making them a challenge to diagnose and treat. And when something is difficult to understand, it becomes easier to dismiss.

Mendenhall’s new book traces the history of how we study these “invisible illnesses” and encourages us to better help those suffering from them. While perhaps a little academic in tone for some readers, this book revealed to me a facet of the world that I was ignorant of, and I’m grateful for it.

3. The Healing Power of Resilience: A New Perspective for Health and Well-Being

by Tara Narula

The inseparable connection between our mental well-being and physical health has never been more salient, and it’s that focus I enjoyed most about this book.

Narula is a board-certified cardiologist and the chief medical correspondent at ABC News, and throughout her career, she has seen the harm that can occur when the gap between the two widens. Resilience is her solution for closing the gap, but it’s the useful advice she provides beneath the umbrella term, such as the benefits of developing a flexible mindset or strengthening personal connections, which stood out for me.

4. Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence, and Fuel Success

by Shadé Zahrai

As someone who has a propensity for overthinking and self-doubt, I appreciated Zahrai’s book. I’ll be honest: I think her Four A’s framework is a little too cutesy and risks oversimplifying. But I recommend this book nonetheless because Zahrai has a gift for explaining cognitive behavioral tools, such as reframing and self-labeling, in ways that make them understandable and accessible.

5. Spinosaur Tales: The Biology and Ecology of the Spinosaurs

by David Hone & Mark P. Witton

Dinosaurs are awesome. That fact alone is enough for me to recommend this book, but it being about the elusive Spinosaurus elevates this recommendation.

Paleontologists have been discovering new wrinkles about this mysterious species for decades, to the point where our understanding is practically evolving before our eyes. Hone and Witton’s book chronicles this scientific journey and all the surprising and chaotic twists it took along the way. A wonderful read!

6. Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life

by Ezekiel Emanuel

Coming from a health policy expert with an impressive CV, Emanuel’s message is surprisingly simple: You don’t have to obsess over diet and exercise to live a healthy and fulfilling life. Wellness is something you can, and should, enjoy.

His new book is about how to do that, and the surprising answer isn’t surprising at all. Emanuel reaffirms the common-sense advice we already know but have forgotten at a time when health advice is as ubiquitous as it is contradictory. Written in a caring and conversational style, I highly recommend this book. (And with a title like that, how can you not want to check it out?)

Kevin Dickinson is the books editor at Big Think. He holds a master’s in English and writing, and in addition to Big Think, his work has appeared in RealClearScience, Pop Matters, the Writer Magazine, and the Washington Post.

By Kevin Dickinson

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut. […] You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do. […] If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

For me, this is the single best piece of advice on offer in Stephen King’s On Writing (2000). Finding the time to read and reading widely are necessary not only for fiction writers but for anyone who wishes to express their ideas in writing.

It’s so fundamental to the craft that it’s not difficult to find other writers offering the same advice. William Faulkner probably gave it its most famous and quotable form: “Read, read, read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!” But my favorite rendition comes from Terry Pratchett: “Read with the mind-set of a carpenter looking at trees.”

Of course, the benefits of reading — such as improved concentration, boosted empathy, and reduced stress — are well known. But these are not the reasons writers recommend a voracious reading habit. If we dig a bit deeper, we can see they have something else in mind.

Consider, for instance, how Margaret Atwood phrased the advice in Second Words (1984): “It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.” Annie Proulx gave the same guidance more succinctly when she noted, “Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”

For these writers, reading isn’t just about expanding one’s vocabulary, mastering sentence structure, or learning to make a simile shine. They are making a more foundational case: Reading supplies writers with the raw materials for thinking on the page. Together, reading and writing form a single cognitive loop, and it’s only by engaging with both that we can transform the vague notions bouncing around in our minds into original ideas on the page.

Writing to someone else’s tune?

What’s perhaps odd here is that these authors felt the need to advise other writers to read in the first place. Maybe it’s just the circles I run in, but I don’t hear filmmakers advising other filmmakers over the need to watch movies or painters reminding their fellow brush jockeys to visit a gallery now and again.

Somehow, the relationship between reading and writing has become, if not unknown, at least underappreciated, and I would wager the reason stems from several misconceptions in the popular imagination.

For one, reading and writing are often seen as two distinct activities — one passive, the other active. We view reading (or listening) as simply an act of receiving, while writing (or speaking) is the act of giving. The written word acts like a kind of mental modem, moving communications from one head to another.

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I imagine this misconception stems from our school years — for many, the most writerly time of our lives. Here, reading and writing are treated as distinct processes: We read to take in information about a subject, and then we write to report what we have retained. Rather than a coordinated creative process, reading is the precursor to the test, and writing is a means of demonstrating what’s in our heads.

Another misconception is that outside influences corrupt the purity of our ideas and voices. This is the view that original ideas are crafted out of whole cloth. Reading while writing is equivalent to cheating on the test. You aren’t presenting your own answers; you’re literally copying out of the book.

Now, there’s no one way that any writer must pursue their craft, and some writers do feel the need to isolate themselves as much as possible to work. The novelist Zadie Smith compares them to solo violinists “who need complete silence to tune their instruments.” Or if you prefer the more Hollywood version: the writers who lock themselves in their studies to write their masterpieces in a sleepless, three-day sprint — influenced only by their genius and bottle of choice.

The misconception here is that abstaining from outside influences is the only way to pursue truly original work. Many writers, including Smith, read to seek out the influence and inspiration of other writers.

“My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigor when I’m too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I’m syntactically uptight,” she writes.

Smith compares this approach to musicians who want to “hear every member of the orchestra.” Playing alongside the melodious winds and pounding percussion of other musicians, a violinist can blend their sound together to create something with more depth of expression than any one instrument can manage alone. And reading provides writers with their intellectual orchestra.

From this vantage point, originality isn’t isolation; it’s the synthesis of different voices and ideas coming together to form something new.

For Smith, one of the great orchestral writers is the Romantic poet John Keats. Keats came to his art with an apprentice mindset, finding his concertmasters in the library. Anyone familiar with his poetry can see the influence of Shakespeare and Spenser at play. In their plays and poems, Keats learned how to express and transform his ideas through clever turns of phrase, an illuminating metaphor, or a lilting assonance. Yet one would be hard-pressed to say their inclusion makes Keats’s work any less original.

“He never feared influence — he devoured influences. He wanted to learn from them, even at the risk of their voices swamping his own.” Smith adds. “The term role model is so odious, but the truth is it’s a very strong writer who gets by without a model kept somewhere in mind.”

Connecting the dots

History is full of examples of writers drawing influence from disparate sources. Sometimes, as Smith noted above, these influences help steer a writer’s voice or expression. Other times, drawing influence from another discipline can help a writer explain their ideas through a memorable metaphor or analogy — such as Sigmund Freud using the story of Oedipus to explain his psychoanalytic theories, or Thomas Kuhn borrowing from political history for his concept of scientific paradigm shifts. Still other authors find seemingly unrelated influences through reading and fuse them together, inspiring their most original and famous works.

Mary Shelley drew from Gothic fiction, Greek mythology, and the then-cutting-edge science of galvanism to write Frankenstein (1818). In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Ursula K. Le Guin combined her lifelong interests in anthropology and Taoism with an alien contact story. One more example: Octavia Butler connected biology, mythology, and sociology with the history of colonization and slavery to craft Lilith’s Brood (1987–89).

These influences are obvious if you’ve read the stories, but in true orchestral fashion, it’s the bringing of these ideas and voices together that created something completely new. And while all my examples are science fiction — I’m on a bit of a kick at the moment — this connection of writing with reading has sparked originality across genres and domains.

Consider Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin didn’t happen upon evolution thanks to a eureka moment on the Galapagos Islands. The idea was already swimming through Victorian academic society. George Cuvier had established extinction as a reality in natural history, and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had developed a theory of species change through inherited traits. Even Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, put forth an evolutionary inkling of an idea in a poem.

Darwin’s contribution was to develop the theory of evolution by natural selection, providing a foundational mechanism for understanding how species change over time. He managed this not only by being observant, patient, and thoughtful, but also by taking his cues from the other members of his orchestra.

These included Charles Lyell’s The Principles of Geology (1830–33) — which presented Darwin with a theory of geological history that allowed his own theory to work — and Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) — which, while about economics, nonetheless spurred Darwin to think about the struggle for survival and reproduction. Then there was William Paley’s Natural Theology, which inspired Darwin to appreciate the forms of species and how those forms adapted to their environments — even if the two thinkers reached wildly different conclusions.

While Darwin’s once-in-a-generation genius is difficult to undersell, he would also be the first to credit the many different ideas and theories he encountered during his reading.

Or, as Philip Pullman put it: “When I’m reading, I’m looking for something to steal. […] Readers ask me all the time the traditional question, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ I reply: ‘We are all having ideas all the time. But I’m on the lookout for them. You’re not.’”

Thinking on the page

Even with his orchestra, Darwin didn’t simply transplant the theory of evolution by natural selection from his head to the page. He further sharpened and refined it through extensive correspondence and in penning On the Origin. Reading and writing weren’t separate activities for Darwin; together, they formed a type of extended cognition.

As William Zinsser points out in Writing to Learn (1988): “Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know — and what we don’t know — about whatever we’re trying to learn.”

In that book, Zinsser argues that writing isn’t simply the act of putting thoughts on a page; the very act of writing is an act of thinking.

Because writing is a physical activity — whether we use a word processor or pen and paper — it gives our thoughts a form we can interact with. Seeing a thought on the page can clue us into where our understanding may be cloudy, where a hole may trip up our logic, or where we may need to check our facts. It further allows us to shape our thoughts by sharpening our sentences, reorganizing the structure, or refining our expressions.

This process doesn’t just make our ideas more presentable on the page; it transforms them. (When writers say, “The only kind of writing is rewriting,” they have something like this in mind.) Reading can support this thinking process by connecting us with other ideas and voices.

For these reasons, Zinsser thought that students should be required to read and write across the curriculum. Mathematicians who could present the solutions to their formulas, anthropologists who could explain their theories, and musical theorists who could demystify their frameworks in writing wouldn’t just teach their readers; in the process, they would learn more about their subjects and come away with other ideas to pursue.

As with the authors quoted throughout this essay, for Zinsser, reading isn’t just a way to onboard new information, and writing isn’t just a way to tell the world what we know. They are a way to think and learn throughout our lives. Or, as he puts it in his other classic, On Writing Well (1976): “I’ve used writing to give myself an interesting life and a continuing education. If you write about subjects you think you would enjoy knowing about, your enjoyment will show in what you write. Learning is a tonic.”

By Josh Browning and Kevin Dickinson

The literary world is no safe haven from wild conspiracy theories. It has its own supposed cover-ups, extraterrestrials, and cryptids lurking in the bookish backwoods. These conspiracy theories aren’t typically harmful and can even offer some fun lore to draw you into the reading. Like all conspiracy theories, though, they distort our understanding of reality and history, and they can sometimes extend beyond the page to have far-reaching consequences.

A rose by any other name

Perhaps the most common literary conspiracies involve questions of authorship: the belief that a writer didn’t actually create the works credited to them. And it’s understandable why readers sometimes doubt the authenticity of the name on the cover.

For one, many authors use pseudonyms. Mary Ann Evans adopted the pen name “George Eliot” because she believed male novelists were taken more seriously; Stephen King became “Richard Bachman” because he was too prolific for the standard publishing cycle; and Benjamin Franklin pretended to be the dowager “Silence Dogood” to prank his brother James.

For another, some attributions are more a matter of convention than provable reality. Scholars can’t say with certainty that Homer existed, and even if he did, it remains an open question how much of The Iliad and The Odyssey can be attributed to him or the oral tradition that followed. Similar questions can be raised about the Chinese philosophers Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu. (No relation. Tzu is an honorific roughly translating to “master.”)

These facts leave plenty of space for wild speculation, even about modern authors with well-documented lives. Rumors claim that Thomas Pynchon is a pseudonym for the reclusive J.D. Salinger, or that Truman Capote wrote To Kill a Mockingbird while using his childhood friend Harper Lee as an authorial front. Both claims are false.

But without question, the most sweeping conspiracies over authorship surround none other than the Bard himself.

“There is an extraordinary — seemingly an insatiable — urge on the part of quite a number of people to believe that the plays of William Shakespeare were written by someone other than William Shakespeare,” the journalist and author Bill Bryson writes in his book on the playwright. “The number of published books suggesting — or more often insisting — as much is estimated now to be well over five thousand.”

Doubts over Shakespeare’s authorship gained traction in the mid-19th century with Delia Bacon. Like many before and after, Delia praised Shakespeare’s plays for their insights and rich language, but this adoration led her to believe that such artistry could not have been achieved by a man of such modest beginnings. She reasoned that the plays must have been written by an educated, world-traveled elite who then credited them to a lowly actor and theater manager — likely to distance himself from their true, subversive intent.

To prove her theory, Delia sailed to England, but instead of sifting through archives or reading primary sources like a historian, she combed the plays for “hidden meanings” and sought inspiration by “absorbing [the] atmospheres” of notable sites. Vibes scholarship, basically.

She came to believe that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Francis Bacon — again, no relation — with the help of a cadre of co-conspirators, including the poet Edmund Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh. While Delia enjoyed fleeting support from literary figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, her unsubstantiated claims were largely ridiculed.

That didn’t stop others from advancing their own anti-Stratfordian theories. Suspects have included James I, William Stanley, Anne Hathaway, Edward de Vere, and Christopher Marlowe — never mind that the last two died years before all of Shakespeare’s plays were finished.

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The inconvenience for all of these lay theories is the same that plagued Delia’s guesswork: They lack truly credible evidence. Meanwhile, scholars and historians have uncovered ample evidence to vouch for Shakespeare’s claim to the quill, including official court records that attribute specific plays to him.

Bryson sums it up nicely: “These people must have been incredibly gifted — to create, in their spare time, the greatest literature ever produced in English, in a voice patently not their own, in a manner so cunning that they fooled virtually everyone during their own lifetimes and for four hundred years afterward.”

Going down a killer rabbit hole

While some conspiracy theories deny that certain authors lived the writerly life, others insist they led a double life in the shadows. No, we’re not talking about a pedestrian affair or unpopular political affiliation. These conjectures aim to add chapters of secret identities and deadly rendezvous to an author’s biography.

Again, it’s understandable as some authors have, in fact, led double lives. To research his first novel, Harlan Ellison went undercover as a member of a street gang. George Orwell was outed as an informant for the Foreign Office’s covert propaganda unit, providing the department with a list of potential communists he called his “fellow-travellers.” And during World War II, children’s author Roald Dahl engaged in espionage while serving as a diplomat to the U.S.

Christopher Marlowe may also have been recruited into the spy game by Sir Francis Walsingham around 1585. Scholars can’t say for certain one way or the other — unless you’re Dahl, spying typically works that way — but the idea did inspire a well-reviewed mystery, “A Tip for the Hangman.”

But the wildest double life attributed to an author belongs to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. You may know him better as Lewis Carroll or, in the case of this conspiracy theory, Jack the Ripper.

Despite leaving a bloody trail of carnage throughout London’s Whitechapel district in 1888 and taunting authorities with letters full of bravado, Jack the Ripper has never been identified. A lineup of doctors, lawyers, butchers, and criminals has been floated as culprits, but who better to throw off the police than a former deacon who excelled at the sciences, entertained children, and worked as a university lecturer?

That must have been what Richard Wallace thought when he accused Carroll and Thomas Vere Bayne of being the true Whitechapel murderers in his books The Agony of Lewis Carroll (1990) and Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend (1996).

Wallace’s theory hinges on the author’s love of riddles and wordplay. According to it, Carroll hid confessions of his foul deeds inside his work as anagrams. For instance, Wallace claims that the famous opening lines of Carroll’s poem “The Jabberwocky” conceal a sneaky confession. Here’s Carroll’s poem:

“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe.”

And here’s Wallace’s decrypted version:

“Bet I beat my glands til, With hand-sword I slay the evil gender. A slimey theme; borrow gloves, And masturbate the hog more!”

If you think that’s a stretch, so did Karoline Leach, author of In the Shadow of the Dreamchild (1999). The book aims to dispel the many myths surrounding Carroll, and in it, Leach analyzes Wallace’s theory. She concludes that Carroll perpetrating such messy wordplay is more unbelievable than the idea of him moonlighting as a Victorian Dexter. She specifically notes that in one instance, Wallace had to substitute letters to make his anagrams work at all.

Leach went on to demonstrate the ridiculousness of Wallace’s evidence by applying his methodology to the opening line of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. Here’s Milne:

“Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now.”

And here’s Leach’s “decryption”:

“Stab red red women! CR is downing whores AA.” (“CR” obviously being a deranged Christopher Robin.)

Wallace’s theories fall apart without the anagrams, as well. In the Retrospect Journal, Kayla Greer points out that physical evidence of Carroll and Vere Bayne’s involvement is nonexistent, and Carroll was only in the right part of London for a few of the murders.

“By Wallace’s methodology,” Greer adds, “one could equally ‘prove’ that Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, or any prolific Victorian author was Jack the Ripper.”

A cold case (and nothing more?)

When a death is sudden, unexpected, and high-profile, it opens the doors to conspiratorial thinking. And literary history has plenty of mysterious deaths for theorists to choose from.

Some speculate that Albert Camus’s death in a car accident in 1960 was no accident, but a KGB hit in response to his criticisms of the Soviet government. Geoffrey Chaucer died of unknown causes in 1400, but that lack of evidence hasn’t stopped people from suspecting murder by order of King Henry IV. And Christopher Marlowe pops up again to secure the conspiracy hat trick. Marlowe was stabbed to death during a bar fight over a game of backgammon, but some claim the brawl covered up an assassination aimed at silencing him and protecting high members of the government. (Remember, he might have been a spy.) Others say it was faked to help him escape his enemies.

Meanwhile, Edgar Allan Poe’s death was not unlike something you’d find in one of his stories. On October 3, 1849, Poe was found in a gutter near a tavern after having been missing for five days. He was delirious and wearing someone else’s haggard clothes. After four incoherent days in the hospital, where he called out for a “Reynolds” who was never identified, he died at the age of 40.

Adding to the mystery, Poe’s death certificate and none of his medical records still exist. We only know that the attending physician, John Moran, said the cause of death was phrenitis (swelling of the brain). This generic diagnosis and the mysterious circumstances have led to many conjectures over the true cause. These have included rabies, substance abuse, carbon monoxide poisoning, heavy metal poisoning, a brain tumor, and murder.

The assumption that Poe died due to his love of the bottle has since been proven unlikely. While Poe had a reputation as a substance abuser who often became belligerent, this popular opinion was largely shaped by a slanderous obituary in the New York Tribune. Its writer, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, held a grudge against Poe and, despite becoming Poe’s literary executor, slandered the author’s name for years after his death.

It didn’t help that Joseph E. Snodgrass, an editor with medical training who helped with Poe after he was found, was a member of the temperance movement and used Poe as a strawman during lectures to highlight the dangers of drinking.

In actuality, Poe swore off alcohol after overcoming an illness and being told by his doctor that another drink would likely kill him. While it isn’t unheard of for an alcoholic to fall off the wagon, samples of Poe’s hair were tested in 2006 and showed low levels of lead (back in the day, the toxic metal made its way into wines and other alcoholic beverages as a sweetener or through contact with leaded glassware). While Poe’s hair showed levels many times higher than what is normal today, the results suggest he wasn’t drinking heavily toward the end of his life.

A hoax of meager genius

Books can also exude a fog of mystery, and literary hoaxes are penned to take advantage of this fact. While such hoaxes alone don’t often reach the heights of a full-blown conspiracy theory — more on that below — they can nonetheless misguide readers into accepting them as evidence of deep-state deception.

Examples include The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, which claim to be lost books of the Hebrew Bible containing magical incantations, but which first appeared in anonymous pamphlets in the 1800s. A century later, the West German magazine Stern purchased what its editors believed were 60 volumes of Adolf Hitler’s personal diaries; they were actually forgeries created by the conman Konrad Kujau.

Yet one of the oddest literary hoaxes in recent memory has to be the Simon Necronomicon. Odd because it’s no secret that the Necronomicon is made-up. The author H.P. Lovecraft devised the book as a plot device in his famous Cthulhu Mythos. In these horror stories, this magic tome is said to contain the history of the Old Ones — powerful, often evil cosmic beings — as well as unspeakable, arcane knowledge.

Lovecraft wrote his stories with an eye toward verisimilitude, and those featuring the Necronomicon are no different. He composed a centuries-long history for the book, even including a list of the academic institutions said to house extant copies. He would also reference it alongside “real” grimoires and alchemical texts, such as The Book of Dzyan (circa 1900) and Turba Philosophorum (circa 900).

His efforts were convincing enough that some readers came to believe the book actually existed. Libraries known for their collections of ancient manuscripts, including the Vatican Library, have received information requests for it, and after Lovecraft’s death, books sporting the name began appearing in occult bookstores. Many of these are obvious and playful homages to Lovecraft’s work, but others claim to be the real deal. The Simon Necronomicon stands with the latter.

Originally published in 1977, this Necronomicon is attributed simply to a “Simon,” though the actual author is likely the occultist Peter Levenda. In the introduction, Simon claims to have been given a Greek translation of a real Necronomicon by a mysterious monk and later verified its curses, incantations, and spells to predate most known religions.

But according to Gabriel McKee, librarian for collections and services at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, the book is actually “a mishmash of recontextualized Sumerian and Babylonian texts peppered with added references to fictional deities created by Lovecraft and the orientalist magical system of Aleister Crowley.” The translations aren’t even original. Simon plagiarized them from academic sources, throwing in a handful of Cthulhus and Yog-Sothoths for good measure.

“The Simon Necronomicon reads its ancient sources through a combination of medieval demonology, 19th-century Theosophy, and 20th-century pulp fiction,” McKee writes.

The book didn’t gain much traction beyond occult enthusiasts and edgy teenager cliques, but it did attract some popular attention during the trial of Rod Ferrell. In 1996, Ferrell and a group of friends murdered the parents of Heather Wendorf and then stole the family’s Ford Explorer. When the police apprehended the teens, they found copies of the Simon Necronomicon and The Witches’ Bible in the car.

Testimony at the trial revealed that Ferrell believed he was a vampire and his friends had formed a small cultish group named the “Vampire Clan.” His elaborate fantasy world, likely a mental escape from his otherwise harsh life, was constructed from extensive reading of not only occult works but also ancient prophetic and apocalyptic literature.

“The general public knows just enough about the history of the ancient Near East for it to view it as a place of mystery and strangeness,” McKee writes. “We actually know quite a lot about ancient Near Eastern cultures and their religious practices […], but historical fabrications expect and depend on ignorance. The more we learn, and the better we communicate that knowledge, the more tools we will have for opposing misconstructed history.”

A hoax with an unrivaled toll

While hoaxes and literary conspiracies can be provocative, they seldom have consequences more far-reaching than filling online listicles or breaking awkward silences at parties. But much like inspiring a vampire cult, they can sometimes motivate violent action. The Turner Diaries — a novel depicting an apocalyptic race war that has gained a reputation as the “bible of the racist right” — inspired Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.

Hoaxes and lay theories can also be actively weaponized to inspire violent action and conspiratorial worldviews. Hate propaganda can manipulate emotions, twist facts, and propagate outright lies, and as far as this use of writing goes, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has to take the cake. It’s a bloody, disgusting cake, but it takes it.

The Protocols is a fake document purporting to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders. During this fictitious meeting, members plan how they will take over the world and bring down Christianity. (Hot tip: Don’t take down the minutes of your global criminal conspiracies. The paper trail always comes back on you.)

While the origin of The Protocols is unknown, a Czarist official in Moscow named Sergei Nilus was one of the first to publish the hoax in 1905. He edited and released several versions afterward, each time adding a new account of how he happened upon it.

Since its initial dissemination, the document has been used to “prove” that a group of Jewish elites is conspiring for world domination. For instance, after the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Bolshevik Party’s rise to power, it was used to explain how “International Jewry” was to blame for communism, hence the term “Judeo-Bolshevism.” In fact, one reason there are so many variations of The Protocols is that they were adopted and adapted over the years by different antisemitic groups and narratives — each time being tweaked to fit that particular group’s grievances.

The Protocols spread like wildfire during the first half of the 20th century, circulating worldwide and inspiring other books and hateful rhetoric. The role it played in the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler’s own writing is well-documented. Henry Ford’s antisemitic volumes, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem (1920), were based on and included elements from it.

For more than 100 years, The Protocols has been used as a way to scapegoat, slander, and justify the murder of Jews, all despite being disproven as early as the 1920s. In his book The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs (1921), British diplomat and journalist Lucien Wolf debunked the hate propaganda, even noting how parts of The Protocols were plagiarized from a German novel in which the literal devil supports the Jews.

In the preface to his book, Wolf calls out his fellow Englishmen for spreading such disinformation:

“I confess to a feeling of shame at having to write this pamphlet at all. That reputable newspapers in this country should be seeking to transplant here the seeds of Prussian anti-Semitism, and that they should employ for this purpose devices so questionable and a literature so melodramatically silly, cannot but cause a sense of humiliation to any self-respecting Englishman.”

Like Delia Bacon’s unwillingness to accept the simple answer that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays, adherents of The Protocols allow their pre-existing biases to shape their worldview. Rather than letting the evidence influence their belief, the belief bends and distorts reality to a point where all evidence must fit within it or be discarded. Unlike Bacon’s story, however, The Protocols show that literary conspiracy theories aren’t guaranteed to remain on the fringe.