Here are 19 books that Awe fans have personally recommended if you like
Awe.
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My interest in healing and nature stems from a very particular source—my own search for answers in the wake of my wife’s premature death in 2007. I’d read somewhere that loss often either engulfs someone or propels them forward, and I didn’t want to end up in the former category, particularly as I had a young daughter to look after. So this list represents an urgent personal quest that started years ago and still continues to this day. The books have been a touchstone, a vital support, and a revelation—pieces in the jigsaw of a recovery still incomplete. I hope they help others as they’ve helped me.
I adore this book because it is so unique—I’ve never read anything quite this specific or niche which seems so all-encompassing.
It is the story of a life lost, and a life found. Of a father that dies and how the recovery of his daughter is tied up with the start of a new relationship—with a goshawk.
At the outset, the author is so wonderfully eloquent on all aspects of loss; the sudden jarring sense of confusion when a person dies and you have their possessions still in your hands; the struggle to keep in touch with reality (“for weeks I felt like I was made of dully burning metal”); the desperation to see the back of grief when new relationships are desperately grasped at, and fail of course, because of that desperation.
The goshawk saves her (and us) from the darkness, as she becomes gripped with the…
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Awe can make me feel simultaneously insignificant and fully, freshly alive. Witnessing a total solar eclipse or reading a story of remarkable human endurance, it’s easy to feel awestruck. It takes more patience and practice to experience awe in the subtle and ordinary, but it’s there too, in abundance, if I can see the mystery in the familiar. As a writer, longtime meditator, and lover of the natural world, I believe we can’t live meaningfully without wonder. We’re meant to be lit up, humbled, and curious about this life. To me, the world is magic, and we’ve been called on stage to participate in the trick.
I read this book on a 2-week river trip down the Colorado, which made the read all the more gripping. The Grand Canyon is awe-inspiring even if you’re only gazing into its beguiling depths from a vista point—moreso if you’re accompanying seasoned river runner Kenton Grua in his attempt to smash a speed record riding a storm-swollen, raging Colorado in a wooden dory.
The drama of Grua’s determination and daring kept me turning pages, but I also loved learning about the history of the Canyon, its great river, and its dedicated and colorful tribe of river runners. My copy is tattered from being stuffed in my dry bag, but the book’s imagery and energy don’t fade.
From one of Outside magazine’s “Literary All-Stars” comes the thrilling true tale of the fastest boat ride ever, down the entire length of the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon, during the legendary flood of 1983.
In the spring of 1983, massive flooding along the length of the Colorado River confronted a team of engineers at the Glen Canyon Dam with an unprecedented emergency that may have resulted in the most catastrophic dam failure in history. In the midst of this crisis, the decision to launch a small wooden dory named “The Emerald Mile” at the head of the…
Awe can make me feel simultaneously insignificant and fully, freshly alive. Witnessing a total solar eclipse or reading a story of remarkable human endurance, it’s easy to feel awestruck. It takes more patience and practice to experience awe in the subtle and ordinary, but it’s there too, in abundance, if I can see the mystery in the familiar. As a writer, longtime meditator, and lover of the natural world, I believe we can’t live meaningfully without wonder. We’re meant to be lit up, humbled, and curious about this life. To me, the world is magic, and we’ve been called on stage to participate in the trick.
When I want to be astonished by the fierce and tender realities of the natural world—which is pretty much always—I read the late poet Mary Oliver. These are immersive essays by a writer who infused the very act of observation with a sacred energy—in her own words, “attention is the beginning of devotion.”
The essays are alive with animal life and soar with Oliver’s signature, forthright voice. In one essay, she rescues an injured gull. In another, she forages the eggs of a snapping turtle for dinner. Oliver humbly witnesses and partakes of the mystery and turns companionably to her reader with stirring questions: “Do you think there is anything not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else?”
One of O, The Oprah Magazine's Ten Best Books of the Year
The New York Times bestselling collection of essays from beloved poet, Mary Oliver.
"There's hardly a page in my copy of Upstream that isn't folded down or underlined and scribbled on, so charged is Oliver's language . . ." -Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"Uniting essays from Oliver's previous books and elsewhere, this gem of a collection offers a compelling synthesis of the poet's thoughts on the natural, spiritual and artistic worlds . . ." -The New York Times
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Awe can make me feel simultaneously insignificant and fully, freshly alive. Witnessing a total solar eclipse or reading a story of remarkable human endurance, it’s easy to feel awestruck. It takes more patience and practice to experience awe in the subtle and ordinary, but it’s there too, in abundance, if I can see the mystery in the familiar. As a writer, longtime meditator, and lover of the natural world, I believe we can’t live meaningfully without wonder. We’re meant to be lit up, humbled, and curious about this life. To me, the world is magic, and we’ve been called on stage to participate in the trick.
In these turbulent and often-dour times, Ross Gay’s book is in my medicine cabinet. Primarily a poet, Gay takes up a daily practice of finding delight and recording it, developing what he calls a “delight muscle.” I think of delight as awe’s less flamboyant cousin: not flashy, but definitely related.
I love these short, spirited, funny, loose-limbed essays in which Gay shares discovered delights, often many more than one per essay, from the praying mantis on an abandoned pint glass at a café to the tomato seedling carried onto a plane, from the hard-to-break habit of annoyance to the surprisingly clean and pleasant porta potty—and I get to go along for the ride.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As Heard on NPR's This American Life 'The delights he extols here (music, laughter, generosity, poetry, lots of nature) are bulwarks against casual cruelties . . . contagious in their joy' New York Times
The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.
Among Gay's funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend's unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an aeroplane, the silent nod of…
I am an Associate Professor of political science at Colgate University. I grew up in a home with tremendous ideological diversity and rigorous political disputes, which caused my interest in learning more about why and how people become their political selves. This interest developed into an academic background in the field of political psychology, which uses psychological theories to understand the origins and nature of political attitudes. Out of this scholarship, I developed a theory about the relationship between closed minds and partisan polarization, which I examine in my book. Now I am looking for ways to create open minds and foster a less polarized community.
Michael Pollan’s scientific and personal investigations into the powers of psychedelics reveal how malleable our brains and minds are and illustrate the potential for people to change from a closed-minded way of viewing the world to one that is considerably more open-minded.
Pollan’s review of the scientific research on psychedelics shows, for instance, that the psychedelic compounds can lead to changes in the openness to experience dimension of Big Five personality traits. This and other similar findings, as well as Pollan’s narrative about his own personal experiences, are useful for suggesting another potential mechanism for changing minds.
"Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured." -New York Times
A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book
A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences
When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such…
I have dedicated four decades to guiding couples toward deeper intimacy and understanding. My passion for relationship dynamics has driven me to teach couples courses for over 30 years, experiences from which my book listed below was directly inspired. Witnessing countless relationships blossom through improved communication and emotional connection fuels my enthusiasm. I have selected books for this list that personally moved and enlightened me, each contributing unique insights into cultivating richer, more fulfilling relationships and sparking genuine transformations in myself and the couples I've supported.
I love how honest David Brooks is about his own challenges with opening up to people and really leaving them feeling seen and heard. As he reviewed many of his own inadequacies, it allowed me to review the ways in which I might be falling short of my own ideals to leave each person I meet feeling seen and heard.
Since I teach people how to do this in my own workshops, I was constantly able to add David’s insights to my own.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain
As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”
And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am an Associate Professor of political science at Colgate University. I grew up in a home with tremendous ideological diversity and rigorous political disputes, which caused my interest in learning more about why and how people become their political selves. This interest developed into an academic background in the field of political psychology, which uses psychological theories to understand the origins and nature of political attitudes. Out of this scholarship, I developed a theory about the relationship between closed minds and partisan polarization, which I examine in my book. Now I am looking for ways to create open minds and foster a less polarized community.
Jamil Zaki’s investigations into the psychology of empathy suggest it may be an important resource to combat rising levels of political polarization. Zaki makes a strong case that empathy is a malleable characteristic—that it can be grown or expanded.
He suggests that we can train our minds to empathize beyond our narrow ingroups. Collectively, these findings, and others, lead me to believe that a more empathic community may be a more open one.
“In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever.”—Angela Duckworth, author of Grit
Don’t miss Jamil Zaki’s TED Talk, “We’re experiencing an empathy shortage, but we can fix it together,” online now.
Empathy is in short supply. We struggle to understand people who aren’t like us, but find it easy to hate them. Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an “empathy deficit.” Since then, things seem to have only…
I am an Associate Professor of political science at Colgate University. I grew up in a home with tremendous ideological diversity and rigorous political disputes, which caused my interest in learning more about why and how people become their political selves. This interest developed into an academic background in the field of political psychology, which uses psychological theories to understand the origins and nature of political attitudes. Out of this scholarship, I developed a theory about the relationship between closed minds and partisan polarization, which I examine in my book. Now I am looking for ways to create open minds and foster a less polarized community.
In this book, literary theorist Gary Saul Morson describes the competing ways in which Russian ideologues and novelists answered the “timeless questions” about human nature, fate, and politics. Morson’s analysis clearly shows that novelists and poets allow for much more complexity and nuance in their worldviews than ideologues. The famous Russian writers, in other words, appear to excel in the type of open-minded thinking that I argue is conducive to liberal democratic values.
By reading Morson’s book, one sees clearly the importance of Russia’s literary traditions and how their works inform an open-minded outlook on the timeless questions of human existence.
A noted literary scholar traverses the Russian canon, exploring how realists, idealists, and revolutionaries debated good and evil, moral responsibility, and freedom.
Since the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has posed questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom with a clarity and intensity found nowhere else. In this wide-ranging meditation, Gary Saul Morson delineates intellectual debates that have coursed through two centuries of Russian writing, as the greatest thinkers of the empire and then the Soviet Union enchanted readers with their idealism, philosophical insight, and revolutionary fervor.
Morson describes the Russian literary tradition as…
I’ve been doing research on polarization for most of my career as an economist and have focused on affective polarization in US politics since 2015. As a behavioral economist, I’m interested in how false and biased beliefs contribute to affective polarization. As a microeconomist I’m also generally interested in economy—not “the economy,” but the efficient use of resources—and affective polarization leads to a lot of wasted time and resources. This happens in politics at all levels, and in relationships of all types—neighbors, colleagues, spouses, siblings—as we all know from experience. So, I’m hoping to try to understand this bias better and cut down on it where we can.
This book is quite different from the others on my list in that the author is a total outsider to politics: Elwood is a former professional poker player.
But it’s the book that resonates with me the most as it directly makes the case that affective polarization is bad for the country and is to a large extent misguided—and citizens across the spectrum should actively try to overcome and fight it. Elwood writes informally and engagingly while still referring to tons of academic research and tackling many thorny recent issues in detail.
If there was one book that I would ask my most polarized fellow Americans to read carefully this would probably be it. Poker champs tend to be astute observers of human psychology—think Annie Duke and Maria Konnikova—and Elwood maintains this tradition.
This is a book about our American divides by Zachary Elwood, host of the psychology podcast People Who Read People. Learn more about this book and its author at www.American-Anger.com.
"I can’t think of anyone I’ve seen who better practices what they preach, who better lives their ideals about depolarization. His book has an earnest, vulnerable, plainspoken style which parallels his speaking style in his podcast. He seems throughout to anticipate negative reactions from readers on both the left and the right..." - from a review by David Foster at KnowTheSystem.org
America is deeply divided. We don't just disagree on…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve been doing research on polarization for most of my career as an economist and have focused on affective polarization in US politics since 2015. As a behavioral economist, I’m interested in how false and biased beliefs contribute to affective polarization. As a microeconomist I’m also generally interested in economy—not “the economy,” but the efficient use of resources—and affective polarization leads to a lot of wasted time and resources. This happens in politics at all levels, and in relationships of all types—neighbors, colleagues, spouses, siblings—as we all know from experience. So, I’m hoping to try to understand this bias better and cut down on it where we can.
Preventing Polarization is, as the title implies, a guide for educators on how to reduce polarization in the next generation. So, it’s unlikely to lead to immediate progress with polarization—but who knows, maybe some adults in positions of power might take some lessons from it as well.
Anyway, I love the premise here as I do think that education is probably crucial for long-term progress with this difficult part of human nature. Just as we must teach our kids to be tolerant and kind toward those from different racial and religious backgrounds or are different from ourselves in any number of ways—we must teach our kids to not be excessively effective polarized!
Are you ready to break down conflict and build consensus on polarizing topics?
Ideally, education equips students to care about the world and helps them shape their futures. In an era that has become incredibly polarized, we can help our students learn how to come together despite differences.
Michelle Blanchet and Brian Deters show how all educators can equip our youth with skills to become active and engaged citizens. A one-off course on civics is not enough.
Preventing Polarization offers basic strategies that every teacher can use. You will create experiences to help students break down barriers through activities and…
