100 Books Like Educated

A timeless meditation on purpose, suffering, and the human spirit. While not about entrepreneurship, this book is essential for anyone seeking to understand the deeper meaning behind their work. Frankl’s insight—that we can find meaning even in suffering—is profoundly relevant for founders navigating hardship and uncertainty. 

What struck me most about it was how Frankl captured the Holocaust not just as a historical event, but as a raw, existential landscape. I’ve seen many films and documentaries about that era, but Frankl’s account stands apart. His lens is philosophical, not just historical. His insight that meaning, not pleasure or power, is the primary driver of human life resonated deeply.

I've focused on the idea myself that many entrepreneurs pursue ventures not for wealth or control, but as a way to fill a deeper existential hole. Frankl’s writing felt honest, profound, and necessary. This is a serious and enduring book I’ll return… show more.

It’s not Hadrian’s love affair with the beautiful boy Antinous that swept me off my feet, nor the way Hadrian makes him a god after his mysterious death and builds a city dedicated to worshiping him.

That’s only a small part of a book overflowing with the emperor’s interior life, his fears and doubts and dreams. Yourcenar spent most of her life on and off writing this book, her life’s work. Filled with the exhilaration and perplexity of achieving absolute power and then holding onto it, we experience Hadrian as a profoundly paradoxical genius from the inside out. 

Walls’ recounts her unconventional childhood marked by poverty, instability, and the eccentric choices of her parents.

The memoir offers an unflinching but often tender portrait of a deeply flawed family and the complicated bonds of love and loyalty. Walls’s voice is both clear-eyed and compassionate as she revisits her past.

Wanting to make sense of my own dysfunctional family, I reread this book several times.

Almost impossible to put down—this was the first book that made me physically feel the words.

I wouldn’t call it enjoyable in the usual sense; the experience was excruciating. But that’s exactly what makes it unforgettable. Hillenbrand’s prose, paired with the true story of Louis Zamperini’s plunge from Olympic track star to the unrelenting hell of a POW camp, smacks you off your cozy little couch and right into a world where Sleepytime tea, candles, and Netflix don’t exist.

What struck me most was how it captured not only the brutality of survival, but the stubborn, almost irrational resolve of the human spirit—and the possibility of forgiveness that would defy logic. This isn’t a book that’s light to hold—it’s grit, torment, and triumph in equal parts. I recommend it because it inspires without sugarcoating—harrowing and uplifting in the same breath.

For anyone who wants proof of just how deep the… show more.

What I love most about Bird by Bird is the way that Anne Lamott characterises writing as a gift, a giving over to someone else in a manner akin only to being a parent.

While I am not a parent, I am inspired by this idea that the written word can make a person braver and better by virtue of opening them up to the world and people in new ways. Despite the hurdles and difficulties of the practice, which Lamott deftly outlines, she ultimately decides that a writer is pursuing an act of generosity and openness. I really love this idea.

There is a real lack of pretentiousness to Lamott’s writing, which allows you to take these nuggets and accept what otherwise might be sentimental claims that “writing is life” as simple truths. 

I love that this book does such a great job of capturing the many incongruities and quirks of life in South Africa, a country with such a complex, troubled history that it is still struggling to reconcile.

It’s a country of immense diversity (racially, politically, and culturally), which leads to some absurd situations. Some funny, some tragic. And it’s set against an incredibly unique and beautiful natural backdrop, and it’s at the bottom of the world, literally representing the global south/periphery. So there’s a ton of dramatic tension inherent.

I also relate with Noah’s story just in terms of the cross-cultural element; growing up with parents from different places and never quite fitting in. And yet he tackles these very serious, very bleak situations and experiences, at both the micro and macro levels, with humor.

Miep Gies was one of the people who hid Anne Frank, her family, and four friends in the Secret Annex in Amsterdam in 1942.

At great risk, four of Otto Frank’s employees secured food stamps from the underground and took care of the hiders for an astonishing two years and one month before they were betrayed. Gies’s book gives a real sense of what it was like to live under enemy occupation when it was impossible to trust anyone.

“We were no longer keeping silent. We had lost the habit of speech. Do you understand the difference?” she once said. She didn’t consider herself heroic for helping the Franks. “It was simple. You were asked. You said yes.”

I want to hug this charming, wise lady! 

She went through a hard time by believing she had choices. I admire her for not being defeated. 

Now a celebrated psychologist, trauma specialist, inspirational speaker, and all-around loveably cute grandma, her story was gripping and moving, especially her brave trip to return to the Auschwitz concentration camp, to face the trauma of her time there during World War 2.

I was awestruck and impressed by how she confirmed her choice and life’s mission to be happy and helpful, no matter what. I was inspired, to say the least. It convinced me that if she can do that, I can tackle a few challenges too.

She is my new sweet Nana.

This is a fascinating historical novel about Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, Patsy Jefferson. Aside from learning much more about history than I ever did in high school or college, I enjoyed reading about the relationship that she had with her father. 

It’s difficult, I think, to have a relationship with a man like Jefferson who was devoted to his ideals and dreams first and to his family second. He had goals that were so immense that there was no competing with them. And yet, Patsy is completely devoted to her father and his goals. It’s a story about loving an imperfect man and making sacrifices.

It gave me a different perspective on a historical figure, but it also made me think about my own relationship with my father because I could relate to coming second or third in the life of a father you love. I know what it’s like… show more.

Michelle made me laugh, made me cry, and made me feel the full weight of reconnecting with a mother only to lose her.

I related deeply to her sense of self unraveling after losing the person who anchored her world—I lost my own mother in my late twenties. Through her vivid memories of time spent with her mother and grandmother, and her journey of reclaiming herself through the foods of her childhood, Michelle pulled me in and carried me forward.