Here are 100 books that Of Yesteryear fans have personally recommended if you like Of Yesteryear. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Her

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Author Of something like

From my list on poetry where you can find pieces of you.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have created art from an early age. Years later, my studies in civil engineering allowed me to combine my love for the arts with my belief in an orderly world. Meanwhile, reading and writing have always been my favorite pursuits. While collaborating as an editor with other authors, assisting them in their writing endeavors, in 2014, I wrote and published my first book. Sharing my writing on Instagram gave birth to the idea of my first poetry book, something like, published in 2018. Since then, two more poetry collections have been published: A TriAngle in 2019 and something like in reverse in 2020.

Maria's book list on poetry where you can find pieces of you

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Why Maria loves this book

If there is a manual for men on how to treat women with love, care, and most importantly, respect, then this is it. 

Of course, it takes great courage for a man to read every page carefully and then generously give a woman what she deserves without selfishness. 

I love that Pierre Alex Jeanty shares his wisdom from a man's perspective, and I wish a substantial male audience would read Her.

By Pierre Alex Jeanty , TreManda Pewett (illustrator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Her as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Women are misunderstood. I’ve heard it many times, so have you. Fewer things are more frustrating than voicing concerns and not truly being heard. Or trying to express yourself, but not finding the right words.

“HER” is collection of poems that has become an inspiration for many women and a guide for many men. Women are praising this book because EVERY woman can see a reflection of herself and her heart on these pages. Originally written from the perspective of a man trying to help other men get a clue, this short and simple read has become a go-to for…


If you love Of Yesteryear...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

Book cover of Pillow Thoughts

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Author Of something like

From my list on poetry where you can find pieces of you.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have created art from an early age. Years later, my studies in civil engineering allowed me to combine my love for the arts with my belief in an orderly world. Meanwhile, reading and writing have always been my favorite pursuits. While collaborating as an editor with other authors, assisting them in their writing endeavors, in 2014, I wrote and published my first book. Sharing my writing on Instagram gave birth to the idea of my first poetry book, something like, published in 2018. Since then, two more poetry collections have been published: A TriAngle in 2019 and something like in reverse in 2020.

Maria's book list on poetry where you can find pieces of you

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Why Maria loves this book

This is a book full of enthusiasm and optimism, even when describing the darkest parts of life. Honestly, the pain hurt less after reading this book. 

It was a one-sitting read, and I thought there was a conversation between Courtney Peppernell and me the whole time. 

It felt as if my best friend and I were talking.

By Courtney Peppernell ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pillow Thoughts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Make a cup of tea and let yourself feel.

Pillow Thoughts is a collection of poetry and prose about heartbreak, love, and raw emotions. It is divided into sections to read when you feel you need them most.


Book cover of Letters to My Lover from Behind Asylum Walls

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Author Of something like

From my list on poetry where you can find pieces of you.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have created art from an early age. Years later, my studies in civil engineering allowed me to combine my love for the arts with my belief in an orderly world. Meanwhile, reading and writing have always been my favorite pursuits. While collaborating as an editor with other authors, assisting them in their writing endeavors, in 2014, I wrote and published my first book. Sharing my writing on Instagram gave birth to the idea of my first poetry book, something like, published in 2018. Since then, two more poetry collections have been published: A TriAngle in 2019 and something like in reverse in 2020.

Maria's book list on poetry where you can find pieces of you

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Why Maria loves this book

Every letter of "Sweet Jane'' to her lover "Eleanor" could be a letter written to the person you love the most but you cannot be with, a letter to the person you think of to escape from your hard reality when isolated. 

In each of those letters, I found the memories of the loved one blended with the day-to-day survival, written impeccably by Robin Sinclair, because I could sense the agony and the despair when all one has left is a pen, paper, and feelings.

By Robin Sinclair ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Letters to My Lover from Behind Asylum Walls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A modern gothic tale of letters written by Sweet Jane to her lover, Eleanor, recounting and obscuring the dark secret that lead to Sweet Jane being committed.

PRAISE FOR LETTERS TO MY LOVER FROM BEHIND ASYLUM WALLS
Written from an asylum, these epistles provide something more “delicate and wrathful” than the expectation that our interned speaker has a tenuous grip on reality. Instead, we witness moments of wisdom and lucidity made possible because the strength of Sweet Jane’s love for Eleanor is greater than the weight of her trauma. These poems guide us through the questions we must ask about…


If you love Lauren Eden...

Book cover of Coyote Weather

Coyote Weather by Amanda Cockrell,

Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.

Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…

Book cover of Self Love Poetry: For Thinkers & Feelers

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Author Of something like

From my list on poetry where you can find pieces of you.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have created art from an early age. Years later, my studies in civil engineering allowed me to combine my love for the arts with my belief in an orderly world. Meanwhile, reading and writing have always been my favorite pursuits. While collaborating as an editor with other authors, assisting them in their writing endeavors, in 2014, I wrote and published my first book. Sharing my writing on Instagram gave birth to the idea of my first poetry book, something like, published in 2018. Since then, two more poetry collections have been published: A TriAngle in 2019 and something like in reverse in 2020.

Maria's book list on poetry where you can find pieces of you

Maria Tzoutzopoulou Why Maria loves this book

While reading this book, I have been trying to figure out what I am: 

a thinker or a feeler. Melody Godfred chooses a fascinating way to write this book. So on the left page, she writes for a thinker (a left-brained person), and on the right page, she writes for a feeler (a right-brained person). 

I will have to count the number of pages representing me as I go through the pages to find out which hemisphere of my brain is dominant, the left or the right.

By Melody Godfred ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Self Love Poetry as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Readers have called her work "life changing," "pandemic medicine," and "part of my daily ritual." Oprah Magazine and the Today Show have featured her work for its timely, uplifting wisdom. Now, Self Love Philosopher Melody Godfred shares her first poetry book, Self Love Poetry: For Thinkers & Feelers, a collection of 200 thought-provoking and heart-opening self love poems.

In Self Love Poetry, Godfred explores concepts like authenticity, surrender, resilience, gratitude, believing in yourself, and of course, love, through 100 pairs of poems, each dedicated to a central theme. On the left side of the book are "thinker" poems that light…


Book cover of East of Eden

Andrea B. Rugh Author Of In Search of Worldviews

From my list on deep dive into hot button topics you need to know more about.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, when my grandmother needed quiet, she sat me down with a stack of National Geographics. The pictures stimulated my interest in foreign cultures. Similarly, spending time in a scientific community awakened a curiosity in the natural world. Completing a PhD in anthropology gave me the tools to realize these goals—immersion in foreign cultures being a main one. When immersion was not possible, books provided a happy substitute.  The anthropologist Clifford Geertz once said, “Anthropologists hope to find in the little what eludes them in the large, to stumble upon general truths while sorting through special cases” (1968:4). This has largely been my approach.

Andrea's book list on deep dive into hot button topics you need to know more about

Andrea B. Rugh Why Andrea loves this book

It seems odd to add a novel, written in 1952, to non-fiction books delving into hot-button topics...

Better than any current book I know, East of Eden is a classic of human relationships, bringing us back to the greatest mystery of all—why human behavior is so unpredictable. Purported to be a retelling of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, it is much more than that, in its exploration of good and evil, genetic inheritance, contextual influences, ethnic traits, human needs, and innate capacities, all elements touched on in the other four books.

In the end, Steinbeck implies that deep questions can never be predictable because they depend on the Hebrew concept “timshel," ("thou mayest"), the essential question of the day, the power of choice.

By John Steinbeck ,

Why should I read it?

21 authors picked East of Eden as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

California's fertile Salinas Valley is home to two families whose destinies are fruitfully, and fatally, intertwined. Over the generations, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the First World War, the Trasks and the Hamiltons will helplessly replay the fall of Adam and Eve and the murderous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

East of Eden was considered by Steinbeck to be his magnum opus, and its epic scope and memorable characters, exploring universal themes of love and identity, ensure it remains one of America's most enduring novels. This edition features a stunning new cover by renowned…


Book cover of The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank

Betty Adams Author Of I Have the Data

From my list on to laugh at the absurdity of human nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

Humans are absurd. We are. Short stories that present this in a true and honest fashion, without being cruel or vulgar are a rare and delicious gem. In all of these books there is not a single ounce of malice or bitterness. Humans are born, we live, we suffer, and then we die. These books don’t deny this, or ignore it, instead they choose to focus on the funny, the fun, the absurd lives that we live. 

Betty's book list on to laugh at the absurdity of human nature

Betty Adams Why Betty loves this book

Life happens. The septic tank overflows. Girls get in fights. Boys track dirt over your best carpet. You are absolutely going to ruin their lives with your attempt to explain the facts of life. Erma Bombeck takes these realities and laughs at them. You can’t help but laugh along with her from her tiny suburban home to her efforts to “forgive her enemies.”

By Erma Bombeck ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The “marvelously funny” and much-loved humorist explores the perils of suburban living in this New York Times bestseller (Vogue).
For years, the Bombecks have heard rumors of a magical land called Suburbia where the air is clean, the grass is trimmed, and children don’t risk getting mugged on their walk to school. After watching their friends flee the city for subdivided utopias like Bonaparte’s Retreat and Mortgage Mañana, Erma and her family load up their belongings and cry, “Station wagons . . . ho!” But life on the suburban frontier is not as perfect as they had hoped. The trees…


If you love Of Yesteryear...

Book cover of Temple of Dreams: A Novel of Now and Then

Temple of Dreams by Carolyn Mathews,

Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…

Book cover of Non-Stop

Arnie Benn Author Of The Intrepid: Dawn Of The Interstellar Age

From my list on sci-fi classics that offer insight into human nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since childhood, I have been obsessed with understanding everything — science and the universe. Now, in this age of the JWST and a burgeoning space industry, I do sub-quantum mechanics research at an international physics think-tank, The Quantum Bicycle Society. My own hard sci-fi novel is intended to help publicize these scientific advances, as well as the behavioral psychology concepts that are the subject of my next nonfiction book, The Animal In The Mirror. The books on this list represent the foundation of inspiration that propelled my formative sci-fi journey, stories that also shine the light of insight onto our shared, instinctive nature.

Arnie's book list on sci-fi classics that offer insight into human nature

Arnie Benn Why Arnie loves this book

This is an evocative story world with many great twists as the plot unfolds, and I’m a sucker for a great twist. I also love the very cool mix of sci-fi, human evolution, and complicated choices.

It not only explores how we might evolve on a journey so long that our tribal factions have forgotten we are even on a journey, but it gets even more interesting when we find out where we are.

By Brian Aldiss ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Non-Stop as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Curiosity was discouraged in the Greene tribe. Its members lived out their lives in cramped Quarters, hacking away at the encroaching ponics. As to where they were - that was forgotten.

Roy Complain decides to find out. With the renegade priest Marapper, he moves into unmapped territory, where they make a series of discoveries which turn their universe upside-down ...

Non-Stop is the classic SF novel of discovery and exploration; a brilliant evocation of a familiar setting seen through the eyes of a primitive.


Book cover of The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Dalton Conley Author Of The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture

From my list on understand nature and nurture.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having grown up in a low-income neighborhood of housing projects as the son of bohemian artists, I always had a keen interest in understanding why some people got ahead while others floundered. Being a sociology professor at Princeton only got me so far. I had to get another Ph.D. in biology to understand that it was not nature or nurture that makes us who we are but the combination of our unique genetic inheritance and our particular social circumstances. The books I recommended all tackle the question of nature and nurture from one angle or another. Hope you enjoy them and learn as much as I did reading them.

Dalton's book list on understand nature and nurture

Dalton Conley Why Dalton loves this book

Published in 2002, this is the book that pushed the pendulum back from the canard that we are entirely shaped by our environmental circumstances. Pinker confronts the reality that we are biological creatures, but far from painting a cold, deterministic view of human behavior, this book is ultimately a defense of social progress.

Pinker shows that understanding our innate tendencies does not justify discrimination or fatalism but rather empowers us to build better societies by working with, rather than against, human nature. Few books changed the way I see the world, but this is one of them. 

After reading it, I was inspired to go back to school and study biology—in order to merge it with social science—to get a complete picture of what makes us tick.

By Steven Pinker ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Blank Slate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now.

"Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time

Updated with a new afterword

One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses…


Book cover of The Winds of Heaven

Bibi Berki Author Of The Youngster

From my list on books that explore mother and daughter relationships under strain.

Why am I passionate about this?

Some writers produce historically important novels of our life and times. I’ve always preferred the “smaller,” timeless stories that dig deep into domestic lives and relationships. For me, the best adventures are always the psychological ones. The bond between mothers and daughters is a rich, if perhaps underexplored, source of literary tension. Often fraught and a battle between deep love and debilitating frustration, it’s the stuff of the highest drama. In The Youngster, the daughter and mother have landed in a place of mutual love, which is then tested by extraordinary – and shocking – circumstances.

Bibi's book list on books that explore mother and daughter relationships under strain

Bibi Berki Why Bibi loves this book

In this book, a widowed mother is shunted between three unwelcoming grown daughters in this touching and entertaining study of obsolescence.

If, like me, you lap up the ins and outs of family relationships and enjoy the flaws more than the perfections of human nature, then this is your next literary escape.

By Monica Dickens ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Winds of Heaven as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this poignant novel, Monica Dickens explores the complexities of family relationships and the challenges of growing up. Set in England in the early 20th century, the story follows young Louise as she navigates the trials of adolescence and the demands of her unconventional family. With compassion and insight, the author captures the joys and sorrows of ordinary life, making this a timeless work of fiction.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the "public domain in the United…


If you love Lauren Eden...

Book cover of Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS by Amy Carney,

When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…

Book cover of The Self Delusion: The Surprising Science of How We Are Connected and Why That Matters

Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson Author Of The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone's Well-Being

From my list on busting common myths about our human nature.

Why are we passionate about this?

We are social epidemiologists trying to understand how the societies we live in affect our health. Together, we try to communicate our scientific research to politicians and policy-makers, but even more importantly to everyone who is curious about how our worlds shape our wellbeing and who want to work together for positive change.  We co-founded a UK charity, The Equality Trust, to build a social movement for a more equal society, and we are Global Ambassadors for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, an international collaboration of organisations and individuals working to transform economic systems.

Kate's book list on busting common myths about our human nature

Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson Why Kate loves this book

You probably view any connection to nature that you feel as a purely emotional and/or intellectual experience. 

But what if we’re not individuals disconnected from other people and nature, but instead connected to nature and one another by biology and evolution in ways that have powerful implications for our ability to create societies that sustain both us as people and the planet we live on? 

Like all our book picks, this one chimes with our own research – the more we learn about our real place in the world and how our world creates our realities, the better able we’ll be to change the world.

By Tom Oliver ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Self Delusion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

We are much more connected to nature and each other than it seems. We perceive ourselves as autonomous, discrete individuals with an unchanging inner self that persists throughout our lifetime, but this is an illusion.

On a physical, psychological and cultural level, we are all much more intertwined than we know: we cannot use our bodies to define our independent existence because most of our 37 trillion cells have such a short lifespan that we are essentially made anew every few weeks; the molecules that make up our bodies have already been component parts of countless other organisms, from ancient…


Book cover of Her
Book cover of Pillow Thoughts
Book cover of Letters to My Lover from Behind Asylum Walls

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