Books like Redirect

Any book written with an imaginative undertone gets to be amongst my favorites. In this brilliant book, the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight are discussed, which cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions.

What I really like is the penetrating insight and sparkling prose that the author has used. Moreover, the very interesting take on why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become has a flavor of its own. Mature readers will definitely love it!

I find this book answers questions many people ask: Why aren’t we always logical? What gets in the way of our making effective decisions?

I first read this book when I started my consulting practice and realized I needed to combine psychology with philosophy in teaching critical thinking in professional settings. People want to understand why we can be unreasonable in the first place. Kahneman’s book helped me improve my own thinking, making me aware of the ways my previous experiences quickly provide interpretations of new experiences.

I find the ability to “hit the pause button” regarding my response to a specific situation and to ask myself, “Is my immediate, intuitive response useful or misleading me?” is one of my most important insights from this book.

This book is one of those foundational books that shifted my approach to both personal and professional habits. The science and storytelling brought habit formation to life, showing me how small changes could drive big outcomes. Like Cal Newport’s and Gretchen Rubin's work, it’s practical and realistic, offering insights I could apply directly to my routines and business practices.

Duhigg’s breakdown of how habits work—and how to reshape them—gave me new tools for building sustainable, intentional habits and teaching others to do it, too. This one has stayed with me and remains a key influence on how I approach productivity.

It’s the 2nd book on my list that’s about happiness, but it’s more philosophical and personal than Dan Gilbert’s book. This book changed my life. It made me realize that I had an expectation that my life should be easy and comfortable. Before I read this book whenever something happened in my life that was not easy and comfortable – my plane was delayed, I got sick, a client was late paying an invoice – I would spin into unhappiness. Why was this happening to me? Everything was personal. Stuff happens all the time. What makes us miserable is how we react to it. I remember reading a passage from the book and feeling my frame of reference change. It permanently changed my view of myself and how I deal with life.

I first fell in love with Vedantam’s way of weaving storytelling with research via his podcast Hidden Brain. When I found out he had written a book I was thrilled, and his written account of our unconscious minds did not disappoint. Vedantam doesn’t shy away from anything (terrorism, capital punishment, race, gender, politics…) in tackling why our reasons for thinking things are not what we believe them to be. He helps us understand the power (for good or for bad) of our “hidden brains” in a way you will never forget.

I love this book because it tackles big questions on the female front—including those young girls have about religion: Why is Eve blamed for everything? Why is God always portrayed as a man?

Main character Agnes itches with questions. But girls aren’t supposed to question authority. As she thinks more and more about the deep things, Agnes wrestles when her own opinions and finds her courage to challenge the status quo—as every girl needs to do!

I think Helen Keller is one of the most fascinating and brilliant individuals in human history. In this book, she shows and tells us what it is like to be a person who cannot see, hear, or speak. I find the book quite moving. Some readers will be familiar with the biopics that have been made about Heller. Take my word these movies don’t offer the pleasure of reading Keller’s story. 

Are philosophers like detectives, in that they chase their culprit over any terrain, and follow any clue? What can count as a clue?

Given the right context, pretty much anything, a pencil placed here rather than there, a picture of a car, something someone said, a fingerprint, can count as a clue. Or are we more like technicians, like the fingerprint expert who is only allowed to look at a certain type of clue? The problem with being the fingerprint expert is that it can completely remove philosophers from their originating problems and turn them into mere technicians.

Ned Block is a detective, who has followed clues about the nature of consciousness deep into psychology and neuroscience. Here Block argues that there is a genuine distinction between seeing and thinking, and draws out the consequences of that for our theories of consciousness.

I still remember when my son’s speech therapist recommended this to me: she warned me that I would find it overwhelming because Temple had such huge challenges.

But I didn’t feel discouraged or overwhelmed at all. Grandin is so uniquely herself from beginning to end, so smart, so aware, so able to figure out both her own needs and those of the animals whose lives (and deaths) she improves, that I found the book totally uplifting, not to mention fascinating.

The fact that she singlehandedly made our slaughterhouses infinitely more humane proves the point my co-author and I are always trying to make: neurodivergent individuals will think of things no one else does and enrich any project or community they’re part of.

So many of us, when we’re starting out, don’t think of ourselves as movement starters. We just want to get others on board to help us make a change at our school, in our neighborhood, or on our team. We often don’t see ourselves as leaders; instead, we are hoping to find a community with a shared perspective or explore the possibility of making things just a little bit better. But how do we get started, and how do we scale what’s working? 

My friend, Jennifer Dulski, was the head of Groups at Facebook and the former president of Change.org, and her book is all about how we can each play a role in sparking change, whether we’re trying to bring about change in our company, community group, college, or in a startup.

Dulski offers practical techniques based on real-life experience. She gives wonderful and varied examples that remind us… show more.