Here are 100 books that Rest in Power fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a psychiatrist-novelist. As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen many patients struggling with infertility and miscarriage. As a novelist, I became intrigued with the idea of having false pregnancy (pseudocyesis) be a key element in a character’s life. My primary goal was to create an engrossing good read. I also wanted to show the psychological trauma of infertility/miscarriage. Another goal was to portray psychiatric patients, the psychiatrists who treat them, and psychiatry in a realistic way. I’m so gratified by the reader reviews: “gripping”...“spell-binding”...“rich, satisfying read”...“a page-turner”...“Illuminating”.
This extraordinary book combines a lived experience with the powerful writing of an accomplished author. Unexpectedly, in her mid-thirties, she finds a man to love and a baby is on the way. But then, the agony: the baby dies in utero in the ninth month. She tackles head-on the deepest feelings and questions this brings. I like the way she unsparingly describes her experience and her grief, and then how she processes this and finds a way to move on.
"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.
This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from…
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…
When my father died in 1998, bladder cancer, I was 41 years old and privileged to be his primary caregiver for five weeks. My first major loss and it was as though a mack truck had been driven through my chest. Ten years later, my mother died, after nine years of dementia, which is like losing someone twice. That was a more ravaging grief. Twelve years later, my nephew died, a month away from his 36th birthday. And in 2022, one close friend of mine took his own life and another died of cancer at age 57. Grief is the subject I gravitate toward in the books I read and the essays I write.
This book is about the most horrifying loss imaginable: the author loses her parents, her husband, and her two young sons all at once, in the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the day after Christmas, 2004. She and her family were spending the holiday in Sri Lanka when the wave hit and overtook the jeep in which they were attempting to flee. I can’t come up with a better justification for suicide than this—she’s lost everyone; she wonders why she was spared, just to suffer these losses every minute of every hour of every day. The book is both a horror story and a testament to human strength. I assure you, you won’t be able to put it down.
The book opens and we are inside the wave: thirty feet high, moving at twenty-five mph, racing two miles inland. And from there into the depths of the author's despair: how to live now that her life has been undone?
Sonali Deraniyagala tells her story - the loss of her two boys, her husband, and her parents - without artifice or sentimentality. In the stark language of unfathomable sorrow, anger, and guilt: she struggles through the first months following the tragedy -- someone always at her side to prevent her from harming herself, her…
I am a member of an unfortunate tribe, the tribe of grieving mothers who write. Upon learning that my newborn son was profoundly brain-damaged, I kept a diary. Writing those pages helped me make sense of his prognosis and figure out how to care for him before he died. Later, my diary helped me write my memoir Holding Silvan: A Brief Life which went on to be named a “Best Book” of the year by both Library Journal and the Boston Globe. Today, I write and work with other writers trying to craft their own stories of loss. Each experience of grief is unique. The five memoirs I’m recommending give voice to a variety of maternal losses — from stillbirth to murder. While each of these memoirs is powerful in its own way, the love in them is universal.
Upon receiving the news that her two young daughters had been killed by a drunk driver, Genevieve Jurgensen didn’t think she could go on, let alone ever write about her loss. Fortunately for us, she eventually found a way to tell this story. Through letters to a friend, she draws us in, circling the pain of that terrible day, musing about the mysterious ways in which loss can coexist with a happy, ongoing life. With its raw and intimate feel, the book is a profoundly moving testimony to the complicated process of healing.
What do you do, how do you live, when both of your daughters are killed on the same afternoon?
On April 30, 1980, Genevieve Jurgensen found herself facing that question when she lost her four- and seven-year-old daughters to a drunk driver. Here she presents her search for an answer.
"She plunged her blade into his chest, feeling it grind along his ribs..."
Outcast swordfighter, Kyer Halidan, was abandoned in a cornfield at age three. Now, twenty years on, she’s searching for answers: Who left her there? And why?
Kyer doesn’t suffer fools, and when she kills a man in…
I am a nerdy economist who studies women and work. I am passionate about using data to understand the real lived experiences of women in today’s economy. Taylor Swift is my muse because she is not only authentic but persistent, a true “reinventionista” in her heart-of-hearts as she moves from era-to-era masterminding her path to long-term happiness and success. I want to live in a world where women’s lives are appreciated, understood, and supported. It’s why I do what I do and, in many respects, I also believe it is why Taylor Swift does what she does.
While Taylor Swift has not written a song about Isabel Allende or her daughter Paula, it may only be a matter of time.
Taylor is known for having a strong, tight-knit relationship with her mother, Andrea. If anyone can write about the tethers and ties that weave through a mother-daughter relationship with such precise detail and sorrowing pain, it is Isabel Allende.
Paula is a memoir about loss and the story about how Isabel lost her adult daughter to cancer. It is the only book to ever make me sob-cry. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. I felt Isabel’s pain deep in the depths of my soul in a similar light as when I listen to the song “Soon You’ll Get Better” on her Lover album, which Taylor Swift wrote about her mother’s treatment for cancer.
"Beautiful and heartrending. . . . Memoir, autobiography, epicedium, perhaps even some fiction: they are all here, and they are all quite wonderful."-Los Angeles Times
In this literary classic, New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende recalls the story of her beloved daughter and her remarkable family's past.
When her daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and fell into a coma, Isabel Allende began to write the story of her family for her unconscious child. Bizarre ancestors are introduced; delightful and bitter childhood memories are shared; amazing anecdotes of youthful years are relived, and the most intimate secrets are quietly passed…
I’m a citizen of both the US and the UK, and in 2016, I watched as both my countries were suddenly pulled in shocking political directions, with Brexit in the UK and Trump’s election in the US. In both cases, strong pre-existing norms against openly racist speech seemed to vanish overnight. As a philosopher of language who worked on both deception and racism, I wanted to know how this happened. This has led me to an enduring interest in the ways that manipulative language can change norms around racism, allowing what was once unthinkable to become normal.
This book is a devastatingly insightful collection of essays about the killing of Trayvon Martin, the event that started the Black Lives Matter movement. They are written by a wide variety of authors, and each has a different focus. However, several of them are especially illuminating in terms of language.
Foremost among these, perhaps, is the editors’ careful dissection of the transcript of the 911 call between Martin’s killer and the police. Through doing this, they show the racist assumptions made and transmitted, even through the apparently neutral language of the 911 operator.
It’s an absolute model of what the philosophy of language can do at its best, and I teach it frequently in my classes.
On February 26, 2012, seventeen-year-old African American male Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a twenty-eight-year-old white Hispanic American male in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman killed Martin in a gated community. Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics, featuring a new preface by editors George Yancy and Janine Jones written after the June 2013 trial, examines the societal conditions that fueled the shooting and its ramifications for race relations and violence in America.
Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics attempts to capture what a critical cadre of scholars think…
Every teacher from pre-Kindergarten to higher education, who has experienced and understands what it means to be committed to equity and to practice transformation but still not see the kinds of outcomes expected, needed, or deserved among students of color. These students of color, particularly Black and Brown students, tend to be grossly underserved in and through the educational system. Decoteau Irby amplifies the humanity of those young people and situates them in the context of suburbia, an understudied place and space among Black and Brown communities.
This book is a profound reflection on the relationship between Christianity and social justice.
Thurman argues that Jesus was himself a member of an oppressed minority and that his teachings were aimed at empowering the disenfranchised. He goes on to explore the ways in which the African American community can draw on the teachings of Jesus to find strength and hope in the face of systemic injustice.
One of the most striking aspects of the book is the way in which Thurman uses language; his writing is poetic and evocative, and he has a gift for articulating complex ideas in a way that is both accessible and profound. It's no wonder that this book was such an important influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement as a whole.
Famously known as the text that Martin Luther King Jr. sought inspiration from in the days leading up to the Montgomery bus boycott, Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited helped shape the civil rights movement and changed our nation’s history forever.
In this classic theological treatise, the acclaimed theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1900-1981) demonstrates how the gospel may be read as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus is a partner in the pain of the oppressed and the example of His life offers a solution to ending the descent into moral nihilism. Hatred does…
When a mysterious stranger traps teen siblings in a precarious game, each must overcome their embittered past for the other to survive.
This magical realism YA novel explores the power of family and forgiveness. But take heed. The truth can cut like shards of glass, especially for those who’d rather…
I’m a therapist and Jungian analyst who has been writing and speaking about the transgender phenomenon since 2016. Across the Anglosphere, teen girls have begun identifying as transgender in significant numbers since around 2011. Many are quickly accessing medical interventions. When I became aware of these trends, I got curious about them. I’m especially fascinated by the way that social and psychological factors can shape our understanding of mental health and mental illness, and I’ve been exploring these topics as they relate to trans adolescents. I’ve worked with trans-identifying young people and their parents, as well as detransitioners.
Mounk’s book is not about mental health per se, but I found that he provided a clear, compassionate framework for understanding the current obsession with identity politics – which, in my experience, relates to our current mental health crisis.
Prioritizing race, gender, and other aspects of identity means that we focus less on universal aspects of the human experience. As a therapist, I know that understanding our suffering from a universal perspective brings healing and transformation. We lose so much when we lose this.
Mounk’s book helped clarify my thinking about identity politics, and I didn’t find it narrow or polemical.
The origins, consequences and limitations of an ideology that has quickly become highly influential around the world.
For much of their history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. It is no surprise then that many who passionately believe in social justice have come to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity if they are to resist injustice.
But over the past decades, a healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minorities has transformed into an obsession with group identity in all its forms. A new…
After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Adobe, I witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, I knew it was time to switch gears and focus on creating more inclusive workplaces where women and others who are marginalized can thrive. I naively set off to change workplaces around the world! My first step was starting the Twitter handle @BetterAllies to share simple, actionable steps to be more inclusive. That handle became the inspiration for my four books and my popular 5 Ally Actions newsletter, which I send to over 40,000 subscribers every Friday.
Michelle MiJung Kim, a skilled storyteller, has a simple goal: to awaken us, inspire action, and drive change toward more inclusive communities and workplaces. Despite spending most of my professional workday contemplating, writing, and speaking about how we can be better allies, I was deeply moved by her book. Her unique stories and specific guidance to address inequities create a powerful emotional connection, making her message all the more impactful.
Kim’s book is so compelling that I find myself returning to it time and again for inspiration. Her unwavering commitment to doing what’s right for humanity is truly infectious, leaving me and countless others eager to delve back into her work for ongoing motivation.
As we become more aware of various social injustices in the world, many of us want to be part of the movement toward positive change. But sometimes our best intentions cause unintended harm, and we fumble. We might feel afraid to say the wrong thing and feel guilt for not doing or knowing enough. Sometimes we might engage in performative allyship rather than thoughtful solidarity, leaving those already marginalized further burdened and exhausted. The feelings of fear, insecurity, inadequacy are all too common among a wide spectrum of changemakers, and they put many at a crossroads between feeling stuck and…
Most readers have a book that helped them see things from a different perspective. For me, it was an entire genre. I grew up during the 1970s in the rural South, where social justice was—and, to a considerable extent, remains—woefully absent. Science fiction and fantasy opened my mind to worlds where diversity was embraced rather than shunned or met with violence. Sadly, progress is a case of two steps forward, one step back. We seem to be in the stepping-back phase, so here are five works of science fiction and fantasy, past and present, that challenge readers to examine society critically and, hopefully, change it for the better.
One area of social justice that is often overlooked is intergenerational justice. As we deplete the planet’s resources, we pass problems along to future generations. Rather than leaving the Earth a better place for those who follow, we are leaving them with an environment at the tipping point. There are a number of science fiction and fantasy books that address this, and it’s possible that Wanderers (2019) springs to mind in part because it’s fairly recent. On the other hand, most of the books I’ve listed are decades old, and this is one of the best works of speculative fiction I’ve read in the past few years. Wendig’s epic novel provides prescient commentary on the political divisions that currently plague our nation and our world, as we split into seemingly disparate tribes, as well as the mounting environmental dangers that coming generations will face if we do not take substantive…
A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world's last hope. From the mind of Chuck Wendig comes an astonishing tapestry of humanity that Harlan Coben calls "a suspenseful, twisty, satisfying, surprising, thought-provoking epic." Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana…
In Renaissance Venice, the deadliest weapon isn’t a blade… it’s a secret.
Angelo Mascari is a master swordsman whose greatest battle isn’t fought for crown or country, but for love. When treachery strikes and the Republic turns against him, Angelo is forced into a desperate flight that leads him across…
The physical practice of yoga transformed my relationship to my body, but the philosophy of yoga changed my life. When I began to study the Sutras, my mind became calmer; I had a greater capacity to listen and be patient in my relationships, and my quality of life improved. As I studied philosophy more, my perspective shifted from lack and blame to abundance and self-awareness. Knowing there is more to yoga than just the physical practice, I find it important to honor the tradition the way it was intended: as a whole system for the mind, body, and spirit to reduce the suffering of all beings.
Susanna Barkataki is a teacher, inclusivity promoter, and yoga culture advocate with an active social media presence who compassionately and playfully nudges the West to honor the original tradition of yoga. Her book takes many of her teachings and presents them in one place. Her wisdom is essential for anyone who wants to understand what yoga is beyond the physical practice. For Westerners, her book is a generous offering and necessary to ensure we are being reverent with the practice of yoga and not appropriating it.
Do you want to be on the cutting edge of the future of yoga?
If you desire an authentic yoga practice embracing ancient yogic philosophy and traditions but don’t know how to embody that knowledge with integrity in today’s modern yoga culture, Embrace Yoga’s Roots is your guide to honor and not appropriate yoga.
"When we mistake yoga for a workout routine, reduce it to physical fitness or even do some of the deeper aspects of yoga without an eye to the whole system of liberation it offers, we rob ourselves and each other of the potential of this practice,"…
