As 2020 finally draws to a close, we at the Next Big Idea Club have been looking back on the books we’ve enjoyed most this year. The last twelve months have been challenging for people around the world, but these great reads have pointed us toward a smarter, wiser, more fulfilled future. So without further ado, here are the most groundbreaking nonfiction books of 2020, as selected by our curators Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink.
Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live
By Nicholas A. Christakis
Featuring new, provocative arguments and vivid examples ranging across medicine, history, sociology, epidemiology, data science, and genetics, Apollo’s Arrow envisions what happens when the great force of a deadly germ meets the enduring reality of our evolved social nature. View on Amazon
The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
By Maria Konnikova
How a New York Times bestselling author and New Yorker contributor parlayed a strong grasp of the science of human decision-making and a woeful ignorance of cards into a life-changing run as a professional poker player, under the wing of a legend of the game. View on Amazon
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton
For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college-educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton argue that capitalism is destroying the lives of blue-collar America. View on Amazon
Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond
By Lydia Denworth
With insight and warmth, Denworth weaves past and present, field biology and neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed for friendship across life stages, the processes by which healthy social bonds are developed and maintained, and how friendship is changing in the age of social media. View on Amazon
Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk
By Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke
Drawing from work in psychology, economics, and political science, the authors dive deeply into why and how we grandstand. Using the analytic tools of psychology and moral philosophy, they explain what drives us to behave in this way, and what we stand to lose by taking it too far. View on Amazon
Humankind: A Hopeful History
By Rutger Bregman
From the bestselling author of Utopia for Realists comes Humankind, which argues that humans thrive in crisis, and that our innate kindness and cooperation have been the greatest factors in our long-term success on the planet. View on Amazon
Immortality, Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions, and the Quest to Live Forever
By Chip Walter
This gripping narrative explores today’s scientific pursuit of immortality, with exclusive visits inside Silicon Valley labs and interviews with the visionaries who believe we will soon crack the aging process—and cure death. View on Amazon
The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage
By Kelly McGonigal
McGonigal draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology—as well as memoirs, ethnographies, and philosophers—to show how movement is intertwined with some of the most basic human joys, including self-expression, social connection, and mastery. View on Amazon
The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science
By Michael Strevens
Like Yuval Harari’s Sapiens or Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine overturns much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world. View on Amazon
The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
By Sonia Shah
A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting, predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change. View on Amazon
The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices
By Casper ter Kuile
Harvard Divinity School fellow Casper ter Kuile explores how we can nourish our souls by transforming common, everyday practices—yoga, reading, walking the dog—into sacred rituals that can heal our crisis of social isolation and struggle to find purpose. View on Amazon
Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
By Lisa Feldman Barrett
In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. View on Amazon
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life
By John Kaag
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds is a compelling introduction to William James’s life and thought that shows why the founder of pragmatism and empirical psychology—and an inspiration for Alcoholics Anonymous—can still speak so directly and profoundly to anyone struggling to build a fulfilling, meaningful life. View on Amazon
The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers
By Eric Weiner
The New York Times bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss embarks on a rollicking intellectual journey, following in the footsteps of history’s greatest thinkers and showing us how each—from Epicurus to Gandhi, Thoreau to Beauvoir—offers practical and spiritual lessons for today’s unsettled times. View on Amazon
Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives
By Daniel Levitin
Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age. View on Amazon
Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life
By Ozan Varol
In this practical and insightful book, rocket scientist turned law professor Ozan Varol reveals nine simple strategies from rocket science that can help you achieve your goals, whether it’s landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. View on Amazon
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope
By Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the acclaimed, bestselling Half the Sky now issue a plea—deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans—to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. View on Amazon
Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World
By Vivek H. Murthy
The 19th Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Vivek Murthy makes a case for loneliness as a public health concern, a root cause and contributor to many of the epidemics sweeping the world today. From alcohol and drug addiction to depression and anxiety, the effects of loneliness appear in myriad forms—but a better future is within reach. View on Amazon
Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization
By Scott Barry Kaufman
In this groundbreaking book, renowned psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman reimagines Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, unraveling the mysteries of his unfinished theory and integrating these ideas with the latest research on connection, creativity, love, purpose, and other building blocks of a life well-lived. View on Amazon
Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms
By Shellye Archambeau
Full of empowering wisdom from one of Silicon Valley’s first female African-American CEOs, this inspiring leadership book offers a blueprint for how to achieve your personal and professional goals. View on Amazon
Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World
By Olga Khazan
The Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan explores why it is that we crave conformity, and how that affects people who are different. She then reveals the hidden upsides to being “weird,” as well as the strategies that people who are different can use to achieve success in a society that values normalcy. View on Amazon
When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency
By Roger L. Martin
With lucid analysis and engaging anecdotes, Martin argues that we must stop treating the economy as a perfectible machine and shift toward viewing it as a complex adaptive system in which we seek a fundamental balance of efficiency with resilience. View on Amazon
You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake!: How Biases Distort Decision-Making and What You Can Do to Fight Them
By Olivier Sibony
You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake! distills the latest developments in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology into actionable tools for making smart, effective decisions in business and beyond. View on Amazon
You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters
By Kate Murphy
Equal parts cultural observation, scientific exploration, and rousing call to action that’s full of practical advice, You’re Not Listening is to listening what Susan Cain’s Quiet was to introversion. View on Amazon
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