The Next Big Idea Club’s Top 24 Books of 2020
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The Next Big Idea Club’s Top 24 Books of 2020

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The Next Big Idea Club’s Top 24 Books of 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 RevolutionsThe 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

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

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

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: 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 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

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

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

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 Murthy

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

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

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

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

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!: 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

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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