Don’t say I didn’t tell you
Get ready for an unparalleled journey!
With the following books, you will travel to space, climb the tallest mountain, and discover the wonders of the human body. You’ll also learn the importance of maps and how to be a successful businessperson.
Once you get to know what’s inside these wonderful books, there will be no stopping you.
Let’s go through them one by one!
The snowy grave of mountain climbers.
This book details the 1996 Mount Everest disaster which led to the death of 8 climbers. This was the third-highest death toll on Everest in one day.
“…I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain.”
Jon Krakauer writes about the events that led to his participation. Initially, he was to go to the base camp only as a journalist and report on the commercialization of Mount Everest. But his childhood dream of climbing Everest bubbled up.
He pushed the deadline forward and trained to do the whole climb.
In May 1996, three separate expeditions were caught in the blizzard. Rob Hall was the guide for the expedition which the author was a part of. Unfortunately, Rob Hall lost his life.
“… in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you’re too driven you’re likely to die.”
This book is heartbreaking for obvious reasons but it will also acquaint you with the many struggles of adventurers.
Why are teenagers so rude?
Behave is one of the most comprehensive books about human psychology.
It provides an enlightening look at how the human brain develops from childhood to adulthood.
“You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.”
This book provides neuroscientific evidence of the good and bad behavior of humans.
The author believes that by understanding that, we can transform our society, culture, and the whole world for the better.
“The brain is heavily influenced by genes.”
One of the interesting things that the book discusses is the development of the prefrontal cortex. Genes play a very important part in how our brain develops.
But…
The interesting thing is that the development of the frontal cortex is determined by our experiences.
I like how this settles the nature vs nurture debate. Both play a part.
“Because it is the last to mature, by definition the frontal cortex is the brain region least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience.”
What I like most about the book is that it discusses brain development in adolescence, helping us understand teenage behavior.
If you are fascinated by human behavior and would like to understand it in detail, this book is the one for you.
A mortician’s take on life and death.
The author shares her journey of coming to terms with death.
Having worked in funeral homes for the first six years of her career, Doughty gives us an insider look.
“Accepting death doesn’t mean you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies.”
The author discusses the common approach towards death in North America. She analyzes that it is focused on avoidance. She shares her own childhood experience with death when she saw a girl fall to her death but her parents never discussed the incident with her.
The author shares the process that goes into getting a corpse ready and what can go wrong in the mortuary. The most emotional part of her job is cremating dead infants.
Doughty forces the reader to look at death with a new angle. Death is what makes us creative.
“Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create.”
This book is an important read because death will come to everyone, sooner or later.
Let’s marvel at our world!
The author wants us to look with awe at the big, wide universe.
He starts from the Big Bang. The author says that the universe was created in a 3-minute time frame.
“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”
Bryson discusses how unlikely it is for a planet to be able to support life and our Earth does that.
He also discusses scientific achievements and how in the 90s some thought that we had learned all about our world. Surprise surprise, they were wrong.
“As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better.”
We are still learning about our world and will continue to do so.
The author makes us think about human activities that are harming life on our beautiful planet.
This book is sure to hit you with a dose of wonder.
Humans are at risk of extinction. But from what?
According to Toby, the Precipice (a steep drop) began with the first detonation of the atomic bomb in 1945.
The author discusses the various existential risks that can put human life in jeopardy.
“If all goes well, human history is just beginning … A vast and extraordinary adulthood awaits.”
He discusses the natural risks like asteroids and volcanoes. He also discusses anthropogenic risks (caused by humans) like nuclear war and climate change.
In future risks, Old touches on artificial intelligence and engineered pandemics.
The author also gives us the odds of how likely an event can happen in the coming 100 years.
“If we learned that a large asteroid was heading toward Earth, posing a greater than 10 percent chance of human extinction later this century…”
The author gives us a hypothetical situation. If we knew an asteroid was heading toward the Earth, we would do everything in our power to save our planet from it.
There are so many risks that we know of, and we do little to tackle them.
The miracle of the human body.
The book ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ by the same author makes you marvel at the universe and the world. This book will make you marvel at your own body.
“Just sitting quietly, doing nothing at all, your brain churns through more information in thirty seconds than the Hubble Space Telescope has processed in thirty years.”
Bryson shares mind-blowing facts about human body organs and processes, many of which you’ll have never heard.
He starts from the elements that make up our body. The author then goes on to discuss the skin, the head, and other systems.
The book also touches on diseases and old age.
“There are thousands of things that can kill us … and we escape every one of them but one.”
More than 8000 things can kill us. But they don’t. We can touch the wrong plant or eat the wrong food. In the end, only one thing leads to our death.
Isn’t that fascinating?
A seasoned entrepreneur spills the beans.
Ben Horowitz is a talented entrepreneur who was the founder and CEO of Opsware.
This book crunches all the business lessons that he learned.
“Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.”
He tells us about the little things like what interview questions to ask when hiring and how to fire people. The author also tells us about the big things like how to build organizational structure and what to do when the going gets tough.
The most important thing about being a CEO is to make the best move when there is no move, the author says. He advises to keep death in mind. If we live every day as our last, we’ll do our best every day.
“…the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.”
Building a business is tough. The author accepts that with no qualms.
This book aims to teach the reader how to handle that uphill struggle.
A geographical look at the politics of the world.
Due to globalization, the borders are melting away.
But the natural boundaries matter a lot, says Kaplan.
The distribution of seas, mountains, and plateaus affects world events. These factors have long determined the nation’s actions and spread of religions.
“Maps … are crucial to any understanding of world politics.”
The author lets us know that landlocked countries struggle most with having a stable economy.
Similarly, the reason why Russia has been aggressive throughout history is because it doesn’t have access to the trade routes. The author also says that China doesn’t need to occupy more land because it already has control of various ports.
The author believes that China’s influence will continue to grow.
“It is the freedom to concentrate military equipment in key locations around the world that has preserved American military might.”
This book provides a very interesting view of how location affects countries’ foreign policies and decisions to engage in war.
You don’t know everything and that is okay.
True wisdom is acknowledging that we don’t know everything.
There is no way we can know all the knowledge that exists in the world, even if we want to. When we make peace with this fact, we can listen to others with an open mind.
“The purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs”
This is what Adam Grant focuses on. He wants us to think like a scientist. The author also discusses biases and fallacies that make us have a distorted view of reality.
To learn more we should engage with those who criticize us. This is what strong leaders do.
“We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.”
Grant advises us to pose the following question to ourselves and others.
“How do you know?”
He calls this ‘a straightforward expression of doubt and curiosity’.
This book will make you doubt yourself but in a good way.
We have to give back to the earth. Now.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist from the Potawatomi tribe.
In this book, she brings us the Indigenous wisdom that focuses on mankind’s relationship with land and nature.
She helps us see how honoring Mother Earth is important for sustainable living and ensuring the best for all.
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.”
In the chapter entitled ‘The Gift of Strawberries’, the author shares her love of picking wild strawberries and how she views them as gifts.
She reflects on how the whole mindset changes if we think of something as a product or a gift.
“Something is broken when the food comes on a Styrofoam tray wrapped in slippery plastic, a carcass of a being whose only chance at life was a cramped cage. That is not a gift of life; it is a theft.”
Kimmerer wants us to build a reciprocal relationship with the Earth. If animals and plants feed us and help us survive, we should be doing something that ensures their survival.
This book will make you reflect on your behavior as a consumer and what you can do better to honor the earth.
Buy Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer On Amazon
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