Psychology

Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) secured its author’s place as one of history’s most celebrated philosophers. Like all great works of moral philosophy, Smith’s book belongs to a tradition that dates to antiquity. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, however, is probably best understood in the context of the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment, for its argument helps reconcile two otherwise conflicting ideas advanced by two of that era’s intellectual titans. Furthermore, The Theory of... Read The Theory of Moral Sentiments Summary

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Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (2000) is an interdisciplinary work of popular sociology and psychology that explores the concept of the tipping point, a moment of sudden change that occurs in social epidemics. Gladwell explores how social epidemics work and offers many case studies and illustrative research to bolster his novel arguments about how epidemics “tip.” The book began as an article for The New Yorker. This guide refers to the first edition of the... Read The Tipping Point Summary

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), by Eric Hoffer, is a philosophical treatise that explores the question of why ordinary people join mass movements and become fanatical devotees of what they perceive as a holy cause. Hoffer argues that prospective fanatics—the soon-to-be true believers—experience personal frustration so intense that their strongest desire is to lose their individuality altogether by surrendering to something greater than themselves. Mass movements exploit this frustration... Read The True Believer Summary

The Uncanny, published in 1919, is one of the most famous of Sigmund Freud’s essays. This is not only because many of his most foundational ideas had their genesis here but because the essay pertains to aesthetics and popular culture, making it both accessible and gripping for a broad readership. The Uncanny is a good example of Freud’s predilection for drawing on aesthetics to support his arguments, and thus a useful introduction to the ideas... Read The Uncanny Summary

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A powerful dichotomy lies at the heart of The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds (2016), Michael Lewis’s account of how the friendship between two Israeli psychologists—Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky—essentially created the field of behavioral economics and shifted paradigms about human decision making. This dichotomy is the tension between intuition and algorithms, between gut feelings and empirical data. In the Introduction, Lewis explains that The Undoing Project exists largely as a complement... Read The Undoing Project Summary

Michael A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, originally published in 2007, is a spiritual self-help book about living life from the point of view of centered consciousness. Identifying with the nonstop chaos of thinking, emotion, and stimulus in our minds causes most of our problems, and Singer offers insight about how to identify as pure awareness and simply notice our experiences pass by without identifying with them. He discusses how our levels... Read The Untethered Soul Summary

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976) won acclaims such as the US National Book Award and the National Book of Critics Circle Award. Its author, Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990), was an Austrian-born psychoanalyst and public intellectual who worked primarily in the United States. Bettelheim wrote The Uses of Enchantment to persuade parents and educators that the European fairy tale, with all its fantastical and violent content, was a greater aid... Read The Uses of Enchantment Summary

Maggie O’Farrell’s novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, published in 2006, is the author’s fourth novel and tackles the grim history of forced incarcerations of women and the devastating effects of family secrets. O’Farrell’s work often focuses on women trapped physically, emotionally, and psychologically by forces over which they have no control, and this novel is no exception. Through a twisted entanglement of three different perspectives, O’Farrell tells the story of not only Esme... Read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox Summary

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Nature (1902) by William James is a philosophical examination of how religious revelations function in individuals’ lives and minds. This renowned work applies James’s theoretical framework of pragmatism to the study of the functionality of religion. James utilizes radical empiricism to examine both the subjective and objective experiences of religion. James argues that individual experiences, not major religious institutions, form the spiritual shape of the world. He... Read The Varieties of Religious Experience Summary

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The Wave is a 1981 young adult novel by Todd Strasser (originally written under the pseudonym Morton Rhue). A novelization of a teleplay by Johnny Dawkins for the 1981 made-for-TV movie of the same name, the story is a fictionalized account of a 1967 social experiment called “The Third Wave,” which took place at a high school in Palo Alto, California. In the novel, the experiment unfolds at the fictional Gordon High School. The story... Read The Wave Summary

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