Books I RATE

This holding page will be updated to include all three sections below after I launch my new website in April 2024.

I’m often asked which books I’d recommend (other than my own!) for Insights on the big questions about Life and Money.

So, over the coming weeks, I’ll list some of my favourite books here under these three categories:

1. Books for understanding other people – and ourselves.
2. Books to help you earn more money – at work or in your business.
3. Books for understanding economics and investment risk.

Isaac Newton, one of the greatest-ever scientific minds, once said,

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

And that’s surely the best way for us all to develop new ideas.

But is it how most people operate today?

About 65 years ago, teams of mathematicians, Scientists, and Engineers stood on Newton’s shoulders (using his Laws of Motion and his formula for gravitational force) to design rocket ships.

In 1969, a Saturn V rocket ship, with its lunar module, landed people on the Moon and safely returned them to Earth.

Since the ”sixties’, however, despite explosive developments in technology (that now enable us to find answers to any question we can imagine, and many we can’t!), some people still struggle to grasp basic facts about our world.

Millions still believe the earth is less than ten thousand years old.

And, as Richard Dawkins, a famous scientist, said, that’s like saying the United States is just 10 metres wide from East to West Coasts!

FYI: The USA is nearly 5 million metres across at it’s widest part.

Indeed, some people still believe the earth is flat.

And that’s despite two thousand years of scientific experiments (and pictures from spaceships) that prove it’s shaped like a slightly squashed ball.

Sadly, our information technology can be used for bad as well as good. And the right to free speech means we allow dumb ‘echo chambers’ on Social Media platforms to grow and keep these crazy ideas alive.

Moreover, the new AI-powered text generators, like ChatGPT, now mean there’s more rubbish content on the internet than ever before – and it’s growing at an exponential rate.

You must decide where to source your information and guidance.

I only urge you to take particular care when learning about vital, human-performance-related issues, such as how our bodies, minds, and emotions work, what motivates us, and what makes us happy and unhappy.

Of course, we’ve had nonsense ideas in ‘self-help’ books for decades. The problem is just much bigger and growing much faster now.

Too many (one is too many!) ‘self-help’ gurus are only out to help one person: themselves, and are happy to take money from vulnerable people through lies and deceit.

So, if you’re like me, and you care deeply about the well-being of others, you’ll want to protect people from the self-help, snake oil salespeople with their long-discredited (Lizard and Split Brain) theories about managing your mind and emotions.

You’ll take Newton’s advice and stand on the shoulders of giants to get a clear view of the evidence—as far as we have any today. Psychology and Neuroscience are very much a work in progress.

So, who are the giants?

Of course, that depends on the topic, but here are some of my favourite books in this area. I’ll offer my thoughts on these books and those other sections, over the coming weeks and months.

Note that these books are written by qualified academics (often professors) in their fields.

The one exception in this list is Johann Hari, a journalist who takes care to interview and quote the academics.

I hope you find this growing list of evidence-based books helpful.

Happy reading,

Paul Claireaux April 2024