Books like A Mind for Numbers

01

The Brain That Changes Itself

Norman Doidge · Psychology

Norman Doidge is a Canadian psychiatrist who traveled to interview the scientists and patients at the frontier of neuroplasticity research in the mid-2000s.

Shares learning and brain science with A Mind for Numbers.

02

Ultralearning

Scott Young · Self-help

Ultralearning is Scott Young's synthesis of principles drawn from his own extreme learning projects — completing MIT's four-year computer science curriculum in one year, learning four languages in a year, and other aggressive self-directed learning experiments — and from the academic research on skill acquisition and deliberate practice.

Both dig into learning.

03

Mastery

Robert Greene · Self-help

Mastery is Robert Greene's long account of how extraordinary human mastery develops — from childhood inclinations through apprenticeship through creative independence to the integration that characterizes true mastery.

Both dig into learning.

04

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool · Science

Peak is Anders Ericsson's definitive account of deliberate practice — the specific type of focused, feedback-driven training that, more than any other factor, determines how expert people become in demanding fields.

Both dig into learning.

05

A Beautiful Mind

Sylvia Nasar · Biography

Sylvia Nasar's biography of the mathematician John Nash — Nobel laureate, game theory pioneer, and paranoid schizophrenic — is one of the finest accounts of genius and mental illness in biographical literature.

Both dig into mathematics.

06

Learn Like a Pro

Barbara Oakley and Olav Schewe · Self-help

Learn Like a Pro is a concise, evidence-based guide to studying more effectively, written by Barbara Oakley — the engineer-turned-neuroscientist best known for A Mind for Numbers and the Coursera course "Learning How to Learn" — and Olav Schewe, a student learning consultant.

Shares learning and memory with A Mind for Numbers.

07

Limitless

Jim Kwik · Self-help

Limitless is Jim Kwik's account of how he overcame a childhood brain injury and learning difficulties to become a professional memory coach and reading accelerator, and what he learned about cognition along the way.

Shares learning and memory with A Mind for Numbers.

08

The Memory Book

Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas · Self-help

The Memory Book is Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas's classic guide to memory improvement, first published in 1974 and still in print over fifty years later.

Shares learning and memory with A Mind for Numbers.

09

Make It Stick

Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger and Mark A. McDaniel · Science

Make It Stick is a book about how memory actually works, and why the study techniques most people rely on — re-reading, highlighting, massed practice — are among the least effective ways to learn.

Shares learning and memory with A Mind for Numbers.

10

Moonwalking with Einstein

Joshua Foer · Science

Moonwalking with Einstein is Joshua Foer's account of spending a year training for and winning the United States Memory Championship, beginning as a journalist covering the event and ending as its champion.

Shares learning and memory with A Mind for Numbers.

11

The Art of Learning

Josh Waitzkin · Self-help

The Art of Learning is Josh Waitzkin's account of how he became a national chess champion as a child and later a world-champion martial artist, and what those two very different disciplines taught him about the structure of high performance.

Both dig into learning.

12

The First 20 Hours

Josh Kaufman · Self-help

The First 20 Hours makes a sharp distinction that most books on learning quietly ignore: the difference between becoming competent at a skill and becoming world-class at one.

Both dig into learning.