Books like Raising Girls

01

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky · Science

Behave is Robert Sapolsky's attempt to explain why humans do what they do — the violence, the altruism, the tribalism, the heroism — by working through every layer of biology that contributes to a single act.

A kindred self-help read.

02

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Susan Cain · Psychology

Quiet is Susan Cain's argument that Western culture — and American culture in particular — has built itself around an "Extrovert Ideal" that systematically undervalues roughly a third to a half of the population.

A kindred self-help read.

03

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Angela Duckworth · Psychology

Duckworth's central claim is that talent is overrated.

A kindred self-help read.

04

The Coddling of the American Mind

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt · Psychology

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue that American universities — and the parents and institutions that feed them — have adopted three ideas they call the Great Untruths: that what doesn't kill you makes you weaker, that you should always trust your feelings, and that life is a battle between good people and evil people.

A kindred self-help read.

05

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Andrew Solomon · Psychology

Andrew Solomon's book is a ten-year investigation into families raising children who are profoundly different from their parents — deaf children of hearing parents, children with Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, severe physical disabilities, and other conditions that create what Solomon calls "horizontal identity": an identity shared with peers rather than inherited from family.

Shares parenting and identity with Raising Girls.

06

The Anxious Generation

Jonathan Haidt · Psychology

The Anxious Generation is Jonathan Haidt's argument that a phone-based childhood — shaped above all by smartphones and social media arriving in the early 2010s — has caused a serious and measurable deterioration in the mental health of adolescents in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Shares parenting and adolescence with Raising Girls.

07

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · Memoir

The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, one month before Plath's death.

Shares gender and identity with Raising Girls.

08

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Maxine Hong Kingston · Memoir

The Woman Warrior is not a conventional memoir.

Shares gender and identity with Raising Girls.

09

Atomic Habits

James Clear · Self-help

Atomic Habits is James Clear's framework for how very small changes — habits so minor they seem to make no difference on any given day — compound into remarkable results over months and years.

Both dig into identity.

10

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

Brigid Schulte · Self-help

Overwhelmed is Washington Post journalist Brigid Schulte's investigation into why so many people — particularly women with children — feel perpetually time-starved in an era when labor-saving technology is more abundant than at any point in history.

Both dig into gender.

11

The Passion Paradox

Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness · Self-help

The Passion Paradox is Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness's examination of why passion — the force that drives many people toward excellence — also burns so many of them out.

Both dig into identity.

12

Turning Pro

Steven Pressfield · Self-help

Turning Pro is Pressfield's follow-up to The War of Art, taking the Professional/Amateur distinction and developing it into a full examination of what the shift actually looks like — and what it costs.

Both dig into identity.