Books like Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

01

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology

Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.

Both dig into meaning.

02

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

Stephen Grosz · Psychology

The Examined Life is a collection of short psychoanalytic case studies drawn from Stephen Grosz's 25 years of practice as a psychoanalyst in London.

Both dig into identity.

03

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · Psychology

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford who argues that the conscious self is a late, small, and largely uninformed participant in the brain's activity.

Both dig into consciousness.

04

Consciousness Explained

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Consciousness Explained is Daniel Dennett's attempt to replace what he calls the Cartesian Theater — the intuitive picture of consciousness as a single unified stream of experience observed by a self — with a model he calls Multiple Drafts.

Both dig into consciousness.

05

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.

A kindred philosophy read.

06

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi · Memoir

When Breath Becomes Air is Paul Kalanithi's account of his life before and after being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at 36, while completing his residency in neurosurgery at Stanford.

Shares meaning and mortality with Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

07

Status Anxiety

Alain de Botton · Philosophy

Status Anxiety is Alain de Botton's 2004 examination of why modern people are so consumed with their standing in others' eyes, and what philosophy, art, and history can offer as remedies.

Shares meaning and identity with Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

08

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Alan Watts · Philosophy

The Book, published in 1966, is Alan Watts's most direct attempt to explain the central illusion he spent his career examining: the belief that each of us is a separate self, enclosed in skin, confronting an alien world.

Shares consciousness and identity with Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

09

The Mind's I

Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett · Philosophy

The Mind's I is a collaborative anthology edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, two of the most influential thinkers on consciousness and mind of the late twentieth century.

Shares consciousness and identity with Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

10

The Wisdom of Insecurity

Alan Watts · Philosophy

The Wisdom of Insecurity, published in 1951, is Alan Watts's argument that the anxiety pervading modern life is a direct consequence of the attempt to find permanent security in an impermanent world.

Shares consciousness and identity with Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

11

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

Shares mortality and identity with Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

12

Into the Wild

Jon Krakauer · Biography

Into the Wild is Jon Krakauer's account of Christopher McCandless, a twenty-four-year-old who graduated from Emory University in 1990, gave his savings to charity, abandoned his car and possessions, and spent two years drifting through the American West before hitchhiking into the Alaskan wilderness in April 1992.

Shares mortality and identity with Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.