Books like The Anxious Generation

01

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 psychology read.

02

Why We Sleep

Matthew Walker · Science

Why We Sleep is Matthew Walker's attempt to do for sleep what no amount of public health messaging has managed: make people genuinely afraid of what they're losing.

Both dig into mental health.

03

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk · Psychology

The Body Keeps the Score is Bessel van der Kolk's account of four decades spent studying and treating trauma, from Vietnam veterans at the VA in the 1970s to survivors of childhood abuse, accidents, and domestic violence.

A kindred psychology read.

04

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 psychology read.

05

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

A kindred psychology read.

06

Raising Girls

Steve Biddulph · Self-help

Raising Girls is Steve Biddulph's guide to the specific challenges of raising daughters in the contemporary world.

Shares adolescence and parenting with The Anxious Generation.

07

An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison · Psychology

Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychiatrist and professor who has manic-depressive illness.

Both dig into mental health.

08

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.

Both dig into parenting.

09

Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

Becky Kennedy · Psychology

Good Inside is clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy's guide to a parenting philosophy built around one central premise: children are fundamentally good inside, and difficult behaviors are not character flaws or manipulation but signals of unmet needs or underdeveloped skills.

Both dig into parenting.

10

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Randolph M. Nesse · Psychology

Randolph Nesse spent forty years as a psychiatrist and evolutionary biologist asking a question most of his colleagues found strange: why did natural selection leave us so vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other forms of suffering?

Both dig into mental health.

11

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

Johann Hari · Psychology

Johann Hari's argument is that the collapse of attention is not a personal failing but a political crisis.

Both dig into mental health.

12

The Compassionate Mind

Paul Gilbert · Psychology

The Compassionate Mind is Paul Gilbert's comprehensive account of Compassion Focused Therapy, the approach he developed over decades of clinical work with people whose suffering was heavily compounded by shame, self-criticism, and an inability to feel comforted or to comfort themselves.

Both dig into mental health.