Books like The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

01

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Carol S. Dweck · Psychology

Carol Dweck's central claim is simple but far-reaching: people hold one of two basic beliefs about their own abilities.

A kindred psychology read.

02

Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman · Psychology

Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, published in 1995, made a widely influential argument: that the cluster of abilities involved in managing emotions — self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skill — predicts life outcomes at least as well as IQ, and possibly better in many domains.

A kindred psychology read.

03

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychology

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a neuroscientist and psychologist at Northeastern University who has spent thirty years studying emotion, and her conclusion challenges the most widely held view of what emotions are.

Both dig into neuroscience.

04

Daring Greatly

Brené Brown · Health

Daring Greatly is Brené Brown's argument, drawn from twelve years of qualitative research on shame and vulnerability, that the willingness to show up without guarantees — to be seen, to risk failure, to remain open in the presence of uncertainty — is not weakness but the foundation of courage, connection, and meaningful achievement.

A kindred psychology read.

05

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Angela Duckworth · Psychology

Duckworth's central claim is that talent is overrated.

A kindred psychology read.

06

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.

Shares child development and parenting with The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind.

07

Scattered Minds

Gabor Maté · Health

Scattered Minds, originally published as Scattered, is Gabor Maté's account of ADHD seen through the lens of his own diagnosis and his decades of clinical practice.

Shares neuroscience and emotional regulation with The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind.

08

A General Theory of Love

Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon · Psychology

A General Theory of Love is a 2000 book by three psychiatrists at the University of California, San Francisco — Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon — who set out to explain love scientifically without stripping it of its significance.

Shares neuroscience and attachment with The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind.

09

Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation

Daniel J. Siegel · Psychology

Mindsight is Daniel Siegel's case that humans have a distinct capacity he calls "mindsight" — the ability to sense and shape one's own mental processes and to perceive the inner lives of others.

Shares neuroscience and emotional regulation with The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind.

10

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

Ethan Kross · Psychology

Humans talk to themselves more or less constantly.

Both dig into emotional regulation.

11

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Antonio Damasio · Psychology

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist at USC whose work challenges the centuries-old idea that reason and emotion are separate faculties, with reason the reliable guide and emotion the unreliable interference.

Both dig into neuroscience.

12

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.