Books like The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

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.

A kindred psychology read.

02

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.

03

Radical Acceptance

Tara Brach · Religion & Spirituality

Tara Brach, a psychologist and Buddhist meditation teacher, wrote Radical Acceptance as a response to what she calls the trance of unworthiness — the pervasive background feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with us, that we are not enough.

A kindred psychology read.

04

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.

05

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.

Both dig into identity.

06

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

Timothy D. Wilson · Psychology

Timothy Wilson's central argument is uncomfortable: we don't know ourselves as well as we think we do.

Shares self-knowledge and identity with The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves.

07

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Lori Gottlieb · Memoir

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist who, after a sudden and shattering breakup, found herself in therapy of her own.

Shares self-knowledge and change with The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves.

08

Out of Africa

Isak Dinesen · Memoir

Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of the seventeen years she spent running a coffee farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi, from 1914 to 1931.

Shares loss and identity with The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves.

09

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon · History

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two Jewish cousins — Josef Kavalier, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague, and Sam Clay (born Sammy Klayman), a Brooklyn dreamer — who together create one of the golden age's great superhero franchises in late-1930s New York.

Shares loss and identity with The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves.

10

The Light We Carry

Michelle Obama · Memoir

The Light We Carry is Michelle Obama's second memoir, published in 2022 as a follow-up to Becoming.

Shares self-knowledge and identity with The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves.

11

Adult Children of Alcoholics

Janet G. Woititz · Psychology

Adult Children of Alcoholics is Janet Woititz's clinical guide to the lasting psychological patterns that develop in children raised in alcoholic families.

Both dig into identity.

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 identity.