Books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

01

The Road

Cormac McCarthy · Literary fiction

The Road follows a man and his young son crossing a post-apocalyptic America — grey ash, dead forests, roads clogged with the rusted shells of cars, occasional gangs of survivors who have become predatory.

A kindred philosophy read.

02

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius · Philosophy

Meditations is not a book Marcus Aurelius wrote for anyone to read.

A kindred philosophy read.

03

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 philosophy read.

04

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn · Science

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962, changed how historians, philosophers, and scientists think about how science advances.

A kindred philosophy read.

05

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse · Religion & Spirituality

Siddhartha is Hermann Hesse's 1922 novel of spiritual seeking, written at a time when Hesse was deeply studying Buddhist and Hindu texts.

Both dig into self-discovery.

06

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

Karen Armstrong · Memoir

The Spiral Staircase is Karen Armstrong's account of the years between leaving her convent in 1969 and discovering the religious scholarship that would define her later career.

Shares self-discovery and mental illness with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

07

A Beautiful Mind

Sylvia Nasar · Biography

Sylvia Nasar's biography of the mathematician John Nash — Nobel laureate, game theory pioneer, and paranoid schizophrenic — is one of the finest accounts of genius and mental illness in biographical literature.

Both dig into mental illness.

08

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Robert Whitaker · Health

Anatomy of an Epidemic is Robert Whitaker's investigation into a paradox: as the use of psychiatric medication in the United States has increased dramatically over the past half-century, the number of people on disability due to mental illness has risen in parallel.

Both dig into mental illness.

09

Brain Energy

Christopher M. Palmer · Health

Brain Energy is Christopher Palmer's argument that mental illness is fundamentally a metabolic disorder — specifically, a disorder of mitochondrial function and brain energy regulation.

Both dig into mental illness.

10

Designing Your Life

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans · Self-help

Designing Your Life borrows tools from Silicon Valley product design and applies them to the messier problem of building a fulfilling life.

Both dig into self-discovery.

11

Greenlights

Matthew McConaughey · Memoir

Greenlights is Matthew McConaughey's memoir-philosophy hybrid, built around decades of journals he kept starting in his teens.

Both dig into self-discovery.

12

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Homo Deus picks up where Sapiens left off, but turns to face the other direction.

Both dig into technology and humanity.