November, 18, 2025
By Charles Steel
When you write a book you end up spending far too much time thinking about titles.
I know I did!
We like books that tell us how to do something. For the more curious, books can tell us why we do things. By comparison, what, where, when and who hardly get a look in.
After my wife made me do a clear-out of the bookshelves, I made a silly video about this.
And yes, I have too many books!
Here is the full list.
How Books
How The World Thinks, Julian Baggini
How Google Works, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
How The Mind Works, Steven Pinker
How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
How Emotions are Made, The Secret Life of the Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett
How to Change Your Mind, The New Science of Psychedelics, Michal Pollan
How Religion Evolved, And Why it Endures, Robin Dunbar
How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi
How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton
How to Live, A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer, Sarah Bakewell
How to Change the World, Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, David Bornstein
Why Books
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping, Robert Sapolsky
Why Nations Fail, The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Why Buddhism Is True, The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, Robert Wright
Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein
The Book of Why, The New Science of Cause and Effect, Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie
Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick J. Deneen
Start With Why, How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Simon Sinek
What Books
Bullsh#t Jobs, The Rise of Pointless Work and What we Can Do About it, David Graeber
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
What Money Can’t Buy, The Moral Limits of Markets, Michael Sandel
What Maisie Knew, Henry James
What Is Life?, Erwin Schrödinger
What We Owe the Future, A Million-Year View, William MacAskill
What It Takes, Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence, Stephen Schwarzman
What’s Our Problem?, A Self-Help Book for Societies, Tim Urban
When Books
The Age of Spiritual Machines, When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Ray Kurzweil
When Breath Becomes Air, What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death, Paul Kalanithi
The Innovator’s Dilemma, When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Clayton M. Christensen
When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labatut
When The Heavens Went on Sale, The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach, Ashlee Vance
When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows, Steven Pinker
The Singularity Is Near, When Humans Transcend Biology, Ray Kurzweil
Where Books
Where’s Wally?, Martin Handford
Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
Who Books
What You Do Is Who You Are, How to Create Your Business Culture, Ben Horowitz
Who We Are and How We Got Here, Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, David Reich
For the book-obsessed people out there, here is an even deeper dive into sub-title
How Subtitles
Makers and Takers, How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street, Rana Foroohar
The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman, How America Took Over the World, John Perkins
Bold, How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!), How to Unleash Your Creative Potential by America’s Master Communicator, George Lois
Range, How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein
The Tipping Point, How Little Things Can Make a Difference, Malcolm Gladwell
The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, Gad Saad
The Examined Life, How We Lose and Find Ourselves, Stephen Grosz
Mindset, How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, Carol S. Dweck
The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human, Jonathan Gottschall
The Future is Faster Than You Think, How Converging Technologies are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
The Great Reversal, How America Gave Up on Free Markets, Thomas Philippon
Empire, How Britain Made the Modern World, Niall Ferguson
The Innovators, How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Walter Isaacson
Originals, How Non-Conformists Change the World, Adam Grant
Zero to One, Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
The Ape That Understood the Universe, How the Mind and Culture Evolve, Steve Stewart-Williams
The End of Poverty, How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime, Jeffrey Sachs
The Broken Ladder, How Inequality Changes the Way We Think, Live, and Die, Keith Payne
Beyond the Unknown, How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars, Andrew Rader
An Immense World, How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong
Becoming Steve Jobs, How a Reckless Upstart Became a Visionary Leader, Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli
The Mating Mind, How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, Geoffrey Miller
The Life You Can Save, How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty, Peter Singer
Innate, How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are, Kevin J. Mitchell
Exponential, How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It, Azeem Azhar
Trade Wars Are Class Wars, How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace, Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis
Open, The Story of Human Progress, How Collaboration and Curiosity Shaped Humankind, Johan Norberg
The Lean Startup, How Continuous Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries
In the Plex, How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, Steven Levy
Not by Genes Alone, How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd
The Secret of Our Success, How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter, Joseph Henrich
The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, How to Know What’s Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake, Steven Novella et al.
Tiny Experiments, How to Live Freely in a Goal-obsessed World, Anne-Laue Le Cunff
The Coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
Fracture, Stories of How Great Lives Take Root in Trauma, Matthew Parris
The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt
Crashed, How a Decade Financial Crises Changed the World, Adam Tooze
Primate Change, How the World We Made Is Remaking Us, Vybarr Cregan-Reid
Utopia for Realists, And How We Can Get There, Rutger Bregman
Glow Kids, How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids – and How to Break the Trance, Nicholas Kardaras
Why Subtitles
The Scout Mindset, Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t, Julia Galef
Good to Great, Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, Jim Collins
Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek, Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, Simon Sinek
Black Box Thinking, The Surprising Truth About Success (and Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes), Matthew Syed
Dream Hoarders, How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, Richard V. Reeves
The Orchid and the Dandelion, Why Sensitive People Struggle and How All Can Thrive, W. Thomas Boyce
Factfulness, Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Dead Aid, Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way for Africa, Dambisa Moyo
The Feeling of Life Itself, Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can’t Be Computed, Christof Koch
The Seven Basic Plots, Why We Tell Stories, Christopher Booker
Give and Take, Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, Adam Grant
The Nurture Assumption, Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Judith Rich Harris
The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt
The Capitalist Manifesto, Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World, Johan Norberg
White Fragility, Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo
The Vital Question, Why Is Life the Way It Is, Nick Lane
Ensh#tification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Cory Doctorow
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