Book Summaries

Read the #1 summary of The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy. Get the book’s key ideas in 21 minutes or less. Download PDF book summary.

Want to get the main points of Lies My Teacher Told Me in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen here.

History has been poorly taught in high school, and this has turned many students away from the discipline. The problem starts with its ubiquitous textbooks. Students are presented with a barrage of sanitized, unrelated facts without critical thought, nuance, meaning, or causation. High School history is dominated by dry, boring, and enormous (often >1,000 pages) textbooks that seem to suck all life from the subject. They don’t share the suspense, uncertainty, or drama as participants at the time must have been and the primary sources sometimes record. Everything not an empty fact is presented as a problem already solved or about to be solved. The result is that students don’t learn the complexity and nuance of history, and they become disengaged with it.

Want to get the main points of Business Model Generation in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur here.

Business Model Generation is a book about systemic business innovation. It provides a template and process that allows teams to discuss and understand how business models have worked and are formed. Successful businesses thrive by creating holistic business models that take advantage of every available resource in their space. Customers lie at the heart of all business models, but the business model may approach them indirectly. Many tools can be used to approach business model brainstorming from a variety of different angles, such as the building block canvas. 

Want to get the main points of Think Like a Freak in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner here.

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have built the Freaknomics brand by demonstrating the counterintuitive power of incentives in a variety of different circumstances. They wrote Think Like a Freak to help convey how to think in this economics-style matter.

Want to get the main points of The 5 Levels of Leadership in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of The 5 Levels of Leadership by John C. Maxwell here.

Rather than viewing leadership through the lens of a career path, people should focus on leadership development as its own path. Building leadership ability and relationships takes a great deal of time and focus, but the great rewards are all at the top. One of the surest signs of a blossoming leader is that they are bringing others up along with them. However, mistakes can also destroy one’s ability very quickly.

Want to get the main points of Liar’s Poker in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis here.

Liar’s Poker is a social expose written by Michael Lewis, a former bond salesman for Salomon Brothers. He covers Wall Street investment banking culture, and all the wretched excess and perverse incentives within it. Readers who want to get an inside look at how Wall Street investment banks really operated back in the 80’s will find much to enjoy and ponder. Some will find value in the economic history of the Savings & Loan era. Others might focus on his story about how a firm’s culture can change people, and the choices one is confronted with should they wish to rise up in that world.

Want to get the main points of Merchants of Doubt in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway here.

Many have no doubt wondered why the United States or even world governments have been so lumbering to act on policy regarding public health such as for smoking. Others may have been curious about why we have struggled so much to achieve scientific consensus on a variety of controversial areas such as global warming or ozone holes. Interestingly, these problems, and others, are all linked by specific tactics and people that one side uses to obfuscate and drag out the issue.

Want to get the main points of The Talent Code in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle here.

Improving is much more about the right approach, environment, and mentality than innate talent. Unfortunately, many people bring the wrong ideas from elsewhere in society into learning a skill, inhibiting their ability to improve. When examining top performers in a variety of disciplines, certain patterns emerge between them. These patterns include how practicing should emphasize mistakes and difficulty, why a long-term outlook is more important than practicing harder, and how coaches and students optimally work together by reading each other’s signals.

Want to get the main points of The Automatic Millionaire in 20 minutes or less? Read the world’s #1 book summary of The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach here.

 The Automatic Millionaire advocates a simple but effective approach for growing one’s wealth: automatically pay yourself first, invest it, and don’t touch it. None of its advice is new per se, but put together it offers a low-friction method of obtaining wealth by taking key psychological principles into account.