Book Summaries

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell explores the decisions we make in the blink of an eye. We’re often taught to view these snap judgments as inferior to decisions based on rational analysis, but Gladwell shows us that decisions made intuitively can be as good as, and sometimes better than, conscious decisions.

Blink delves into how and why we make the gut decisions we do, when it’s unsafe to trust our guts, and what we can do to make all our snap judgments smarter, less biased, and more efficient.

In this summary of Blink, learn:

• How a couple’s divorce can be detected within just a few minutes of interaction
• Why you can understand someone from their bedroom without ever meeting them
• How to make better decisions by getting less data

Does it sometimes feel like everybody else has life figured out except you? Rachel Hollis, author of Girl, Wash Your Face, wants you to know that’s a lie. Life is messy and complicated for everyone, but once you understand that you are in control of your life, you can begin to live with passion, joy and confidence. 

Aimed at women who feel overwhelmed and unworthy, Girl, Wash Your Face examines 20 lies that can hold you back from becoming who you were meant to be. Hollis details her own mistakes, traumas and life lessons, and shares with readers the strategies she used to overcome these lies and find true happiness.

In this summary of Girl, Wash Your Face, learn how to deal with the feelings of:

• Not having made it far enough by this point in your life
• Everyone has their stuff together but you
• You’re not good enough as a parent or a lover

If you’ve turned on a TV or read a newspaper in the last two decades or so, you’d have a pretty grim picture of the world. Terrorism. Extreme poverty. Deadly epidemics. And it’s getting worse all the time. But this view is completely wrong. Not only are things much better than we think—they’re better than they’ve ever been.

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—And Why Things Are Better Than You Think explores our misconceptions about the world by identifying ten instincts that mistakenly lead us to embrace an over-dramatic, stereotyped, inflexible, and unduly pessimistic view of the world. 

For each instinct, the book explores real-world examples of how they manifest, why we believe in them, their harmful impact, and how we can apply factfulness to overcome them. At the end of this summary, we hope you’ll have swapped out your dramatic worldview for a factful one: informed by data, relentlessly eager to absorb new information, and always questioning conventional wisdom. 

When Breath Becomes Air is the beautiful and heart-wrenching memoir of Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgical resident diagnosed with lung cancer in the last year of his training.

When the life Paul and his wife Lucy imagined for their futures ceases in the face of his diagnosis, he works to understand what his new life will look like and how long it will be. Through various treatments, his struggle to return to work, and the birth of his first and only child, Paul details his personal journey of discovering the meaning of life, death, and the thin line separating them.

He explores what it means to save a life—not only his patients’, but his own, as well. 

When Breath Becomes Air is a #1 New York Times Bestseller and topped many “Best Books of the Year” lists.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan explores the question of where our food comes from, and how the growth, processing, marketing, and distribution of food affects our health, animal welfare, and the environment.

This book, published in 2006, was the first of several blockbuster influential books critical of the post-World War II industrialization of food production by our government and big business.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma refers to the age-old human dilemma of deciding what to eat. Because we’re omnivores, and biologically designed to eat plants, animals and fungi, we have wide-ranging options compared to “specialized eaters” like koala bears or monarch butterflies that can eat only one thing. In the early days of human evolution, deciding what to eat was a dilemma because some options could sicken or kill us. As a species we learned what to eat through various tools such as memory, recognition, taste, culture, and tradition.

Around the end of World War II, our food system began to change radically. Today we’re again confused and anxious about our food choices due to ignorance about where our food comes from — plus an array of new health concerns. We’re confronting a modern-day Omnivore’s Dilemma about what we should eat.

In this Omnivore’s Dilemma book summary, learn:

• How corn made its way into tens of thousands of foods, as a result of federal corn subsidies
• How “Big Organic” farms, like those powering Whole Foods, are in some ways no better than massive industrial farms
• What the author learned when he forced himself to forage for his food, hunting pigs and mushrooms

No one starts with nothing. Rags-to-riches stories fool us because although they may be factually true—you may start your life poor and finish it rich—they leave out all the advantages of circumstances that contribute to success. Further, they make us believe that success is an individual achievement.

But no one succeeds alone. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell shows us that where you’re from and the opportunities you’re given matter as much as personal advantages such as talent and intelligence.

In this Outliers summary, learn:

• Why planes crash more when the pilots speak Korean instead of English
• Why Asians are good at math
• How Jewish lawyers rose to prominence

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson argues that we are frustrated in life and feel like failures because we value and prioritize the wrong things, thanks in part to society’s emphasis on positive thinking, over-involved parents, and our susceptibility to superficial social media messages. This leads us to pursue emotional highs that don’t lead to lasting happiness.

The solutions are counter-intuitive and include: be wrong, fail, tolerate feeling bad, accept pain, practice rejection. Because we can’t care equally about everything, we need to prioritize and focus on what brings us happiness and meaning.

Have too much stuff, and not sure how best to get rid of it? Marie Kondo is a world-renowned expert on tidying, and this book teaches you how to get past the most common barriers preventing you from decluttering. The principles in this book are the basis of the hit Netflix show, “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.”

Go through the Konmari method once, and you may find your relationship with things to be changed permanently. People have reported dampening their desire to shop for new things, and feeling more peaceful around their home.

(Personally, I went through a Konmari cleaning a few years ago and instantly became more minimalist. I wanted to buy fewer things and continue keeping the same level of organization. )

In this Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up summary, learn:

• What “sparking joy” means and why most of what you own doesn’t do this
• How to get over common cleaning barriers, like regretting a purchase or having clothes you don’t fit into anymore
• Why sentimental items are the hardest to discard, and how to do it successfully.