Mental Health Book Reviews Page 4

Susan Cain
Crown
2012
368 pages
$20.00 - $30.00

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Susan Cain's landmark defence of the introvert - a cultural critique and a self-help book wrapped around serious psychological research.

Matt Haig
Penguin Books
2015
264 pages
$19.00

Reasons to Stay Alive

A memoir of depression and anxiety from the inside, told in short luminous fragments - brief, devastating, and genuinely hopeful.

John J. Ratey, MD, Eric Hagerman
Little, Brown Spark
2008
294 pages
$11.99 - $37.00

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

A Harvard psychiatrist's case that exercise is the most underused mental health tool we have, told through stories and science.

Dan Buettner
National Geographic
2012
336 pages
$14.95

The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest

Dan Buettner's tour of the world's longest-lived communities - diet, movement, purpose, and connection together, in a framework that has aged well.

Bessel van der Kolk
Penguin Books
2014
464 pages
$19.00 - $34.00

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

A Harvard-trained psychiatrist's synthesis of four decades of trauma research - the book that reshaped how readers understand the relationship between body and mind.

Tim Spector
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
2015
323 pages
$15.54

The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat

Tim Spector's rigorous tour of diet, the microbiome, and individual variation - one of the most reliable nutrition books on the shelf.

Russ Harris
Shambhala Publications
2022
320 pages
$19.95

The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living

The most accessible popular guide to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - a framework that has quietly changed how a generation of therapists treat anxiety.

Mark Hyman
Little, Brown Spark
2021
272 pages
$14.99 - $35.00

The Pegan Diet: 21 Practical Principles for Reclaiming Your Health in a Nutritionally Confusing World

Mark Hyman's attempt to merge paleo and vegan into one pragmatic set of whole-food principles - reasonable advice wrapped in functional-medicine packaging.

Steven R. Gundry
Harper Wave
2017
416 pages
$13.49 - $28.99

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

A commercially successful, scientifically contested anti-lectin book - most mainstream nutrition experts do not endorse its core claims.

Eckhart Tolle
New World Library
1999
236 pages
$11.24 - $16.49

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Eckhart Tolle's guide to presence, thought, and the pain-body - a contemplative classic that works better for some readers than others.

Arianna Huffington
Harmony
2016
416 pages
$17.99

The Sleep Revolution

A wake-up call about our culture of sleep deprivation and a readable, if uneven, guide to reclaiming rest.

Melissa Hartwig Urban, Dallas Hartwig
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2015
432 pages
$12.99 - $26.00

The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom

A thirty-day whole-foods elimination and reintroduction protocol - useful as a diagnostic, less useful as a long-term identity.

Daniel Kahneman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
2011
499 pages
$12.99 - $38.00

Thinking, Fast and Slow

A Nobel laureate's synthesis of fifty years of research into how the mind actually works - influential, rigorous, and partially overtaken by the replication crisis.

BJ Fogg
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2019
320 pages
$13.99 - $27.00

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

The Stanford behaviour scientist who trained James Clear lays out his own system - start absurdly small, anchor to existing behaviour, and celebrate.

William Davis
Rodale Books
2011
304 pages
$19.99

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

A commercially huge, scientifically weak book arguing modern wheat is the root cause of most chronic disease - widely disputed by mainstream nutrition science.

Matthew Walker
Scribner
2017
368 pages
$13.99 - $29.99

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

A UC Berkeley sleep scientist's landmark case that sleep is the most powerful health intervention available to us - told with urgency and style.