The World’s Best Non-Fiction Books in Their Respective Domain in 2023 (Constantly Updated)

Maybe you’ve noticed that I am obsessed with lists of any type.

I already made a list of the best books to turn your life around fast.

Then there is the Summary Database. And the Books Database.

This list is different. It contains the best books in many different categories, including books I did not read (I put an “*” next to them).

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Money

Achieving Financial Freedom

• Zero to One, Peter Thiel: this book will explain you how to build a company properly, and how to think about it.
• Unscripted, MJ DeMarco: the best practical business book on building a business that makes millions. It also contains a huge part of mindset.
• The Millionaire Fastlane, MJ DeMarco: the best practical book on building a business that makes millions, minus the mindset part.

Understanding Marketing

• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Jack Ries and Al Trout: a must-read as it covers the basics of marketing.
• Positioning, Jack Ries and Al Trout: a book to understand why things go viral, and how to get people to listen to your message.
• Different, Youngme Moon: a book to avoid making the same marketing mistakes than all other companies make.
• Copywriting Secrets, Jim Edwards: the best copywriting book you will ever read.
• Traction, Justin Mares, Gabriel Weinberg: the best book to create a complete marketing strategy for your product.

Learning Sales

• Copywriting Secrets, Jim Edwards: the best copywriting book you will ever read.
• Straight Line Selling, Jordan Belfort: an excellent introduction to how sales get done.

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Psychology

Performances and Learning

• The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey: the second most influential book in my life.

Solving Traumas

• The Body Keeps the Score*, Bessel van der Kolk: written by a worlwide authority on trauma, the book will explain you what trauma is, and how to solve it.
• Psycho-cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz: this old book is the best book ever written on the human mind.
• Personality Isn’t Permanent, Benjamin Hardy: it could be a sequel to Psycho-cybernetics. It’s the best self-development book ever written.
• Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection*, John E. Sarno: this book explains the link between repressed emotions and muscular pain, and how you can solve them both.
• Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature*, by Connie Zweig: this book also treats of the negative emotions we repress due to society and how we can stop doing so to embrace them instead, and becoming whole with ourselves.

Becoming More Social

• Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi: a great book on how to build a world-class network.
• Charisma on Command, Charlie Houpert: the best book on becoming more social and making more friends.

Understanding Women

• The Game, Neil Strauss: the book that started it all. It’s a journey of a guy going from a complete noob with girls to one of the most skilled dating guru in the world. A bit outdated, but the story is amazing.
• Models, Mark Manson: one of the best practical books on dating women. Also a bit outdated in the age of social media, but most of the content remains applicable.
• Practical Female Psychology for the Practical Man, Joseph, David, Franco: a book that will teach you how women think.
• Dating Essentials for Men, Robert Glover: this book covers all aspects of dating the other books don’t.
• My Secret Garden, Nancy Friday: a deep-dive in women’s sexual fantasies.

Pure Mindset

• Mindset: The Psychology of Success*, Carole Dweck: this book explains how to go from a fixed “I can’t do this” mindset to a flexible “I can’t do this yet” mindset.
• The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone: a great book on how to achieve your goals faster than anyone!
• The Setup, Dan Bilzerian: you will hate me for putting this book there, but The Setup is one of the very few books where the author explains how he succeeded.
• Relentless*, Tim Grover: a book on how to be relentless.
• Psycho-cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz: this old book is the best book ever written on the human mind.
• Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins: an autobiography of one of the best athletes in the world.

Books on Meaning

• Man’s Search for Meaning*, Viktor Frankl: this book narrates Frankl’s experience in concentration camps and his discoveries on meaning.
• Maps of Meaning*, Jordan Peterson: Peterson studied how different religions looked for meaning and extracted what they had all in common to create a universal map to meaning.
• 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson: everything one should know to be prepared in life.
• Siddharta, Herman Hesse: a fiction about finding meaning.

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General Culture and Science

Learning History

• Homo Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari: the history of our species.
• A Short Story of Nearly Everything*, Bill Bryson: a book about the history of science.
• Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt: a very detailed book about the reconstruction and development of Europe after its latest destruction.
• The Penguin History of Latin America*, Edwin Williamson: exactly what it says it is.
• A Political History of the World*, Jonathan Holslag: how the major historical events in the world influenced the course of history.
• The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant: this short book written by two historians is a summary of the lessons they have learned about human societies.
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*, Edward Gibbon: this book written in the 18th century is one of the best accounts of the decline of the Roman Empire!
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome*, Mary Beard: The best book on Roman History.
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich*, William L. Shirer: a detailed account of the history of rise and fall of Nazi Germany.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel*, Jared Diamond: the book explains why Eurasians and North Africans have conquered others, and not the other way around.
• Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson: the book takes an economic and historical approach to explain why certain nations succeed, and why others fail.
• The Changing World Order, Ray Dalio: this book gives a comprehensive picture of the political and economic cycles that make history.

Understanding Reality

• The Fabric of Reality*, David Deutsch: a book to explain physics simply.
• The Beginning of Infinity*, David Deutsch: the sequel to the Fabric of Reality.
• The Road to Reality*, Roger Pensore: a book to explain physics simply.
• The Incerto, Nassim Taleb: The Incerto is a series of books that teach you to look at reality not from a physics perspective, but from a risk and probability perspective. It contains
  • Fooled by Randomness: An analysis of how randomness intervenes in life and is seldom taken into account.
  • The Black Swan: a book about catastrophic unforeseen events that can ruin an entire enterprise.
  • The Bed of Procrustes: a short book about aphorisms.
  • Antifragile: a treaty about the things that get stronger in disorder.
  • Skin in the Game: a study of life and people in the presence or absence of stakes.

The Human Body

• Genius Food*, Max Lugavere: a nice and funny book about food and their impact on your body.
• Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker: on the importance of sleep, and how little we know about it.

Books About the Future

• Blockchain Basics*, Daniel Drescher: the best non-technical book to understand what the blockchain is.
• Life After Google*, George Gilder: a book to prepare yourself for a world beyond centralization.
• The Future Is Faster Than You Think*, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler: a book about future technologies.
• Homo Deus*, Yuval Noah Harari: a book about the merge of technology and the human body.
• The Sovereign Individual*: Jacob Rees-Mogg, James Dale Davidson: ironically, this book came out in the mid-90s and predicted the Internet, crypto-currencies, the collapse of states, the lack of faith in institutions, and many more crises of our world.

For more resources, head to auresnotes.com.

Photo by Jonathan Singer on Unsplash