Monthly Non-Fiction Reading List 4.2025
We’re back! And we have 11 books on this month’s reading list. We have a bit of a mixed bag with books I really enjoyed, some I didn’t like so much, and some that started off good and then got kind of bad.
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Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential by Scott Barry Kaufman
Brace yourself. This is going to be a longer book review because I have a lot of thoughts. Overall, I absolutely loved this book, and I personally think it’ll be one of the best non-fiction books of 2024. It’s a much-needed book that probably should have come out years ago, but it’s better late than never. While I loved the book, I do have some criticisms.
The title is pretty self-explanatory. Navigating the topic of telling people to “get out of the victim” mindset is super tricky because people are quick to get defensive. The wild part is that anyone who gets defensive when being told to get out of the victim mindset is more than likely the exact type of person who needs to read this book. Fortunately, if these people actually read the book, Scott manages to do an excellent job discussing the topic while also showing compassion to various adversities people face.
I think this book really resonated with me because I’m a recovering drug addict and alcoholic coming up on 13 years sober. I had the victim mentality most of my life, but getting out of it was what really helped me finally get sober. However, I can still fall back into this type of thinking, and Scott’s book was a great refresher that gave me a well-timed kick in the rear.
The author touches on so many great topics and backs it up with research as well as some great insights from great thinkers. He discusses how trigger warnings backfire, how trauma can lead to growth, how people become wounded healers, and so many other great topics.
I can see Scott getting some pushback from people about this book, mainly from the types of people he discusses in this book. But again, they’re definitely the ones who need to take this advice and put it into practice.
So, what’s my criticism? This book is very right-wing coded, but I don’t think that was the intent of the author at all. Scott makes this book pretty apolitical, but it’s largely based on the narrative that “the left is a bunch of snowflakes with a victim mindset”. You can tell based on all of the examples given throughout the book.
Again, I don’t fault the author because I think this is just a massive narrative in our country, and it’s going to take some work for people to realize what’s actually going on. For those paying attention, the right has as much of a victim mindset as the left, but their narrative is that these “rugged and tough” folks, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Look no further than the Libs of TikTok account to see how many people she’s tried to cancel over the years for things the right dislikes. There have been insane assaults on freedom of speech coming from the right because people say things they don’t like. If you follow right-wing people for five minutes, you can see their victim mindset as they scream that everything is the fault of immigrants and other minority groups, and they’d be able to succeed if it weren’t for them. But in this book, you won’t even find a hint of anything the right has been doing that clearly shows their victim mindset.
Scott’s a humanist and just wants everyone to get along, but this becomes the Joe Rogan problem that many others have fallen victim to. “I’m not right wing…but I’ll only criticize the left.” I think that’s an issue, and if Scott reads my review, I hope it’s something he thinks about. Again, liberals and conservatives both have clear issues with the victim mindset, but the narrative is that this is something only the left suffers from.
Overall, this is an excellent book. If you read it from your own perspective and how you may be suffering from a victim mindset, you’ll gain a ton of value from it. I’m going to re-read this book in the future and will have my son read it as well. But in the future, I hope Scott’s mindful that this issue has a much broader scope than whiny liberal college students.
Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In by Joel Salinas and Robert Bordone
As someone who avoids conflict as much as possible, I absolutely loved this book. This book is by a behavioral neurologist and a conflict management expert. They teach readers how to embrace conflict, rather than avoiding it or running away from it. As the title suggests, it gives a lot of practical tips for how to have conflicts while keeping your cool and finding a way to compromise. We run into these situations all the time in our lives, so this is a great book for everyone.
How to Be a Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed (Until Just Now) by Raffi Grinberg
This book was surprisingly good. I’m an adult, so I didn’t really have a reason to read it since I’m not the target audience. Still, I’m always on the lookout for books I may want my son to read at some point. This is definitely one of them. Raffi does a great job covering topics that every young person should learn about. He discusses interpersonal topics like relationships and managing your mental health, and he also goes over saving, investing, taxes, career advice, and so much more.
If you’re a parent, you may want to check out this book and see if may be good for your child. If you’re someone around your early 20s or are just an adult who needs to grow up, this is definitely a book you need to read.
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
I’ve read this book multiple times, and it was extremely useful when I was trying to understand what’s going on with the craziness in the world a while back. I’ve been sober for about 13 years, and have been working on myself ever since. It’s helped me become pretty resilient and learned how to cope with a lot of things, which is what this book preaches we should be teaching young people. I’m the father of a 16-year-old son, and I decided to re-read this book because while I thought I was making him resilient, now I’m concerned he may have been coddled.
In short, this book discusses how younger generations play into their own cognitive distortions, believing their constantly being harmed and are in dire need of help. This book was written years ago, and a lot of it still holds up.
I will say that with everything happening in 2025, I’d be curious what this book would sound like if it were written today. This book was written after a lot of campus protests around the time of Trump’s first term, when liberal students were being all sorts of wacky. But now, I can’t remember the last time I heard of one of these out-of-control protests on a campus, and we have the conservatives trying to shut down free speech every chance they get.
Anywho, this is a great book that I think everyone should read at least once.
Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change by Olga Khazan
Olga Khazan did it again. This was such a great book, and I binged it in about a day. Olga is a writer for The Atlantic, and I loved her first book. In this one, she wanted to research personality change, and she decided to put herself through an experiment to see if she could change her own personality. She discusses the history of personality research, and then dives into the “big 5” personality traits.
In the book, she documents her journey of trying to raise her score with each of the big 5 personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. She goes to pretty interesting lengths as well, including joining an improv group. She’s also extremely open and vulnerable in this book, discussing her relationship and and other personal stories.
This topic has interested me for a while because I got sober in 2012, and I’m a completely different person than I was. Still, I hear people debate about whether or not you can change your personality when I and so many others are living proof.
Olga does a great job discussing the benefits of personality change and how it can make your life better, so I highly recommend checking this book out.
Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults by Mara Einstein
This is one of those books that started out so good but then it just fell flat for me. We live in a time where everyone calls everything cults, but this author did such an amazing job in the first half relating marketers and influencers to cult leaders and how they manipulate us into buying things. I thought it was super interesting, and I couldn’t stop reading it.
Unfortunately, it eventually got to the point where all the book did was discuss influencers, and it just became a bit repetitive for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a content creator for a while now, but I just feel like the book could have taken a few more interesting directions. I’m sure a lot of people will love this book, so you should for sure check it out if it sounds interesting.
Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieren Setiya
This is one of my go-to books when I’m going through a tough time. Currently, I’m dealing with some issues, but not as bad as the previous times when I read this book. As I read the book this time, it wasn’t as useful as the previous reads.
What About Men?: A Feminist Answers the Question by Caitlin Moran
I enjoy reading books by feminists. I think it’s important to get the female perspective on things, and this one caught my attention. It’s not everyday that feminist writers try to address what’s going on with men and some of their struggles. Unfortunately, the book just isn’t that great.
I don’t mind books that don’t have a ton of research, but it depends on the topic. The author’s heart is in a good place, but she leans on stereotypes about men, anecdotes, and guesses to come to her conclusions. When there’s such a wealth of data on many of these important topics, it’d be nice if she included them in her book to inform her decisions. A great book that does this is Of Boys and Men by Richard V. Reeves.
I also don’t mind humor in a book, but the author jokes way too much throughout the book, making it hard to know when she’s being serious. I’m not even sure if I’d recommend this book because I think your time would be better spent reading Reeves’ book instead.
World Eaters: How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy by Catherine Bracy
I wasn’t a huge fan of how this book was written, but it was interesting. It’s about venture capital and how they incentivize startups to do things that are in the interest of capitalism rather than the common good. It was cool learning about some of this stuff, but it just wasn’t all that engaging of a read for me.
How to Fall in Love with Questions: A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty by Elizabeth Weingarten
I’m a big believer in people embracing curiosity, which is why I was super excited for this book. It started out really good and had a lot of great studies and information. Then, it started to go up and down. The author includes far too many personal stories, and many didn’t really seem relevant to the topic she was writing about, and that kind of took me out of the book. There are some good nuggets of wisdom in here, but it’s not great overall.
On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It by Michael Patrick Lynch
I’m really bummed out that I didn’t enjoy this book. I absolutely love the other books by Michael Patrick Lynch, and I re-read them regularly. I want to make it clear that this book just wasn’t for me, but I’m sure many people will like it. Lynch is a philosopher, and this book dives into the importance of truth in politics.
Where this book missed for me, personally, is that it’s just way too far in the realm of academic philosophy. Lynch’s other books are written for the lay person, making them a bit more of an enjoyable read for people like me. This one reads like a text book with a lot of instances of “if P = Q, then Y must be P”-type stuff that is just a bore for me.
If you’re super into philosophy, you may love this book. I just kind of wish it was more in lien with his other books.
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