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10 of the Best Psychology Books I've Ever Read
Matt Karamazov
January 29, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 36 minutes
📚 Welcome back to The Reading Life!
You might know that I love reading and learning about space, the universe, distant galaxies, the mysteries of the cosmos, etc. It’s endlessly fascinating.
But I can’t help but feel that there are virtually infinite unexplored universes inside each one of us as well.
The vast expanse of the human mind is just as fascinating as the design and structure of the furthest-reaching galaxies, and that’s what these ten books I’m going to recommend tonight can help you explore: your mind, and the minds of others.
I’ve also just started this Reading Challenge on Instagram where I’m reading 200 pages a day until I reach 200,000 Followers. I’m only on Day Three, but it’s been such a good decision so far. Not only am I reading more (obviously), but I’ve also been forced to be more productive and organized in order to hit my daily reading goal.
Follow along on Instagram if you want to be my accountability buddy! Or laugh at me when I fail haha. Either works.
You might also be interested in my Ultimate Guide to Speed Reading on YouTube.
Now, before our coffees get cold, let’s hit the books!
Tonight, Inside The Reading Life, We’ve Got:
“Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways, they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.”
“I am one of the richest self-made men in Britain for two reasons. I own my company outright, and I began to make more baskets the minute the first had a few eggs in it.”
Inside my private business mastermind, Creator Launch Academy, we’re tackling one nonfiction book per month and implementing its lessons inside our businesses.
This month’s book is How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis, a fantastic book about getting rich, obviously, but also with a touch of tragic beauty, written as it was when Dennis found himself at the top of the financial mountain, with terminal cancer…and alone.
Click here to claim your free trial, and join our business book club for educational content creators!
After achieving my (somewhat meaningless) goal of reading 1,000 books before I turned 30, I set a new (also meaningless but cool) goal of reading 10,000 books. As of today, I’ve read exactly 1,462 books, including 8 books so far this year, and if you’re interested, here’s my full Reading List.
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Every now and then, a capital-B Book comes along. You probably know exactly what I mean. For me (and literally millions of other readers over the intervening decades since it was published), this was one of those Books.
Viktor Frankl was a World War II Holocaust survivor who spent years imprisoned in four separate Nazi death camps, losing his entire family before he was set free by the invading Russians and spent the rest of his life helping people find the real meaning of their lives.
This Book is already massively popular, and yet still not as popular as it deserves to be. Something like 16 million copies have been sold, but even attaching any number to it at all almost cheapens the infinite value of this incredible, inimitable, life-transforming Book.
Frankl’s fundamental message is that we always possess the freedom to respond to our circumstances, not to be crushed by them. Our lives are up to us, and as long as we have something – or someone – to live for, no fate or tragedy is insurmountable.
Difficulty Rating: Medium
Why You Might Love It Too: This is both one of the darkest and the lightest books you’re ever likely to read, and it’ll remind you that, no matter where you may find yourself, there’s always a way forward, and you can always keep walking.
“The self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self-image and you expand the ‘area of the possible.’ The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success.”
A big claim that’s made in this book is that it’s almost literally impossible to act differently than our self-image of ourselves. Or rather, it’s possible, but we experience extreme cognitive dissonance – mental discomfort – when we do.
This has proven itself over and over again in my own life, and it resonates with some of the best advice I’ve ever received from Tony Robbins, which is to raise your standards.
We get what we tolerate in life, and if your standards are low to the ground, your life will never take off.
Similarly, if our self-image is that of an unmotivated, lazy underachiever, that’s exactly the kind of life we’re going to end up living. Now, if you don’t want that kind of life for yourself, this book can help.
It's a multimillion-copy bestseller that explores the concept of “emotional surgery,” or uncovering more of what we unconsciously believe about ourselves and to reprogram our own minds for success.
I never like to oversell these claims, because proponents of books like these tend to promise the world – the whole world and everything in four easy steps, or whatever.
This isn’t that.
Just like with anything, you get out what you put in, and the work you do on yourself is the work of a lifetime. There’s so much gold here in this book, and any number of my notes on this book have the power to change a person’s life, but it has to be applied, and it has to be lived.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Love It Too: This is a very easy to read book, and one that’s immediately applicable. You’ll literally see yourself differently after reading it, and it’s helped a tremendous number of people develop this life-changing self-confidence that’s quite astonishing to behold.
“Man's tragic destiny is that he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe.”
This book about the subconscious fear of death and how it motivates much of human behavior won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, but the man behind the book was just as interesting as its subject matter. I never met the guy, but he might just be one of my favorite university professors.
Becker taught at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was so beloved by his students that they once got together and offered to pay his salary after learning that the university wasn’t going to renew his contract!
Many times - while teaching, for example, King Lear, anthropology, and whatever else - he’d come to class in full costume, full of life and energy and enthusiasm for learning.
When he died at the age of 49 from colon cancer, the academic world lost someone very special, and I’d personally recommend several of his other books too, including The Birth and Death of Meaning, and Escape from Evil.
The Denial of Death is one of my favorite books, and its main thrust is that being alive - as fragile beings with no satisfying explanation for why we’re here - is so terrifying that in response to this realization, the majority of people retreat into a socially constructed self that basically forms a psychological defense against the reality of death.
Becker also believed that these psychological defenses prevent us from discovering who we really are, and not only that, are also responsible for much of the evil that’s present in the world.
It’s not an “easy” read, by any means, and one of its strengths is that it gives a person very little room to hide, or rationalize away his conclusions.
With brilliantly reasoned arguments, he shows how this subconscious fear of death limits our lives, prevents accurate self-knowledge, and, if not surmounted through the pursuit of “genuine heroism,” casts a dark shadow across our full human potential.
Difficulty Rating: Medium
Why You Might Love It Too: This book explains the behavior of sooo many people and a lot of the craziness you see in the world - it’s a Before/After book for sure. You see the world one way now, and you’ll (likely) see it completely differently after reading The Denial of Death.
The Seven Principles of Persuasion:
1 - Reciprocity: People want to repay favors that they’ve received from others.
2 - Commitment and Consistency: People want to view themselves as consistent.
3 - Social Proof: People gravitate to what is popular or approved by others.
4 - Liking: People are more easily persuaded by people they like.
5 - Authority: People tend to more easily obey authority figures.
6 - Scarcity: People value objects and resources that are in short supply.
7 - Unity: People are more likely to take the side of their group members.
This is one of the must-read classics of persuasion and it’s pretty much been the gold standard for books on that subject ever since it came out in 1984.
I’m generally distrustful of new books from people who claim to have found a “new paradigm” or whatever when it comes to influence – save your time and your money and just buy this one book.
The seven universal principles of persuasion that he covers in depth are: reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity, and unity, and once you have those covered, you have more than a decent idea of why people do pretty much anything, and how you can influence their behavior to align with what you want them to do.
Influence, like The 48 Laws of Power, is amoral – meaning, it’s not the material itself but what you do with it. You could use it to become an evil genius, or you could use it to inspire positive change in both yourself and your community. The principles can be used either way. The choice, as always, is yours.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Love It Too: This book explains a lot of the behavior of other people too, with the added benefit that you can use that information to help you (ethically) get what you want. Some major cheat codes to life in this one.
“Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled on, and their singularities ignored.”
Most people are paralyzed by the fear that they aren’t “enough”; that they aren’t “worthy” enough in the eyes of others, or that they need to add something to themselves in order to be deserving of love and acceptance. De Botton refers to this as status anxiety, and it’s the topic of his positively brilliant book.
I’m somewhat desensitized to it myself, having been on “both sides,” as it were. I spent a long time working minimum-wage security jobs in hospitals and bars (which is where I found so much free time to read!), and so I have plenty of experience dealing with people who thought they were “better than me” for whatever reason.
It’s funny: the doctors never talked down to me (they always treated me with respect), but the nurses were the worst!
Nowadays, I have more of the “trappings” of success and status, with people going out of their way to befriend me or make me notice them, etc.
But here’s the thing: “rich” or “poor,” I was always me! And I was always enough, no matter who may have thought otherwise. Truthfully, I barely even noticed them - I was just going on about my life!
Status anxiety, however, is not a new phenomenon, and it’s got a wildly colorful history that de Botton explores in this book. It’s a phenomenon that he says has less to do with material comfort than with love and the deepest forms of human acceptance.
People everywhere are rushing around in a great panic trying to “achieve” things, to make themselves “worthy” of love and respect, but they’ve already had it all along! They (and you) don’t need to do anything extra or have anything or be anything to be worthy of unconditional acceptance and human dignity. It’s already yours.
I found many of his conclusions and recommendations fascinating too. For instance, his reminder that we can choose who and where to derive status from.
If we give the matter careful thought and consideration, we can decide whose acceptance we want to gain, and what we are and are not willing to do to get it.
What’s more, we can get to a point where we realize that the less anxious you are about your relative status, the less desire you’ll feel to showcase how deserving of it you are.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Love It Too: This book will help you see status in an entirely new way, and more specifically, how most people think they want to be rich or famous, but really they just wanted to be loved. To be noticed. It’s a beautifully written book, but, charged with compassion for others, you’ll also likely behave more beautifully toward others as well.
“The waiting rooms of psychiatrists are filled with rich and successful people who thought that wealth was the answer to every question.”
Flow is one of those foundational psychology books, revolutionary at the time, that holds the key to understanding everything from creativity, productivity, happiness, meaning, and purpose. Flow states are associated with all of those things, and this book is about how to bring more of this genuinely satisfying state of consciousness into your life.
Csikszentmihalyi (and you will not spell his name right until approximately your 100th try) was an academic researcher, and so much of the book is fairly technical, but it’s also thoughtful, deep, extraordinarily practical, and applicable to virtually everyone on earth.
He’s not just writing for other academics; he’s more or less uncovered one of the secrets of sustained happiness and purpose, and his joy in sharing it comes across really well throughout the book. It’s not the most epic page-turner I’ve ever read, but he makes at least an in-good-faith attempt to make it entertaining and accessible.
“Flow states,” those times when we are fully and completely engaged in what we’re doing, lose track of time, and experience a near-total immersion in the moment as it unfolds, don’t just “happen.”
There are preconditions that must be met, prerequisites that need to be present in order to enter a flow state. Or make entering a flow state more likely.
These include: engaging in an activity with a clear purpose, one that’s meaningful and/or interesting to you, and one that’s near the limit of your abilities, without exceeding them. Too challenging and you get frustrated (no flow), too easy and you get bored (no flow).
Retiring from all work, never struggling to achieve anything worthwhile, and letting your skills and abilities atrophy from lack of use is psychological death to human beings. Sitting on a beach for forty years with nothing to do is likely a fate worse than death.
No, you want effortful striving; a goal; something that challenges you, that calls upon the very best that’s within you. That’s where the majority of meaning can be found on this earth.
You’ll also find that what you pay attention to becomes your life. Shaping and controlling the contents of consciousness is the key to a meaningful life, and Flow teaches you how to do just that. But again, it’s not just going to “happen.”
You have to, well, consciously direct your attention and give your absolute best effort to something that lights you up. Take care of that, and flow generally ends up taking care of itself.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Love It Too: This book will help you access states of consciousness that most people rarely experience in their daily lives. Meaningful challenge, pleasurable adversity, and growth-inducing problems will engage your mind and fill your heart in ways that dollars never could.
The Thirteen Sources of Well-Being:
1 - More Positive Emotions
2 - Fewer Negative Emotions
3 - Life Satisfaction
4 - Vitality
5 - Environmental Mastery
6 - Positive Relationships
7 - Self-Acceptance
8 - Mastery
9 - Autonomy
10 - Personal Growth
11 - Engagement in Life
12 - Purpose and Meaning in Life
13 - Transcendent Experiences
This was one of my standout reads of 2020, a book that impressed me and astounded me so strongly that now I recommend it all the time.
In his professional academic career, Scott Barry Kaufman has focused on expanding on and spreading the ideas of Abraham Maslow, whose name you may recognize from that pyramid you were made to memorize in school. You know the one!
At the bottom level, you’ve got the very basic survival needs of air, food, water, and health. Then, going up a level you find shelter and stability as the next most important human needs, all the way up to the need for development, creativity, and growth.
Kaufman shows how, at the end of Maslow’s life, he was working towards extending his world-famous ideas (dealing mainly with self-actualization and self-expression) to the idea of transcendence, or interconnection between the fates and destinies of every human being alive on Earth.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Love It Too: This book will show you sooo many more ways to be happy and fulfilled and satisfied than most people ever think to try. The author’s obvious enthusiasm for the subject matter of human flourishing is alive on every page as well, making it an extremely enjoyable read in itself.
“I loathe malls, but I respect the free market as the most ingenious system yet devised for people to enjoy mutual gains from trade under conditions of peace, freedom, and autonomy.
I hate the way that corporate lobbyists corrupt democracy, but I recognize that our quality of life in the developed world is a fragile, fortunate exception to the global historical norm of toil, oppression, poverty, disease, and death.”
Evolutionary psychology is a fascinating lens through which to observe modern techno-consumer capitalism, and that’s exactly what Miller does here in this book, one of my absolute favorites.
In my gross oversimplification, he looks at “trait display” and “status-seeking” and other things with respect to human mating, and how the things we buy are used to present ourselves to potential mates in the best possible light.
That being said, Miller explains that consumer capitalism is one the least efficient ways of doing this!
Through conversation, mutual exploration, and group dynamics, we’re already very good at determining whether someone we’re meeting for the first time is higher or lower on the Big Six personality traits – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism (mental stability), and generally intelligence.
We don’t need to mindlessly buy things – and waste our vital powers doing so – in order to find the communities to which we most suitably belong.
There’s a ton of nuance in this book, and reasonable people may disagree with some of Miller’s conclusions, but he basically says that consumer capitalism is responsible for some of both the best and the worst features of modern societies.
The answer isn’t just to ‘disband’ capitalism or adopt some new system – rather, the thing to do is mindfully approach our consumption patterns and recognize when we have gone too far.
Difficulty Rating: Medium
Why You Might Love It Too: This is another Before/After book that helpfully explains the otherwise wildly irrational-looking behavior of sooo many people you see walking around and doing stuff. It’s eye-opening for sure.
“Status is an essential nutrient found not in meat or fruit or sunlight but in the successful playing of our lives. When we feel chronically deprived of it, or disconnected from the game, our minds and bodies can turn against us. To our brains, status is a resource as real as oxygen or water. When we lose it, we break.”
Put any group of humans together, and almost instantly they'll start trying to figure out who should lead, who's most worthy of respect, and who should be praised and emulated.
Not only that, but we each carry around a sense of where we stand in that hierarchy, and many of us go to rather extreme lengths in order to rise to the top.
According to the award-winning writer and journalist Will Storr (award-winning = high status!), the "status game" that we're all playing is an invisible thread that runs through the best and the worst of what human beings do all day.
Whether we're "winning" or "losing" affects our happiness and our self-esteem, our relationships with others, our goals in life and whom we choose to copy, and even how long we'll live.
All this being the case, just think about how complicated it is to be alive!
You've got all these forces - the cravings for status and for love, social conditioning, and the impact on the individuals of the wider culture, the subconscious fear of death, the swirling emotional storms affecting our thoughts and actions all day long, and so much more - how do we even live? How do we make sense of it all?
For that, we should be grateful to Will Storr as he explains a few of the rules of the Game of Life...
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Love It Too: This book gives you very few places to hide, which could also be part of its appeal. He nails the inescapable diagnosis and description of the human craving for status, and if you’re up for an intellectual challenge and a challenge to your pride/ego, give this one a shot.
“Dostoevsky never forgot that ‘crisis vision’ – the recognition that the world is an incredibly beautiful place, and that we are prevented from seeing this mainly by laziness, negativity, and force of habit.”
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Individuals tend to have much greater control over their internal and external circumstances than they believe and, within reason, you can change your moment-by-moment perception of reality by working to strengthen your consciousness.
The way Colin Wilson conceptualizes it in this book is that life is like a vast museum just full of beautiful artwork that we could perceive, but it's as if we're trying to see in the dark.
We don't bring our full mental faculties to the task, and although the brilliant artwork is still there in the dark, we have to “turn on the lights,” so to speak, to be able to see how beautiful life really is or can be.
Every once in a while, however, we are reminded of the literally stunning beauty and wonder of life, and it shakes us out of our accustomed habits of seeing the world as a rather dull, dreary, miserable place.
It is within our power to shake ourselves out of this suboptimal, habitual way of seeing, and the investigation of how certain people have done that throughout history is Colin Wilson's project here in this book.
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Why You Might Love It Too: Colin Wilson believed that most people were like great big jet aircraft trying to fly on just one engine. That is, we’re not nearly as alive and awake as we could be. This book will help you “turn on all your engines,” so to speak, and my guess is that you’re going to like this new state of being.
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OK, that’s it for now…
I’ve got plenty more excellent book recommendations coming your way soon though!
There’s also my YouTube channel, where I publish book reviews, reading updates, and more each week.
And if you want to learn how I’ve built an audience of 180,000+ followers across social media, became a full-time creator, and how I’m rapidly growing my audience and scaling my profits in 2025, join us inside Creator Launch Academy and that’s exactly what I’ll teach you — we’d love to have you in the community!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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