100 Best Karma Books of All Time

Arianna Huffington

Founder/The Huffington Post

This is a daring, delightful, and transformative book. Lori Gottlieb takes us inside the most intimate of encounters as both clinician and patient and leaves us with a surprisingly fresh understanding of ourselves, one another, and the human condition. Her willingness to expose her own blind spots along with her patients’ shows us firsthand that we aren’t alone in our struggles and that maybe we should talk more about them! Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is funny, hopeful, wise, and engrossing—all at the same time. [source]

Andrea Barber

My new favorite book 😍😍 @LoriGottlieb1 https://t.co/7iQsEH7sDa [source]

Chris Abraham

I would like to introduce Zandria and Lori because Zan just read Lori's amazing new book this month, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone; and, since I adore you both, you should be friends. https://t.co/lwQJSJHQxb [source]

Andreas Zhou

Great read to help get you into the mindset of building a scalable business to create wealth quickly vs following the stereotypical career path. [source]

Nick Loper

Kinda cheesy with all the supercar references but will motivate you and explains what it really takes to shortcut the traditional path. [source]

Scott Oldford

I don't know how many times I read that book when I was broke but, of course, the sidewalk, slow, and fast lane, I borrowed that for the SSF method that I talk about sidewalk, slow, and fast lane for lead generation. He talks about it from a financial perspective, so almost completely, entirely unrelated but that book was very, very life changing for me. So, two of those books, by far, the best books that from a level of changing my life at the right time. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

I read The Bhagavad Gita, which is something I wasn’t ready for before, but glad to finally understand. [source]

Bernard Tan

The “Tao Te King” by Lao Tzu probably resonated with me the strongest, but others like the “Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “Bhagavad Gita” or Zen Buddhist scriptures were also real eye-openers, even for a non-religious person like myself. [source]

Bill Liao

The human world occurs in language so best get good at it! [source]

Naval Ravikant

CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList

So good that it may as well be non-fiction. [source]

Bryan Johnson

Love this book. [source]

David Blaine

He says, 'Love is stronger than hate. Soft is stronger than hard. Water is stronger than stone.' [source]

Steve Jobs

Founder/Apple

In late 1972, Jobs had just started at Reed College, an elite liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon. He started doing lots of LSD and reading lots of books about spirituality. [source]

Jack Kornfield

Changed countless lives. [source]

Travis Brewer

Travis Brewer said this is one of his most-recommended books. [source]

Jonathan Haidt

The Dhammapada is one of the greatest psychological works ever written, and certainly one of the greatest before 1900. It is masterful in its understanding of the nature of consciousness, and in particular the way we are always striving and never satisfied. You can turn to it – and people have turned to it throughout the ages – at times of trouble, at times of disappointment, at times of loss, and it takes you out of yourself. It shows you that your problems, your feelings, are just timeless manifestations of the human condition. It also gives specific recommendations for how to deal with those problems, which is to let go, to accept, and to work on yourself. So I think this is a kind of tonic that we ambitious Westerners often need to hear. [source]

Dr. Gabor Maté

The Buddhist collection of sayings. And it begins with, basically, the idea that we create the world with our minds. [source]

Edward Glaeser

Jacobs pointed out innumerable ways in which people are connected by proximity and the virtues of dense living. [source]

Leo Hollis

This book sums up these new ideas of putting people first – that the city is complex but not a place that needs to be rationalised. [source]

Andrei Codrescu

Burton’s extraordinary footnotes are a book on their own, and his translation, hard-going at first, takes English to amazing heights. [source]

Issandr El Amrani

This translation is really significant. It is a beautiful edition of one of my favourite books. [source]

Marina Warner

The Arabian Nights was a collection of popular, vernacular tales that was actually rather despised by scholars – the Arabic apparently is quite rough, compared to the elegance of the Farsi used in the much better known, more established and highly valued Persian romances of the time. The Nights tales were considered trifles and not looked after – the same has happened with a lot of early children’s literature. We don’t have a lot of it because no one saw fit to preserve it. [source]

Naval Ravikant

CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList

I’m rereading The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. Sometimes I think it’s better to just to reread the greats than it is to read something that’s not as great. [source]

Ashley Hathaway

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell has got to be at least one of my all-time favorites. I reference it constantly. If you’re not familiar the book is just a conversation between the journalist Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, who worked in comparative mythology and religious studies. It so beautifully brings every human experience together from the beginning of time. The world is basically explained through archetypes of people and the stories we tell. I highly recommend it and re-read parts regularly. [source]

Bryan Callen

Joseph Campbell was the first person to really open my eyes to the compassionate side of life, or of thought... Campbell was the guy who really kind of put it all together for me, and not in a way I could put my finger on... It made you just glad to be alive, realizing how vast this world is, and how similar and how different we are. [source]

Sarah Franklin

It’s glorious. It’s softer and gentler than the other Dahl books. [source]

Tilly Burn

I love the idea of two underdogs tricking really nasty evil people. And there’s so much great imagery in the book [source]

Andy Puddicombe

The purpose is not to read cover to cover, the purpose is to find out what is the essence you need in that moment that’s going help you live a happier, healthier life, and in turn to help others lead a healthier and happier life. And that’s enough. I still use the book in that way. [source]

Bryan Van Norden

Despite the intimidating title, it’s actually a readable introduction to a certain kind of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. [source]