Sam Freedman portrait

Sam Freedman's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Sam Freedman recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Sam Freedman's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures book cover1

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

Malcolm Gladwell

4.1
What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?

In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tippi
Sam Freedman portrait Recommended by Sam Freedman.
Civilization and Its Discontents book cover2

Civilization and Its Discontents

Sigmund Freud

4.1
It stands as a brilliant summary of the views on culture from a psychoanalytic perspective that he had been developing since the turn of the century. It is both witness and tribute to the late theory of mind—the so-called structural theory, with its stress on aggression, indeed the death drive, as the pitiless adversary of eros.

Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the last of Freud's books,
John Gray portraitDavid Bell portraitSam Freedman portrait Recommended by John Gray, David Bell, and Sam Freedman.
Sam Freedman portrait
Sam Freedman

A rough synopsis of the book is that love is a social construct designed to prevent us from murdering each other, at the expense of creating profound neurosis, so definitely a bold choice for a second date. https://t.co/pEnlgR6aiL [source]

John Gray portrait
John Gray

Civilisation, as Freud understands it, begins with the restraint of violence… which means that the civilisational condition is one of discontent. [source]

David Bell portrait
David Bell

A dispassionate view of the cost of civilisation to the individual. [source]

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets book cover3

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Svetlana Alexievich, Bela Shayevich

4.5
From the 2015 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, comes the first English translation of her latest work, an oral history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive documentary style, Secondhand Time is a monument to the collapse of the USSR, charting the decline of Soviet culture and
Sam Freedman portraitStephanie Flanders portrait Recommended by Sam Freedman and Stephanie Flanders.
Sam Freedman portrait
Sam Freedman

@martinbright It's amazing. Have you read Second Hand Time? Best book of the century so far for me. Just incredible. [source]

Stephanie Flanders portrait
Stephanie Flanders

The power comes from the stories themselves, the people she found and talked to. [source]

I Am a Strange Loop book cover4

I Am a Strange Loop

Douglas R. Hofstadter

4.2
Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here?I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called “I.” The “I” is the nexus
Sam Freedman portrait Recommended by Sam Freedman.
5

The Quincunx

Charles Palliser

4.0
The protagonist, a young man naive enough to be blind to all clues about his own hidden history (and to the fact that his very existence is troubling to all manner of evildoers) narrates a story of uncommon beauty which not only brings readers face-to-face with dozens of piquantly drawn characters at all levels of 19th-century English society but re-creates with precision the tempestuous weather a
Sam Freedman portrait Recommended by Sam Freedman.