The Best Books On series

Subjects in the series

The subjects are chosen for breadth rather than for similarity.

• Personal finance and investing
• Self-help and personal development
• Business and entrepreneurship
• Mental health and mindfulness
• Health, fitness and nutrition
• Romance
• Fantasy and science fiction
• History
• Thriller and true crime
• Cooking and food
• Parenting and relationships
• Science and nature
• Biography and memoir
• Spirituality and religion
• Psychology
• Career and productivity
• Technology and artificial intelligence
• Travel
• Young adult
• Children's and educational
• Art, design and photography
• Philosophy

What the volumes share

Every entry in every volume answers the same four questions: what the book actually covers, what distinguishes it from the books beside it, why it earns a place in a finite list, and what its limits are.

Revisions

This collection is revised rather than finished. Health research moves quickly, books go out of print, new editions correct old errors, and titles that were the best available answer five years ago are sometimes no longer. A reference work that is not maintained becomes a historical document, and this one is intended to remain useful.

The next revision is scheduled for January 2027. It will add titles published since this edition closed, replace entries where a better book now exists, and correct anything a reader has shown us to be wrong. Where the evidence behind a recommendation has changed, the entry will change with it, and significant reversals will be noted rather than quietly amended.

Other volumes in the Best Books On series are published on a rolling schedule, each covering a single subject and built to the same standard as this one. A reader who has found this volume useful may find the same approach applied to a subject they know less well more useful still, since the method is designed to be most valuable exactly where a reader cannot yet judge for themselves.

To be told when the next revision is available, or to tell us about a book you believe belongs in the collection, visit the address below. Corrections are particularly welcome and are read. A volume describing six hundred and sixty books will contain errors, and a reader who finds one has done the next edition a service.

Source: the Preface and New Books, pages 5 and 556. Reproduced from the printed volume.