Yehoshua Bomberg
Polymaths are a rapidly declining breed. In a world of acute specialization and breakneck expansion of knowledge, it’s hard (read: impossible) to keep up with all you have to be abreast of to navigate the world as we know it. This explains why you may be a legal luminary but know very little about how to troubleshoot a minor quirk with your home PC.
Nevertheless, it is crucial to have a well-rounded knowledge base and seek to bolster your faculty for reasoning. When you hit these marks, you not only become (and sound/appear) more intelligent, your worldview will broaden, and your approach to life’s demands (the good, bad, and downright ugly) will improve drastically.
A sure-fire way to expand your mental capabilities is to develop a lifelong reading habit and voraciously soak up relevant information tidbits as you come across them. An even better way is to devour books specifically geared towards making you more intelligent.
Don’t know where to start? Let us point you in the right direction with an explosive list of the best books guaranteed to make you smarter.
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#1 The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson
Women hold up half the sky and, most days, do even more of the heavy lifting including childbearing and child-rearing. All after a long day at the office. Women have always been strong, true heroes - sheroes, oftentimes unacknowledged. As we shake off the last traces of a major patriarchal hangover, women are coming into their own. In the 21st Century, all women can fully embrace their fiery fem power and celebrate their no-holds-barred individuality.
It is time to acknowledge the successful women of the world. From the foremothers who blazed trails and broke barriers, to today's women warriors from sports, science, cyberspace, city hall, the lecture hall, and the silver screen, The Book of Awesome Women paints 200 portraits of powerful and inspiring role models for women and girls poised to become super women of the future.
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Contributor: Christina McCall from Mango Publishing
#2 Habits of a Happy Brain by Loretta Graziano Breuning
This book will challenge everything you think you know about your emotions and thought patterns. It brilliantly translates years of academic research into practical and easy to read language. The exercises included will help you retrain your brain to be more focused, better motivated, and even a happier human being.
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Contributor: Rachel Fink from Parenting Pod
#3 Steve Jobs: A Biographic Portrait by Kevin Lynch
This is a stunning visual guide to the life and works of entrepreneur Steve Jobs. Easily one of the most influential innovators of the twenty-first century, Steve Jobs has fundamentally shaped the way in which we communicate and, even more broadly, live our lives.
In this information-packed graphic biography, Steve Jobs' remarkable talent and genius are explored through bold design and original graphics. Author Kevin Lynch explores Jobs' journey from savvy salesman, to his rivalry and market competition with Bill Gates, and his shift towards radical innovations in later life. This technological innovator led a fascinating, astounding and ultimately too short life, that irreversibly impacted how we communicate.
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Contributor: Steve Roth from The Quarto Group
#4 The Golden Ratio by Gary B. Meisner
The golden ratio has intrigued some of the greatest minds of history. It is also a topic riddled with a surprising amount of misinformation, which for many years has led to confusion, debate and polarizing viewpoints. Information written on the golden ratio just a decade or two ago can now be shown to be incomplete in its facts and conclusions.
The Golden Ratio - The Divine Beauty of Mathematics by Gary Meisner shares the results of his twenty-year investigation and collaboration with thousands of people across the globe in dozens of professions and walks of life. The evidence will close the gaps of understanding related to many claims of the golden ratio's appearances and applications, and present new findings to take our knowledge further yet. This book invites you to take a new look at a timeless topic, with a compilation of research and information accompanied by over two hundred beautiful color illustrations from Rafael Araujo.
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Contributor: Lydia Rasmussen from The Quarto Group
#5 Like a Virgin by Richard Branson
This book feels like the little back book for things “some” people just know. It’s so good that I read it twice and I buy it for everyone I respect professionally. The biggest focus of the book “keep an eye on the details” cannot be taken lightly. For a creative entrepreneur this is almost a re-training of the mind, but it’s an important skill to adopt. You save time if you take in the details and focus. No work is ever re-done!
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Contributor: Niki Papaioannou from NIKI INC.
#6 Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow is one of the most innovative books on the market, combining actionable psychology with modern self-help theory. The modern classic teaches readers how to tap into their ultimate self and truly experience life by balancing chaos and order. Likewise, Flow beautifully illustrates the necessity of fully immersing oneself into everyday experiences in order to live a truly meaningful existence.
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Contributor: Samuel Matthews from Glacier Wellness
#7 Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe
I LOVE this book. It takes complicated concepts like tectonic plates, cells, and datacenters and explains them in a really visual, easy-to-understand way. It's an easy way to gain the information you need to impress your friends at your next holiday party!
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Contributor: Kathryn Marr from Live Like Kat
#8 Daisy and the Gerry by Wynter Sommers
Gerrymandering is a complex issue. Most find it difficult to explain. We hear the term on the news and shrug wondering why we should care about it. Daisy and the Gerry takes the convoluted concept and clarifies it via a fictional breezy narrative which is entertaining to read.
In the back of the book, there is a Did You Know section. This section details the original broadsides (old fliers which were handed out to the public) and newspaper articles of early America, when the term was coined. Vocabulary is explained and put into context with footnotes so the reader understands the political environment of the time...and how it may parallel modern times.
If you want to get smarter, then understanding the reason why the people of early America were passionate about Gerrymandering is a great way to make yourself come across as brilliant in any social gathering. Daisy and the Gerry will help you understand the social nuances of the day and how gerrymandering influences how you...and your friends... make political decisions today.
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Contributor: Gretelde Pillis from Pure Force Enterprises, Inc.
#9 Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock
The book opens us up to thinking about the world probabilistically and develops our capacity to spot our own mental shortcuts and shortfalls. By understanding these shortfalls, we can better apply to tools offered in the book to overcome these shortfalls when analyzing problems and concepts, making us better thinkers.
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Contributor: Mathew Casey from Pozieres Consulting
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