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14 Books (Not Self-Help) That Will Change Your Life — Transcript

by Mark Manson · 3,917 words · 594 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00One of the most impactful books I've
0:01ever read was about mosquitoes. Another
0:03one was about a pedophile. Actually, let
0:05me let me let me explain that one. Look,
0:08we've all read all the classic self-help
0:10books, but I've actually found some of
0:12the most impactful books in my life were
0:14not trying to give me advice. In fact,
0:16they weren't trying to change me at all.
0:18Here 15 of them. Mosquito by Timothy
0:21Winegard. It's a book about bugs.
0:23That's what we're starting with.
0:26Just hang in there with me. Timothy
0:27Winegard's Mosquito makes the case that
0:28the single deadliest killer in human
0:30history is not war, not famine, not any
0:33human dictator.
0:35It's the mosquito. Mosquito-borne
0:37diseases have killed more people than
0:38every war combined in human history.
0:41We're talking nearly half of all human
0:43deaths were caused by a mosquito. But
0:45here's where it really gets [music]
0:47wild, because mosquitoes didn't just
0:49kill lots of people. They decided who
0:51won. They steered wars. They crippled
0:53armies. They toppled empires. Entire
0:56military campaigns were designed around
0:59mosquito seasons. International trade
1:01emerged to trade mosquito repellents.
1:03The coffee and tea you drink every day
1:05and the fact that it came from the other
1:07side of the world, it was largely shaped
1:09by
1:10the mosquito. And nobody talks about
1:12this. Nobody [music] thinks about it. We
1:14walk around assuming history is shaped
1:16by great leaders and bold ideas. And
1:18meanwhile, a tiny insect that you can
1:20crush between your fingers [music] was
1:21pulling the strings the entire time. It
1:23made me realize how much of life is
1:25dictated by forces that we never really
1:27think about and that we can hardly even
1:28see. And that often the most complicated
1:31philosophical and social questions can
1:33actually be answered with something as
1:35simple and as small
1:36>> [music]
1:37>> as a bug. The Art of War by Sun Tzu. The
1:40most famous book about war ever written
1:42is, funny enough, hardly about war. You
1:45pick this up expecting a playbook for
1:47utter domination of your foes,
1:49strategies, tactics, how to crush your
1:51enemies under the heel of your boots.
1:53Yet,
1:55most of the book, the vast majority of
1:57the book, is actually how to avoid
1:59fighting in the first place. How to
2:00position yourself so that conflict is
2:02unnecessary or doesn't even make sense.
2:05How to win the fight before the fight
2:06even begins. Sun Tzu's most famous idea
2:09is that the greatest victory is the one
2:11that requires no battle at all. If
2:13you're actually fighting, then something
2:14is already gone wrong. And look, this is
2:16a 2,500-year-old military text. I didn't
2:19pick it up exactly expecting life
2:21advice.
2:22But once you see it, you can't unsee it.
2:23That is some wisdom that applies to
2:25almost every area of life. The best way
2:27to handle conflict in your
2:28relationships, in your career, with
2:31anybody, isn't to get better at fighting
2:33them. It's to get better at making those
2:35fights unnecessary. The people who win
2:37the most are the ones who rarely have to
2:39fight at all. Lolita by Vladimir
2:41Nabokov. This is a novel about a
2:44pedophile, and it made me a better
2:45person. Hear me out. Lolita is probably
2:48the most beautiful prose I've ever read.
2:51The narrator, he's charming, witty,
2:54deeply intelligent, devastatingly
2:56romantic. And as you're reading along,
2:58you get swept up in this absolutely
3:01gorgeous language. It's almost
3:03enchanting. And then you remember what
3:05this [ __ ] is doing. He is
3:07destroying a child's life. Honestly, you
3:10kind of forget as you go. That's the
3:13whole trick of the book. That's the
3:14whole point. Nabokov wrote the most
3:16seductive narrator in literary history
3:19and then made him an absolute monster.
3:22Because that's how monsters work. They
3:25don't show up looking like monsters.
3:27They show up charming, eloquent, making
3:30you feel like you're the only person in
3:32the room. And here's the other thing
3:34that haunts me about this book. The book
3:35is called Lolita. It's entirely about
3:38her. Yet, you barely hear her utter a
3:41single word throughout the entire novel.
3:43Her voice is completely swallowed up by
3:45his. And that absence is the entire
3:48point. This book completely rewired how
3:51I see manipulation. And it taught me
3:53that the most dangerous people in the
3:55world aren't the ones who scare you.
3:57They're the ones who dazzle you.
3:59Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Siddhartha
4:02is the story of a man who tries
4:03everything. He tries religion, he tries
4:06luxury and wealth, he tries parties,
4:08women, drugs, and then he flips the
4:11script and he tries all the opposite
4:12things. He tries starving himself, he
4:15tries meditating for days and days on
4:17end, he tries renouncing all possessions
4:20and worldly pleasures. He gorges himself
4:23on every experience that life can offer,
4:25taking each one to its absolute extreme.
4:27And none of it works. Not the spiritual
4:30extreme, not the material extreme,
4:31definitely not the sexual extreme. Every
4:33pursuit taken to its logical conclusion
4:36collapses under the weight of its own
4:38obsession. The realization that
4:39Siddhartha arrives at, and the one that
4:41is the basis of all Buddhism, is that
4:43the ultimate pursuit is to become
4:45pursuitless, to stop chasing. Not
4:47because ambition is bad or desire is
4:50evil, but because the act of desperately
4:52grasping for meaning is the very thing
4:55that prevents meaning in the first
4:56place.
4:57Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales. Why
4:59do experienced hikers die on trails that
5:02beginners survive? Why do elite climbers
5:04make fatal mistakes that amateurs avoid?
5:07Why do you Navy SEALs sometimes drown
5:09while ordinary people make it out alive?
5:11He studies hundreds of survival
5:12situations, plane crashes, shipwrecks,
5:14people lost in the wilderness, trying to
5:16figure out who lives and who dies and
5:18why. And the answer is not what you
5:20would expect. It's not the fittest, it's
5:22not the most skilled, it's not the
5:24person with the best gear, the most
5:26experience. In fact, it's experience and
5:28expertise that sometimes gets people
5:30killed because it makes them rigid. What
5:33Gonzales discovers is that the people
5:34who survive are the ones who are best
5:36able to let go of a plan. They can look
5:39at a situation, accept that everything
5:41they assumed is now wrong or [ __ ] up,
5:43and make a new decision based on what's
5:46actually happening in front of them, not
5:48what was supposed to happen. And that's
5:49not just a survival skill, that is a
5:52life skill. How many people are drowning
5:54right now in a career, a relationship,
5:56or a belief system because they refuse
5:59to accept that the map no longer matches
6:01the territory. Endurance by Alfred
6:03Lansing. Ernest Shackleton's ship gets
6:05trapped in Antarctic ice and it gets
6:08crushed. He and his crew are stranded on
6:10frozen pack ice in the middle of nowhere
6:13with no way to communicate with the
6:14outside world. Yet, somehow they
6:17survived for two years. Shackleton kept
6:20his men sane and surviving with
6:22something almost stupidly simple,
6:24routines, daily tasks, meal schedules,
6:27chores. He even enforced a policy of
6:30mandatory cheerfulness. I'm not joking,
6:32he called it enforced cheerfulness. So,
6:34if you were moping around on the
6:36Antarctic ice feeling sorry for
6:38yourself, you were told to knock it off.
6:40In a survival situation, despair is
6:42contagious and it can kill you faster
6:44than the cold. And that's the thing that
6:46stuck with me long after I put the book
6:48down. That what separates people who
6:50fall apart from the people who hold it
6:51together maybe is not mental toughness
6:53or some heroic inner strength, it's
6:56actually just having something to do
6:58every day. It's the routine, it's the
7:00structure. Take that away
7:02and maybe you lose everything. But
7:04before we get to the next book, this
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7:26you'll go on a $200 weekend trip without
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7:56about, like that $50 Pilates class that
7:58you've been eyeing but couldn't justify,
8:00or the taco place that landed on the
8:02best hidden gems list in 2019 but you
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8:14earning Bilt points today. The Master
8:17and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
8:19Bulgakov wrote this novel in secret in
8:21Stalin's Soviet Union, knowing that it
8:23would never be published in his
8:24lifetime. And he was right, it wasn't
8:27released until 26 years after his death.
8:29And when you read it, you quickly
8:31understand why. The devil shows up in
8:33Moscow, and what does he do? He doesn't
8:35tempt anyone, he doesn't corrupt anyone,
8:38he doesn't hurt anyone, he simply tells
8:40the truth. That's it. He walks into a
8:42room full of Soviet bureaucrats and
8:44intellectuals, and he says the thing
8:46that everyone already knows but nobody
8:48is willing to say out loud, and it
8:49slowly destroys them. Not because the
8:52truth is shocking, but because the
8:53entire system, their careers, their
8:56relationships, their identities, it's
8:58all built on a collective agreement to
9:00never say what it is. And that's what
9:03wrecked me about this book, is that so
9:05much evil is it's not about trying to
9:07hurt people, it's actually just
9:10cowardice. It made me think about how
9:11much suffering exists in the world
9:12because
9:14people know what's wrong, but they're
9:15just not willing to say anything because
9:17they've all kind of silently agreed to
9:20just accept that this is the way things
9:22are.
9:23And then you read this thinking it's
9:24Soviet Russia and communism and
9:26censorship, but then you put the book
9:27down and you look around at your own
9:28life, your job and your friendships and
9:30your family, and you realize that this
9:32is happening everywhere, all the time.
9:34The The is sitting there in the room,
9:36everybody can see it, but nobody's
9:39willing to say it. Brave New World by
9:41Aldous Huxley. Everybody compares this
9:43book to 1984, Orwell's dystopia versus
9:47Huxley's dystopia. And for decades,
9:49George Orwell's dystopia seemed like the
9:51more prophetic one. Surveillance states,
9:54authoritarian governments, censorship,
9:56thought police. But, as the years go on,
9:59I think Huxley's vision is the one that
10:01is actually coming true.
10:03In Brave New World, nobody is oppressed.
10:06Nobody is tortured. Nobody's rights are
10:08taken away from them. Instead, everyone
10:11is given exactly what they want. Endless
10:14entertainment, effortless sex, a drug
10:16called soma that makes you feel blissful
10:18anytime you want. People are not
10:20controlled through fear, they're
10:21actually controlled through pleasure,
10:23and they love it. They don't resist
10:25because
10:27there is nothing to resist. Why would
10:29you fight a system that keeps you
10:30comfortable and happy every second of
10:32every day? And that is actually the
10:34horror of the book. And it doesn't feel
10:37like horror when you're reading it, it
10:38feels fine.
10:40Like nice, actually. But then you put it
10:42down and you look at your phone and you
10:44look at your streaming queue and 3 hours
10:46go by and
10:47you start thinking,
10:49"Oh [ __ ] I think I'm one of them." Now,
10:51to be clear, I have not read this book
10:52since high school, but it is one of the
10:54few books I read in school that has
10:56always stuck with me and I consistently
10:58think about. Because what if the world
11:00doesn't end with a boot on your face?
11:02What if it ends with you smiling,
11:04scrolling, perfectly happy and content,
11:07and never once asking if this is all
11:09there is? Open by Andre Agassi. This is
11:14probably the best memoir I've ever read.
11:17And I say that as somebody who is not
11:19even a tennis fan and didn't even know
11:21anything about Andre Agassi when I read
11:22it. It grabs you from the very first
11:24sentence. You would expect that one of
11:26the greatest tennis players who ever
11:27lived would not start their
11:28autobiography with with sentence, "I
11:31hate tennis." But, Agassi is very open.
11:34He goes on and shares stories from his
11:36life in such a candid and honest way
11:38that it it really disarms you as a
11:40reader. And what it showed me is that we
11:43tend to have this concept of greatness,
11:46that it is some joyous
11:49euphoric achievement. You know, if you
11:51become world-class at something, if you
11:53dedicate your entire life to something,
11:55that there must be this like cathartic
11:57release that happens when you get to the
11:59top of the mountain. And what Agassi's
12:01story showed me is that you can actually
12:03have a very complicated relationship
12:05with something that you're a great at.
12:06You can actually hate the thing that
12:08you're great at. And the fact that
12:10you're great at it just makes you resent
12:12it even more, that it can become a type
12:14of prison or cage to your identity. I
12:17ended up relating to this a lot because
12:19in many ways I feel similarly about
12:22being an author. I think it's the the
12:24thing that I'm probably best at and I'm
12:26best known for, but it's not the thing I
12:28enjoy doing the most. So, I've struggled
12:30throughout my life resolving that
12:31tension within myself, and it was
12:33fascinating to read Andre's story of how
12:36he resolved that in his own life. War
12:39and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. This is, in my
12:43opinion, the greatest book ever written.
12:45I know that's a big claim and I don't
12:47care. I will die on that [ __ ] hill.
12:49War and Peace is a tapestry. It's dozens
12:52[snorts] of characters from every level
12:54of Russian society, peasants, soldiers,
12:56aristocrats, socialites, generals,
12:59kings, and Tolstoy does something that
13:01no other author I've ever read has
13:03pulled off. He makes every single one of
13:05them fully, completely human. Not good
13:08or bad, not heroes or villains, just
13:11people fumbling through life with their
13:13petty jealousies and quiet hopes and
13:15confused hearts and secret ambitions.
13:17The entire novel centers around perhaps
13:20the most consequential event in modern
13:22Russian history, Napoleon's invasion of
13:24Russia. Armies of hundreds of thousands
13:27of men, the fate of a civilization at
13:29stake. And yet, in each chapter, you
13:31only see what each character sees. A
13:33soldier sees the field out in front of
13:35him. A socialite sees the party that
13:37she's attending and who she's trying to
13:38impress. A general sees a piece of the
13:41map. Even Napoleon himself, the man
13:43supposedly orchestrating the entire
13:45thing, is shown to be almost comically
13:48limited in his understanding of what is
13:50actually happening. And that is
13:51Tolstoy's gut punch. Nobody knows what's
13:54actually going on. Not the peasant and
13:56not the emperor. Everyone is trapped
13:59inside their own narrow window while
14:01history rolls over them like a wave that
14:03none of them can totally see or grasp.
14:05The lesson of War and Peace is
14:07ignorance, our own. And once you accept
14:10that you have no idea what the events of
14:12your life actually mean and what the
14:14consequences of your choices are going
14:15to be, it makes you a hell of a lot more
14:17humble and a hell of a lot more
14:19forgiving. Homage to Catalonia by George
14:22Orwell. Everybody knows Orwell is the
14:24guy who wrote 1984 and Animal Farm as
14:27the great literary critic of
14:28totalitarianism and dictatorship around
14:31the world. What most people don't know
14:33is that before he wrote any of his
14:34novels, he actually went and volunteered
14:37in a war, and it wasn't even his own
14:39country. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War
14:42broke out and Orwell didn't just write
14:44an op-ed about it. He actually got on a
14:45train, went to Spain, and joined the
14:47fight against fascism. Now, give the man
14:49some credit. He had the balls to put his
14:51body where his beliefs were. But, in the
14:53process of participating
14:56his beliefs slowly got shattered. What
14:58Orwell found on the ground looked
15:00nothing like the noble struggle that he
15:02had imagined. The leftist factions
15:04fighting Franco spent as much time
15:06fighting each other as they did fighting
15:08the fascist. Political allies were
15:09backstabbing each other. Propaganda was
15:11rewriting events he witnessed with his
15:13own eyes. The cause that he had risked
15:16his life for was eating itself from the
15:18inside out. I think the powerful
15:19takeaway of Homage to Catalonia is that
15:22our ideals, no matter how
15:23well-intentioned, will never match
15:25reality. And Orwell had to find that out
15:28the hard way. And that's the thing about
15:29this book. It's easy to believe in
15:31something from a distance. It's easy to
15:33have principles when they're never
15:35tested. It's easy to believe in
15:37something when the only thing you're
15:39putting on the line is a comment on
15:41Instagram. But Orwell actually tested
15:43his beliefs. He actually went there. He
15:46actually joined the fight. And when he
15:47did, his beliefs crumbled. And on top of
15:50all that, he had the honesty to write
15:52about it. That kind of disillusionment,
15:54told honestly, is worth more than a
15:56thousand books about what you should
15:57believe without doing anything. George
16:00Washington by Ron Chernow.
16:02There are two competing theories about
16:04how history works. The first is the
16:07great forces theory. The idea that
16:09history is shaped by massive, impersonal
16:12forces like economics, technology,
16:14geography, and disease. Individuals are
16:17just along for the ride. And anybody who
16:20appears great on the surface, they just
16:23happen to be the individual who is
16:24surfing the wave. Ironically, the great
16:27forces theory of history was largely
16:28invented and popularized by Tolstoy in
16:31War and Peace. But the second theory is
16:33the great man theory of history. That
16:35singular individuals of incredible
16:38talent, through sheer force of character
16:40and will, can bend the arc of history in
16:42an entirely new direction. Now,
16:44personally, I always tended to believe
16:46in the great forces theory. I thought
16:48individuals were a little bit overrated
16:50and that we have a bias towards
16:53celebrating individuals as heroes. Until
16:56I read this book. Chernow's biography of
16:58George Washington is not a patriotic
17:00fairy tale. It's a portrait of a
17:02complicated man who, at every critical
17:04turning point in his life, did the thing
17:07that few expected and almost no one else
17:10would have had the courage to do. He
17:12held together a starving, freezing army
17:14through pure will. He was handed near
17:16dictatorial power and gave it back
17:19voluntarily, not once but twice. And he
17:22did this in an era where every
17:24revolutionary leader in history had
17:26crowned themselves king. And you realize
17:29that this was not inevitable, that this
17:31was not a great force of history. If
17:33Washington had been a slightly different
17:35man with slightly different values and
17:37principles, America would have been a
17:39monarchy or a military dictatorship or
17:41hell, probably like seven different
17:43countries dealing with each other's
17:44[ __ ] But I think he might be right.
17:46I finished this book and thought this
17:48might be the greatest man who ever
17:50lived. And amazingly, somehow, despite
17:52having cities and states and
17:54universities named after him, despite
17:56being called the father of our country
17:59and being on the [ __ ] $1 bill, I
18:01think George Washington is kind of
18:03underrated. The Metaphysical Club by
18:05Louis Menand. In 1872, a handful of
18:08young men started meeting in Cambridge,
18:10Massachusetts. And they wanted to argue
18:12about ideas. They'd get together in the
18:14evening, probably with a bottle of rum,
18:16and debate the meaning of life. The
18:18group lasted for about 9 months and no
18:21records were kept. Those men ended up
18:23being some of the most important
18:24American intellectuals of the 19th
18:26century. One was Oliver Wendell Holmes,
18:29who would go on to become one of the
18:30most influential Supreme Court justices
18:32ever. One was William James, who
18:34essentially invented modern psychology.
18:37One was Charles Sanders Peirce, the
18:39father of semiotics. And later, there
18:41was John Dewey, who reshaped the entire
18:44American education system. They each
18:46became legendary independently, but what
18:48brought them together at that time was a
18:50shared conviction, that beliefs are
18:52dangerous. Not wrong beliefs, but just
18:55beliefs, period. They'd just lived
18:57through the American Civil War, which
18:59was essentially what happens when two
19:01sides are so certain they're right that
19:03they're willing to kill each other over
19:04it. And these men looked at all of the
19:06carnage, everything that them and their
19:08friends and family had been through, and
19:10they said, "We don't need new ideas, we
19:12need to have a different relationship
19:15with ideas. And what they invented would
19:18later become known as pragmatism. The
19:20radical notion that ideas are not sacred
19:22truths to be defended, but they are
19:24tools to be tested on reality. If an
19:27idea works, then use it. If it stops
19:30working, drop it. A group of friends
19:32sitting around talking decided that
19:33certainty itself was actually the
19:35problem. And then they each went out and
19:38independently changed the world. The
19:40Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Most
19:43people have heard of the image of
19:44Sisyphus without knowing much about it.
19:46It's basically a Greek tragedy where a
19:48man was condemned to roll a boulder up a
19:51hill for eternity, only to watch it roll
19:53back down every single time. In one way,
19:55this sounds like the most depressing
19:57story ever told. In another, it hits a
19:59little bit too close to home sometimes,
20:01depending on how repetitive your life
20:03is. But, Camus' famous conclusion was
20:06that one must find a way to imagine
20:08Sisyphus happy. The insight isn't that
20:10suffering is noble or that persistence
20:12pays off. It's that the ability to find
20:15meaning or even joy inside a situation
20:17that will never improve is not
20:19delusional. It's actually the highest
20:21way of affirming life. All right, guys.
20:23So, those are some of the books that
20:25I've read that have had a profound
20:26impact on me. I'm curious what's had a
20:28profound impact on you. So, leave some
20:30of your most powerful books in the
20:32comments, but there's a rule. No
20:35self-help books, no life advice, no
20:37self-improvement, no productivity hacks.
20:40None of that [ __ ] We're talking novels,
20:42literature, plays, poetry. What has had
20:45the biggest effect on you? Put it down
20:47in the comments below. Explain what it
20:48was. Explain what the best takeaway was
20:51and why we should read it. See you in
20:53the next video.

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This page contains the full transcript of 14 Books (Not Self-Help) That Will Change Your Life by Mark Manson, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,917 words across 594 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

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Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

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