Today, we are going to take a look at the best Brené Brown book recommendations.
Brené Brown is a professor, author, researcher, and podcaster. She became famous after a TED talk about shame and vulnerability, and went on to write six number one New York Times best selling books including Daring Greatly and Born to Lead.
Brené Brown loves to read. She especially loves to read books about psychology, leadership, and powerful women, but it seems like most of her favorite books have to do with emotion.
On top of that, Brené Brown has authored a total of 36 books. You can’t really write that many books without being a lover of reading.
Brené Brown Book Recommendations List
Being a researcher and an author herself, Brené Brown’s book recommendations are top notch. Here is a full list:
- The Power of Starting Something Stupid by Richie Norton
- Lead Yourself First by Raymond M. Kethledge
- The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler
- The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- Stretch by Scott Sonenshein
- Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
- Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
The Power of Starting Something Stupid by Richie Norton
The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live Without Regret was written by Richie Norton, published in 2013, and contains 320 pages.
Brené Brown first recommended the book on her website in a blog post writing, “Richie Norton’s new book, The Power of Starting Something Stupid, is already getting me in a heap of trouble. As I was reading it, I made notes to Steve (my husband). When I was done, I handed it to him and said, ‘This could change the way we live.’”
She then goes on to write, “I love that Norton gives us a playbook. Real solutions to getting unstuck. This is a powerful book to read on the heels of writing (or reading) Daring Greatly. It’s the one-two punch of ‘Show up and be seen. Here’s the plan.’ I love his ideas on projects versus abstract ideas, and I’m a complete convert to his SMART plan: Serve, Thank, Ask, Receive, Trust.”
The Power of Starting Something Stupid says that sometimes the smartest people have to embrace stupid in order to achieve success. That’s right. Richie Norton argues that the smartest people in the world understand that they have to do things that other people might think are stupid.
He states that many of the greatest inventions were once mislabeled as stupid. He believes that the great ideas that will change the world in the future will be labeled as stupid at first, too.
In the book, Richie Norton wants to teach you how the “New Smart” will achieve success by starting something stupid. To build on that, some other pieces of the puzzle of success are overcoming the obstacles like lack of money, education, and time.
All in all, Richie Norton wants The Power of Starting Something Stupid to help you crush fear, make your dreams happen, and live life without regret.
Lead Yourself First by Raymond M. Kethledge
Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude by Raymond M. Kethledge and Michael S. Erwin. This book was published in 2017, and is 240 pages long.
When Brené Brown recommended the book, she said, “Solitude is the birthplace of clarity and perspective. As a leader, I’ve experienced this truth and as a researcher I’ve seen the power that solitude brings to leaders. The tough part is that it takes real courage and discipline to make solitude a practice. In this important book, Ray Kethledge and Mike Erwin show us how it’s done and the profound difference it can make in our organizations.”
Lead Yourself First explores how you can use solitude to change your life. Using solitude, you can focus on your own thoughts to inspire clarity, creativity, emotional balance, or generate courage.
Unfortunately, in our modern times something called the smartphone exists, and solitude has quickly become nonexistent. Raymond Kethledge and Michael S. Erwin aims to bring back solitude and teach you how to use it in order to become a great leader.
He takes account of other leaders who used solitude to their advantage such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Martin Luther King, Jane Goodall, and many more.
With Lead Yourself First you can find out how to harness the benefits of solitude to lead anyone, including yourself!
The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler
The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler. The book was published in 1988, and has 100 pages.
Brené Brown wrote a blog post about The Book of Qualities. In it she wrote, “I’m so glad I found this book. It was published 25 years ago and it’s magical. Author J. Ruth Gendler explores all of the emotions and qualities that we know so well and brings them to life. Excitement wears orange socks. Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt, and Worry makes lists of everything that could go wrong while she waits for the train.”
The book is interesting in that it is from the perspective of 77 different emotions. Each emotion gets its own pages, while some pages are filled with cute little illustrations.
Pleasure is wild and sweet. She likes purple flowers. Worry etches lines in people’s foreheads when they are not paying attention. Fear composes horror music in the middle of the night. Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt. Excitement wears orange socks.
The Book of Qualities gives you a new way to look at your emotions. It’s great for kids too!
The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World was written by Melinda Gates. She published the book in 2019. It is 288 pages long.
Brené Brown loves Melinda Gates’ book, saying, “The Moment of Lift is an urgent call to courage. It changed how I think about myself, my family, my work, and what’s possible in the world. Melinda weaves together vulnerable, brave storytelling and compelling data to make this one of those rare books that you carry in your heart and mind long after the last page.”
The Moment of Lift is all about women’s empowerment. In the book, Melinda Gates argues that when you lift up women, you lift up the whole of humanity. I agree!
Melinda Gates has been all around the world trying to find the solutions for the people with the most urgent needs. In all of her travels, she has discovered one outlying thing. That is that if you want a successful society, you need to lift women up.
Melinda Gates said that she wrote the book in order to share the stories of the women that she has met over the last twenty years of her travels. The Moment of Lift is all the most important lessons that she learned.
Included in all the lessons from others are her own personal stories. She writes about her and Bill Gates’ marriage, and current events such as lack of contraceptives, to child marriage, to gender inequality at work.
Get introduced to powerful women and lessons for any woman in The Moment of Lift.
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Becoming was the first book written by Michelle Obama, and published in 2018. The book is about 440 pages long. It became a number one New York Times best seller almost immediately.
When Brené Brown recommended Michelle Obama’s book, she said, “Reading an advance copy of Michelle Obama’s new memoir and it’s so damn good. Good for my heart, my head, and my soul.”
Becoming is Michelle Obama’s memoir, and she takes us through her entire life, starting with her childhood. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago, then graduated from Princeston and Harvard Law School. She became a mother and still balanced her work with motherhood.
Of course, she also gets into her time at the White House and spills all the beans on both public and private events. Michelle Obama tells the full story of both herself and her family.
Michelle Obama had done a lot during her time at the White House especially for women and girls, as well as helping children and adults live more healthy lives. She also raised two girls during a time when the media spotlight was constantly on her.
Michelle Obama is an amazing storyteller and will have you sitting in the same cozy spot from the front to the back.
Fun fact: Michelle Obama’s Becoming was also a coincidentally recommended book by Barack Obama.
Stretch by Scott Sonenshein
Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined was written by Scott Sonenshein and published in 2017. This book is around 300 pages.
Brené Brown recommended the book, Stretch, in an Instagram post, sharing, “Every now and then a book comes out that gives you a new language and a new frame to better understand yourself and the people around you. Stretch is one of those books. It’s about the power of stretching and the dangers of ‘chasing.’ PS – I got a little chaser in me.”
What do you think is the key to success? Most people would say more money, more time, more things like cars and houses. That is how people measure success after all. But maybe we are wrong.
In Stretch, Scott Sonenshein shares that there are two different types of people: chasers and stretchers. Chasers are always looking for more, exhausting themselves in the process. Stretchers use what they already have at their disposal to find creative, productive ways to solve problems.
Scott Sonenshein argues that people are at their best when they have constraints and why having unlimited resources isn’t always the best. He draws examples from entrepreneurs, educators, parents, athletes, artists, and even gets examples from sports, medicine, and history.
Stretch builds the foundations to using the resources that you already have to create a better life for yourself.
Best Books by Brené Brown
Brené Brown is an incredible author. She has written six number one New York Times bestsellers, but we are going to look at two of the best Brené Brown books.
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
Daring Greatly was published in 2012, and has 320 pages. This book was her second number one New York Times bestseller.
In an interview about Daring Greatly, Brené Brown said, “When we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.”
In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown argues that being vulnerable is something hard to do, and in order to overcome vulnerability we have to be ‘daring greatly’.
Vulnerability leads to courage, yet it is the core of our most difficult emotions of grief, fear, and disappointment. However, vulnerability is not weakness because it is also important for the emotions of love, joy, and belonging.
Daring Greatly wants to teach you that being vulnerable isn’t bad. What’s worse than being vulnerable is standing on the outside dreaming of what could have been. Brené Brown teaches us that being vulnerable can lead our lives into greatness.
Fun fact: The title of this book comes from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt.
Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
Atlas of the Heart is the 36th book by Brené Brown, and her 6th number one New York Times bestseller. It was published in 2021 and has 336 pages.
About the book Brené Brown says, “I want this book to be an atlas for all of us, because I believe that, with an adventurous heart and the right maps, we can travel anywhere and never fear losing ourselves.”
Atlas of the Heart is a book that maps out human emotion. Brené Brown explores 87 different emotions that make up the human experience, and teaches us how to make a connection to these emotions by asking how it looks, how it feels, and what it does to us.
Brené Brown uses her experience and research of over twenty years to lay out the framework of accessing emotions that will help improve our lives. How can you make meaning with your emotions?
Fun fact: Atlas of the Heart has a series on HBO Max!