In his wonderful book “The Myth of Self-Esteem” (published in 2005), the great American psychologist Albert Ellis talks about the disadvantages of pursuing self-esteem and why there are better alternatives to feel good about ourselves.

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“The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, similar to his other bestsellers, doesn’t disappoint. The main idea revolves around examining how “epidemics” start and spread. More specifically, what makes certain things—deceases, fashion, books, TV shows—famous while others can never hit the mainstream. Malcolm Gladwell examines all the ways to make an idea “stick.”

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  Firstly, I should start by noting that Malcolm Gladwell had done it again. I highly recommend this book. It is simply a must-read. It offers some quite interesting and unique insight into how “geniuses” are made (that’s right, not born), how they rise to success and how being very smart is simply not enough in life to get fame and fortune.
Malcolm Gladwell’s idea is quite straight forward: “People don’t rise from nothing.” There is always someone or something that has helped them on the way up–parenting style, life circumstances, lucky coincidences.

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I have read my share of research on happiness, of course, but I can say that the book by Prof. Sonja Lyubomirsky was still able to surprise me in some ways. The research that she selected to include is quite interesting, although often intuitive. It definitely sparkled my further curiosity and thirst to know more.

The book attempts to answer an important question that has “bothered” humanity for a long time—namely: Why can’t we ever be completely happy? And why do certain things, that we believe will make us happy (a new job, more money, a soul-mate), after we obtain them, don’t give us the satisfaction we expected?

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  Anyone who has read / planning to read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” will probably be surprised to learn that the book was written almost a century ago. It was first published in 1936 and has since sold over 15 million copies.

Not many (if any) books that are 100 years old sound today with the same fresh notes as this publication. Why is that? The obvious reason that we all can guess is that it touches on a timeless topic—that is, how to build long-lasting bridges to other people.

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