Jordan Peterson

Author, Influencer, Professor

Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, YouTube personality, author, and a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. He began to receive widespread attention as a public intellectual in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues, often described as conservative.

Jordan Peterson's 184 Book Recommendations

• Demons
• Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ
• The Horse's Mouth
• Tolstoy
• Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology
• Genius: The Natural History of Creativity
• Psychology and Religion: West and East
• A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries
• The Myth of Mental Illness
• Endurance
• Ordinary Men
• War and Peace
• Zorba the Greek
• Wuthering Heights
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Symbolic Life
• The World's Religions, Revised and Updated
• The Stone Angel
• The Neuropsychology of Anxiety
• The New Executive Brain:Frontal Lobes in a Complex World
• The Red and the Black
• The Rational Optimist
• The Origins and History of Consciousness
• The Old Man And The Sea
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• The Master and Margarita
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Long Goodbye
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
• The Moral Judgment Of The Child
• The Mystery of Capital
• The Great Escape
• The House of God
• The Interpretation of Dreams
• The Great Code
• The Idiot
• The Great Mother
• The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception
• The Denial of Death
• In the First Circle
• The Crisis of Islam
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Discovery Of The Unconscious
• The Forge and the Crucible
• The Emotional Brain
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
• The Brothers Karamazov
• The Big Sleep
• Symbols of Transformation
• How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place: “Read Lomborg's book: How to Spend 75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place. Highly recommended”
• The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
• Shamanism
• Sometimes a Great Notion
• On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo
• Our Culture, What's Left of It
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Point Counter Point
• Psychology and Alchemy
• Play, Dreams And Imitation In Childhood
• Mysterium Coniunctionis
• Notes from Underground
• Mephistopheles
• Of Mice and Men
• Myth and Reality
• Man's Search For Meaning
• Modern Man in Search of a Soul
• Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
• The Fratricides
• I, Claudius
• Flowers for Algernon
• For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Life at the Bottom
• On Becoming a Person
• The Painted Bird
• A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity
• Brain Architecture: “One of the best neuroscience papers of the last twenty years, in my opinion: Larry Swanson's take on the hypothalamus: https://buff.ly/2RyYeG8 His book, Brain Architecture, presents a more accessible take.”
• Cancer Ward
• Earth in Human Hands
• Brave New World
• Enlightenment Now
• Awakenings
• Anna Karenina
• An Anthropologist on Mars
• Animal Farm
• A Farewell to Arms
• Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self
• Answer to Job
• A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms
• Words with Power: Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature
• Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives
• Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
• The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900
• Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
• Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence: “I learned an awful lot from that book”
• Island
• The Joyful Wisdom
• The Will to Power
• An Outline of Psychoanalysis
• Little Science, Big Science
• The Bible: “what should you have read? And the answer to that could easily be, well, you probably should have read the Bible.”
• Factfulness
• Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
• Crime and Punishment
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One: “It was my attempt to deal with the aftermath of Nietzsche's pronouncement of the Death Of God in his revelatory book, Thus Spake Zarathustra”
• 1984
• A Way of Being: “What can you recommend? First, a book: A Way of Being by Carl Rogers, 1980”
• "The Kingdom of God is Within You"
• A Confession and Other Religious Writings
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• Down and Out in Paris and London
• Homage to Catalonia
• The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
• The Rape Of Nanking
• The Sacred and the Profane: “I read Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane at least five times over the last two decades. I thought it was a masterpiece the first time I read it. But every time I reread it, I thought it was better.”
• The Road to Wigan Pier
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human: “It's a great book”
• The Case for Trump: “Everybody who wants to understand Trump… should read @VDHanson The Case for Trump. I think he nails it”
• Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting: “This is an excellent book. Read it if you're feeling hopeless about the future.”
• Infidel: “she made a remarkable splash years ago with her first book, Infidel… And so that was a great book.”
• Panzram: “There's a great book, if you're interested in this sort of thing, called Panzram.”
• The Blank Slate: “Pinker's The Blank Slate is a book everyone should read… It's an amazing accomplishment.”
• Angela's Ashes: “it's an amazing book because it's written almost entirely without resentment”
• Wealth And Poverty Of Nations: “I read a great book at one point called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations”
• A Billion Wicked Thoughts: “the best book I've ever read investigating…”
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces: “it's a great book”
• How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place: “He wrote a great book called How to Spend $50 Billion… A book I would highly recommend.”
• The War on the West: “I highly recommend it.”
• Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves: “The book is a model of clarity and subtle depth”
• The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat: “The End of the Line is a great book”
• The Unnatural History of the Sea: “Unnatural History of the Sea, I love that.”
• Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World: “So it's a remarkable book. Cod, I love that, too.”
• Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind: “his textbook on evolutionary psychology is a great book”
• The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century: “a book that I've just been reading that I would recommend… The Great Leveler, which I really like”
• In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom: “In Order to Live, which is an amazing book”
• Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It: “I think that is a great book”
• Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do: “I read a great book a long while back called Bullying…”
• Peacemaking among Primates: “Peacemaking Among Primates. I thought that was a great book… Good Nature… Another great book… Are We Smart Enough… another great book… Different… I would highly recommend…”
• Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals: “Peacemaking Among Primates. I thought that was a great book… Good Nature… Another great book… Are We Smart Enough… another great book… Different… I would highly recommend…”
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?: “Peacemaking Among Primates. I thought that was a great book… Good Nature… Another great book… Are We Smart Enough… another great book… Different… I would highly recommend…”
• Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist: “Peacemaking Among Primates. I thought that was a great book… Good Nature… Another great book… Are We Smart Enough… another great book… Different… I would highly recommend…”
• Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet: “wrote a great book recently called Super Abundance”
• The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis: A Commentary: “a great book… I found it extremely useful. I'm going to read it again.”
• Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt: “the best account that I've ever read… It's an amazing book”
• Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault: “the following two books are invaluable… Understanding Postmodernism by Stephen R. Hicks”
• The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America: “some of them were really helpful”
• The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It: “Here's a link to his book. Read it if you have a son or brother or father.”
• The Wilder Shores of Marx: “A recommended book: The Wilder Shores of Marx”
• The Respondent: “Read his book if you're a father in trouble in divorce court.”
• Fossil Future: “Young people: read these two books”
• False Alarm: “Young people: read these two books”
• Mercy Among the Children: “This is the greatest novel I have read in many years: Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards”
• Return of the God Hypothesis: “Reading Stephen C. Meyer's Return of the God Hypothesis. It's a difficult book, well-written, densely informative.”
• The Madness of Crowds: “@DouglasKMurray fights the good fight for freedom of speech in his book, "The Madness of Crowds"... If you want a truthful look at today's most divisive issues, it's available for pre-order here”
• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: “This is an excellent resource for parents who want to quickly and efficiently help their young children master the skills of reading. Highly recommended. Every short lesson is laid out in great detail. Just follow the steps.”
• Out of the Dark: “Gregg Hurwitz's new book, an exciting, entertaining read, now out”
• The Nowhere Man: “I don't generally recommend thrillers but THE NOWHERE MAN by @gregghurwitz is a compelling, exciting read.”
• The Black Book of Communism: “Marxists: read it and weep. Or ignore it and remain willfully blind and dangerous: The Black Book of Communism”
• The Coddling of the American Mind: “Buy a copy of The Coddling of the American Mind for your kids' teacher, or principal”
• The Complete Maus: “This is a remarkable work. Art Spiegelman's father was a concentration camp survivor”
• We Need to Talk About Kevin: “Her "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is the best novel about psychopathy I've ever read”
• The Female Brain: “I found this book credible re biological sex differences. Readable and interesting, as well”
• Unsafe Space: “Buy this book and read it: Spiked presents Unsafe Space: the Crisis of Free Speech on Campus”
• The Big Oyster: “Great books on oceanic life #2: Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster”
• Four Fish: “Great books on oceanic life #3: Four Fish: The future of the last wild food, Paul Greenberg”
• The Great Terror: “Read real books. The Gulag Archipelago. 1984. Road to Wigan Pier. The Great Terror. The Devils. Crime and Punishment.”
• While Time Remains
• Is Social Justice Just?: “Perhaps their work will do something to protect us all from the poisonous fangs of the narcissists of compassion.”
• Global Weirdness: “Global Wierdness: a short, accessible book about climate change, by an independent body”
• The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size
• Listen, Liberal: “Thomas Frank's book Listen Liberal details Democrat's abandonment of working class”
• The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: “I read that a long long time ago”
• The Diversity Delusion: “Read it, weep, and strongly consider a trade school (before those are corrupted too)”
• Lord of the Flies: “Lord of the Flies. Part of my Great Books list.”
• The Charterhouse of Parma: “The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal is one of the books on my list of recommended readings”
• The Gulag Archipelago (Abridged): “Audio book version of Solzhenitysn's Gulag Archipelago: one of the greatest works of the 20th century.”
• Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944: “...I was reading a book called Hitler's Table Talk, which was a collection of his spontaneous utterances at mealtimes collected over about three years. It really affected my reading of it because the number of times he used parasite metaphors really stuck in my mind.”
• Affective Neuroscience: “One of the best books on the neuroscience of emotion is Jaak Panksepp's "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions." The book includes chapters on sleep and arousal, pleasure and fear systems, the sources of rage and anger, the neural control of sexuality, as well as the more subtle emotions related to maternal care, social loss, and playfulness. This book is graspable, creative, deep, informed, and personal and is mentioned in my lists of the greatest books.”
• Paradise Lost: “From Milton: Satan's thoughts on the nature of Hell: "Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep, Still threatening to devour me opens wide. Enough self-reflection reveals this as too terribly true."”
• East of Eden: “My recommended book of the week is John Steinbeck's East of Eden… From the dust jacket: "This sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel."”
• Don't Burn This Book: “He's now announcing his new book, "Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason", for which I've been able to contribute the foreword.”
• The God Delusion: “I was reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins today. In principle, I'm going to speak with him publicly at some point in the next five or six months. I don't really want to have a debate with him. I want to have a discussion.”

Books written by Jordan Peterson

• Maps of Meaning
• 12 Rules for Life
• Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life
• We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine