Emotions and happiness

Happiness, anxiety, grief and the habits of mind that make a day feel lighter or heavier. 41 books.

• A Grief ObservedC. S. LewisFollow C. S. Lewis as he tests faith against grief and asks how to remember his wife without replacing her with an image of his own making.
• Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of CharacterJonathan ShayVietnam veterans' accounts and the Iliad illuminate how betrayal, grief, and rage can outlast combat, and what soldiers, clinicians, and civilians might do to prevent and heal that damage.
• An Unquiet MindKay Redfield JamisonA psychiatrist recounts her experience of severe mood illness, the difficulty of accepting lithium, and the support that helped her live and practice medicine.
• Codependent No More How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for YourselfMelody BeattieLearn to recognize when helping has become controlling, set limits without abandoning care, and take responsibility for your own life.
• Darkness VisibleWilliam StyronWilliam Styron recounts his experience of severe depression, the crisis that led him to hospital care, and his gradual return to serenity and joy.
• Dopamine NationAnna LembkeWhy does so much pleasure leave us in pain? A psychiatrist and her patients show how to find balance in a world of too much.
• Everything Happens for a ReasonKate BowlerA historian of the American prosperity gospel confronts terminal cancer in her thirties, discovering what remains when tidy formulas of certainty and control collapse.
• Feeling Good: The New Mood TherapyDavid D. BurnsLearn practical ways to identify distorted thoughts, test them on paper, and break cycles of inactivity, anger, guilt, and perfectionism through cases and exercises.
• How We DieSherwin B NulandA surgeon explains how common diseases bring death and how honest care can help patients and families make decisions. His cases include hard lessons from his own practice.
• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with AddictionGabor MatéPhysician Gabor Maté links Vancouver patients' experiences with his own compulsions to explore how pain, biology, relationships, and policy shape addiction and the possibilities for care.
• Listening to Prozac The Landmark Book About Antidepressants and the Remaking of the Self, Revised EditionPeter D. KramerA psychiatrist's encounters with Prozac challenge simple boundaries between depression, temperament, and identity, while tracing how medication changes diagnosis and moral choice.
• Maybe You Should Talk to SomeoneLori GottliebA therapist in crisis becomes a patient herself, and her sessions with Wendell unfold alongside four patients facing death, grief, loneliness and self sabotage, showing how people actually change.
• On Death and DyingElisabeth Kübler Ross, M.D.Conversations with dying patients and their families reveal how denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and hope can overlap, and why listening to each person matters.
• Solitude a Return to the SelfAnthony StorrSolitude can sustain imagination, work, and inner growth alongside close relationships. Through psychology and creative lives, Anthony Storr shows when being alone helps and when it harms.
• Staring at the SunIrvin D. YalomYalom, a psychotherapist, shows how facing death changes how you live: the fears we disguise, the ideas that steady us, and why connection matters more than argument.
• The Denial of DeathErnest BeckerBecker argues that our fear of death drives heroism, culture and neurosis alike, and asks how anyone can live honestly once the comforting illusions fall away.
• The Myth of Mental IllnessThomas S. SzaszSzasz's challenge to psychiatric diagnosis sharpens questions about bodily disease, social judgment, and coercive treatment. His account of hysteria shows how these boundaries are drawn.
• The Year of Magical ThinkingJoan DidionJoan Didion traces the mind’s struggle with sudden loss, following grief, memory, illness, and the fragile effort to make a life after everything changes.
• Addiction by DesignNatasha Dow Schüll
• Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting FulfillmentMartin E. P. Seligman
• Brain on Fire: My Month of MadnessSusannah Cahalan
• Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress CycleEmily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski
• Drinking: A Love StoryCaroline Knapp
• Fierce Self Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and ThriveKristin Neff
• Healing the Shame that Binds YouJohn Bradshaw
• Is There No Place on Earth for Me?Susan Sheehan
• My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of MindScott Stossel
• Night Falls FastKay Redfield Jamison
• Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of AbolitionDavid Garland
• Saving Normal : An Insider's Revolt Against Out of control Psychiatric Diagnosis, Dsm 5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life (9780062229274)Allen Frances
• The American Way of Death RevisitedJessica Mitford
• The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for LivingDalai Lama XIV, Howard C. Cutler
• The Biology of DesireMarc Lewis
• The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through MadnessElyn R. Saks
• The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You WantSonja Lyubomirsky
• The Inflamed MindEdward Bullmore
• The Least of UsSam Quinones
• The OutrunAmy Liptrot
• The RecoveringLeslie Jamison
• The Top Five Regrets of the DyingBronnie Ware
• The UndertakingLynch, Thomas