The best self-help books don’t promise to “completely change your life” overnight. Instead, a truly great one—written by someone who knows their stuff—will gently nudge you towards small shifts that ...

Draw boundaries. Protect your peace. Worry less about pleasing others. The prevailing (and best-selling) wisdom of the day encourages an inward turn. By Emma Goldberg There’s a certain flavor of ...

To understand modern self-help books, open “Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm”. The sequel to “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”—and no doubt the prequel to ...

If you’re a reader, and you’re on Instagram, chances are the algorithm has fed you posts promising that “this book will change your life” or touting “five books that made me successful.” These claims ...

In a 1954 New Yorker essay “Howtoism,” writer and critic Dwight Macdonald states that authors of how-to books are to other authors as frogs are to mammals, and encourages people to read other genres.