Some classic novels offer sharper insight into living than modern advice manuals. Through ordinary lives, quiet failures, and moral compromise, they reveal how meaning forms without instruction.

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.

Author James Clear presents his book, "Atomic Habits" during Workplace Summit, Pennsylvania Conference For Women 2019. "Habits" is one of the best self-help books. Self-help books provide the guidance ...

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 ...

Heaven helps those who help themselves.” So opens Samuel Smiles’ 1859 book Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct—an appropriately self-published work that birthed the modern genre.

At the start of every year, millions of people around the world turn to self-improvement. And while many are looking to ...

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 ...

Change. Whether you call it self-help, personal transformation, growth, or just plain change, it is a goal to which virtually everyone aspires. Gaining self-esteem, losing weight, improving ...

Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score has spent more than 245 weeks on The New York Times non-fiction bestseller list and is one of the most commercially successful trauma recovery books of ...

Nearly half (47%) of Americans think they could write a self-help book based on their life experiences, new research suggests. A recent survey of 2,000 US adults discovered that youth and wisdom are ...