29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

My new book,
RECENT ULTRALEARNING ARTICLES CHALLENGES PRODUCTS PODCAST FREE NEWSLETTER
Learn
ULTRALEARNING More
is now available.

The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023

 December, 2023 | Comments | Share

The past year was good for my reading. I finished around 40-50 books, and there
were plenty more that I started but did not finish. (Not finishing books is a good
thing!)

Below are some of my favorites I read this year:

1. Why Knowledge Matters by E.D. Hirsch

I previously reviewed Hirsch’s controversial 1988 bestseller,
Cultural Literacy. In this 2016 book, Hirsch presents a sweeping
curriculum change in French schools as evidence that
misguided educational theories are undermining our children’s
learning.

Hirsch argues that schools have been seduced by three

intuitively appealing but ultimately unsound ideas:

1. A focus on skills over knowledge. Schools spend more time on reading

comprehension “skills” such as “finding the main idea” or “close reading” of
texts. But the science suggests these skills don’t really exist beyond what can
be taught with a few hours of practice. Being a good reader relies on having a
lot of background knowledge, which is deemphasized in skills-based
curricula.
2. A focus on the individual over the community. The skill-based focus arises
because there is no definitive curriculum or canon for language arts. We’ve
abandoned the idea that education ought to teach students a core set of
commonly held knowledge, to the detriment of disadvantaged students,
Hirsch contends.
3. A focus on natural development over education. The idea that education
ought to be “natural” has roots as far back as Rousseau. But Hirsch argues it

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 1/8
29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

is a mistake—that our nature is cultural, and so a failure to teach a shared

culture has harmed students who don’t have access to that culture in their
home environment.

Hirsch’s remedy is “domain immersion,” or, to put it another way, teaching

knowledge about the world. What knowledge? Hirsch is open here, but he argues
that all students ought to be taught whatever knowledge is expected to be known
by members of educated society.

2. Psych by Paul Bloom

You don’t need to learn the history of physics to understand
physics. While learning more about Einstein’s work on the
photoelectric effect or Maxwell’s studies of electromagnetism
can be edifying, you don’t need to know about them to learn the
physics these experiments proved. The underlying theory is all
that’s required to understand physics.

Psychology isn’t like this. There’s no deep undercurrent of

theory that ties everything together. Instead, the picture of psychology as a
discipline is like a pointillist painting, where you can squint to see the totality
only through reference to thousands of tiny dots.

Despite having read a few bookshelves worth of academic psychology texts, I

enjoyed Yale professor Paul Bloom’s survey of the field. Because understanding
psychology cannot be divorced from understanding its history, I enjoyed Bloom’s
birds-eye view of the field from the past to the present day.

3. How We Reason by Philip Johnson-Laird

We reason by creating mental models of the world. That may
not sound surprising, but it has plenty of interesting
implications for understanding how we think.

I had read Johnson-Laird’s original work, Mental Models, last

year. It was nice to see an in-depth follow-up on how the theory
has developed in the subsequent two decades.

In a future post, I’m going to have a full summary of Johnson-Laird’s book, and
what the theory implies.

4. Creativity in Science by Dean Simonton

Creativity is a tricky subject to study. Experimentalists tend to focus on relatively
mundane acts of creativity, such as divergent thinking or alternative uses for

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 2/8
29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

everyday objects. But this approach is far removed from the

great insights of artists, scientists and inventors we typically
laud as creative. Theoreticians, in contrast, spend time creating
computer simulations of creative thought—often reducing
creativity to mechanical problem-solving.

Psychologist Dean Simonton’s work in this field is unusual due

to his largely historical focus on creativity. Instead of gathering
data from experiments or simulations, he has studied data sets drawn from the
works and biographies of creative individuals.

This book surveys theories of creativity, contrasting four competing explanations:

expertise, genius, society, and chance, in offering a model for how creativity
works. Simonton’s work provides a nice hybrid between the purely anecdotal
work of biographers and the data-driven work of experimental scientists.

5. Cognitive Behavior Therapy by Judith Beck

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is considered the gold
standard for psychological therapy. I recently reviewed Beck’s
book, which is written as a practical guide for therapists
implementing CBT.

While CBT is undoubtedly effective, it’s unclear exactly what

the active ingredient is. The classic theory focuses on the
cognitive (or “C”) part, namely that depressed/anxious people
suffer from distorted beliefs, and these cognitive failures tend to form self-
sustaining patterns.

However, some critics argue that these flawed beliefs may be caused by
overactive emotional circuitry that operates outside of consciousness. Pure
exposure therapy, for instance, tends to do roughly as well as exposure-plus-
cognitive therapy for anxiety disorders. If this is true, then it may be the “B” or
behavior change component that is more directly responsible for patient results.

6. How Languages are Learned by Patsy Lightbown and

Nina Spada
Reading summaries of domain-specific research is part of my
goal to deepen my understanding of the science of learning.
While plenty of books offer theories on learning, in general, it
helps to gird those takeaways with more detailed work from
different fields.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 3/8
29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

To that end, I read a few different books from the field of second language
acquisition (SLA) over the summer, and even wrote a review of How Languages
are Learned.

Language learning occupies an unusual place in learning theory. People learn

their native languages with few failures and little instruction. Yet, most people
struggle to learn foreign languages in school (and many immigrant adults fail to
learn the language of their adoptive country). General-purpose learning theories,
like cognitive load theory, draw a sharp distinction between skills we innately
acquire and those that require schooling. So where do second languages fit into
that scheme?

On the one hand, SLA research is fascinating and contains many unexpected
findings. On the other hand, SLA seems even less amenable to a clear scientific
consensus about what works than mathematics or reading, which are themselves
beset by eternal controversies. Still, as someone who has spent years learning
languages, it was fascinating to dive deeper into how it works!

7. The Science of Learning Physics by José Mestre and

Jennifer Docktor
Along with languages, physics is another subject where many
students conspicuously fail. Teaching students to think like
physicists is a fiendishly difficult goal. Even students who ace
exams often revert to folk theories when presented with real-life
problems.

Mestre and Docktor tackle this challenge by reviewing the large

body of literature on learning physics. I plan on writing a full
review of their book, which I found to be a helpful summary.

8. The Republic by Plato

My interests are mainly contemporary, so I haven’t spent a lot of
time reading the classics. I’d usually rather read a psychology
textbook from the 21st century than try to parse out the
(probably wrong) theories of philosophers who didn’t have
access to experimental science.

But recently, I’ve been reconsidering this viewpoint. Objectively

speaking, the classics aren’t likely to be the best source on any
particular topic, but their longevity has embedded them into the background
culture of all subsequent discussions.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 4/8
29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

To my surprise, I really enjoyed The Republic. It is both well-written and weird,

which puts it above many other famous philosophical books that are too obscure
to be easily read.

9. Social Learning Theory by Albert Bandura

Social Learning Theory is a difficult book to summarize, but it
has profoundly impacted my thinking. Self-efficacy, which I’ve
covered in-depth here, is just one of the big ideas.

Another big idea is the importance of learning from others.

Behaviorists tended to view all actions as resulting from the
reward-punishment contingencies associated with taking that
action. Bandura helped shape the now-prevailing view in which
reward contingencies shape motivation, but not learning beyond deciding what to
pay attention to. In this view, motivation shapes which activites we choose to do,
but knowledge—mostly gained from other people—shapes what our effective
choices are.

10. Beginning to Read by Marilyn Jager Adams

Phonics is a hot topic these days, with prominent coverage in
the New York Times and elsewhere. The push to follow the
“science of reading” has attracted attention beyond the usual
interest in niche educational topics.

There is an accumulation of evidence that systematic phonics

instruction (where kids are taught and drilled on the sound-
spelling correspondences in print) is superior to whole-
language or “balanced” methods. This evidence has often been ignored, but now
there is a stronger push towards phonics.

Given the topic’s newsworthiness, you’d expect the “science of reading” to be

relatively new. But this controversy has been settled for decades. Jeanne Chall’s
influential summary Learning to Read: The Great Debate was published in 1967!
Marilyn Jager Adams’s extensive review of the literature concluded essentially
the same thing in 1994.

In some ways, reading about the debate has made me more pessimistic about
science-driven solutions in many areas of life. If experts can collect clear evidence
that a particular approach is more effective, but that evidence is essentially
ignored in practice for decades, it makes me less hopeful about other social
reforms where the data points one way, but intuitions point in the other.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 5/8
29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

Join my weekly newsletter Join 100,000+ readers who get

my private weekly newsletter
and get instant access to 5 of my
e-books and exclusive content I
don't share anywhere else.
No spam, no email sharing, easy unsubscribe.

Name...

Email...

AND GET JOIN NEWSLETTER

5 BOOKS FOR FREE!

 Best Articles
Best Learning Best Habits Best Goal Setting
Best Life Philosophy Best Career Best Feeling Better
Best Thinking Better Best Productivity Best Books

 Related Articles
What's Wrong With Just Reading Book Summaries?
I was having a conversation with a friend who likes to read book summaries. He’s
not a big reader, but still wants the i…

Digging into How We Teach and Learn: 7 Books That

Have Challenged and Shaped My Thinking
In my quest to understand the nuts-and-bolts process of how we learn complex,
valuable skills, I’ve read quite a few boo…

Ten Great Books on How to Learn Better

What are the best books to read to become a better learner? (Aside from my book,
of course.) I get asked this question a…

Seven Principles of Learning Better From Cognitive

Science
I just finished one of the best books I’ve read on the science of learning. Daniel
Willingham is a Harvard educated cogn…

What Does Research Say is the Best Way to Learn a

Language?
Language learning is a topic close to my heart. Few things are more exciting than
talking to someone in a language that …

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 6/8
29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

 Facebook  Twitter  Email  Print

2 Comments 
1 Login

G Join the discussion…

LOG IN WITH OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS ?

Name

 Share Best Newest Oldest

R Reader − ⚑
10 days ago

Hi Scott

I live in surrey BC and thanks to library I have always have a good book to read.

If I could recommend 1 book recently read Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food
Book by Chris van Tulleken

This book blew all my assumptions about packaged food and we can’t trust food companies at all. Highly
recommended and thanks for your work.
0 0 Reply • Share ›

C Calvin − ⚑
10 days ago

What is your reading habits like nowadays Scott? I know over the decades you have done things like read for 90
minutes per day and get up at 5 AM. But with kids, how do you do this now and what is your schedule like?
Unless now all your reading is done at "work" which is during the day at your office?
1 0 Reply • Share ›

Subscribe Privacy Do Not Sell My Data

PREVIOUS ARTICLE  FULL ARCHIVE NEXT ARTICLE

Follow About Scott Pages

I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, RECENT
podcast host, computer programmer and an ULTRALEARNING
avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly ARTICLES
essays on this website to help people like you CHALLENGES
learn and think better. My work has been PRODUCTS
featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, PODCAST
Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't FREE NEWSLETTER
promise I have all the answers, just a place to
start.

MORE ABOUT ME CONTACT ME

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 7/8
29/12/2023, 23:16 The 10 Best Books I Read in 2023 - Scott H Young

AS SEEN IN

© 2006-2023 ScottHYoung.com Services Ltd. · All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/12/19/10-best-books-read-in-2023/ 8/8