Book Summaries

Sloww is your go-to book summary website for the highest quality and most detailed free book summaries anywhere in the world.

This page is a comprehensive list of 100+ nonfiction book summaries. You may also enjoy my book recommendations and full reading list (Google Sheet). Enjoy!

“I love your work on Sloww. The book summaries are God-sent, and I appreciate how you express complex concepts with such clarity. Big Thank You.” — Sarah G, Sloww reader

Sloww Book Summaries: High Quality, Detailed, Nonfiction (& Free!)

About the Book Summaries

What makes Sloww summaries the most useful book summaries in the world?

Author Quotes: I always use the author’s original words—not filtered by my mind. Watch out for book “summaries” that are only or mostly in the reader’s words—you’re essentially playing the “telephone game” with these (you’re reading the reader’s mind, not the author’s words).

Key Themes: I group similar quotes into key themes, so you get the gist of the main themes from a book and see direct examples of original author quotes that support the themes. Key themes can then be synthesized across books to make you more of a interdisciplinary generalist.

Visual Formatting: I do a lot of extra work to provide intuitive visual organization. This is rarely seen in other book summaries online that are often long pages of unformatted text or bullet points. I use highlighting, bolding, visuals, and infographics to bring my book summaries to life.

Appropriate Length: There are far too many short summaries out there that only give you bits and pieces of a book. My summaries are “as long as they need to be” depending on the quality of the book. I offer both free summaries and 🔒Premium summaries (further distilled and more actionable). Here are some examples of how much fluff I cut out of a book to produce my summaries (free summaries cut ~90% out of a full book on average; 🔒Premium summaries then cut the free summaries in half):

📚 Lifelong Learning Book Summaries

• Make It Stick by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It 
• How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens | Book Summary 1, 2 | 🔒 How to Apply It 
• A Synthesizing Mind by Howard Gardner | Book Summary 
• Range by David Epstein | Book Summary 
• Ultralearning by Scott Young | Book Summary
• Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte | Book Summary

🌎 Lighter Living Book Summaries

Pair with: Sloww Stage 1: How do I design a lighter life?

Slow living book summaries:

• In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honore | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim | Book Summary
• Slow by Brooke McAlary | Book Summary
• Chasing Slow by Erin Loechner | Book Summary
• Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist | Book Summary
• The Slow Fix by Carl Honoré | Book Summary
• In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell | Essay Summary
• Conspicuous Consumption of Time by Bellezza, Paharia, & Keinan | Research Summary

Simple living book summaries:

• The Quest of the Simple Life by William J. Dawson | Book Summary 1, 2
• Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin | Book Summary
• The Value of Voluntary Simplicity by Richard Gregg | Essay Summary
• Voluntary Simplicity: Listening to the Quiet Revolution by Katie Barton | Thesis Summary
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo | Book Summary
• Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki | Book Summary
• Simplify by Joshua Becker | Book Summary
• The Blue Zones Cookbook by Dan Buettner | Book Summary

Time & money book summaries:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear | Book Summary | 🔒 How To Apply It 
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown | Book Summary | 🔒 How To Apply It 
• Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Peter Kaufman & Charlie Munger | Book Summary
• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel | Book Summary
• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman | Book Summary
• Die With Zero by Bill Perkins | Book Summary
• When by Daniel Pink | Book Summary 
• Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren by John Maynard Keynes | Essay Summary

🧭 Higher Purpose Book Summaries

Pair with: Sloww Stage 2: How do I find higher purpose?

Meaning & purpose book summaries:

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl | Book Summary 1, 2 | 🔒 How to Apply It
• Yes to Life by Viktor Frankl | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle | Book Summary 1, 2, 3 | 🔒 How to Apply It
• Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho | Book Summary 1, 2
• The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren | Book Summary
• Find Your Why by Simon Sinek | Book Summary
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch | Book Summary 
• Ikigai by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles | Book Summary | My Ikigai 2.0 eBook
• Awakening Your Ikigai by Ken Mogi | Book Summary | My Ikigai 2.0 eBook
• The Path Made Clear by Oprah | Book Summary
• The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna | Book Summary

🧠 Mental Mastery Book Summaries

Pair with: Sloww Stage 3: How do I master the mind?

Psychology book summaries:

• Ego Development Theory by Susanne Cook-Greuter | Paper Summary 1, 2 | 🔒 How to Apply It
• The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham Maslow | Book Summary 1, 2, 3, 4 | 🔒 How to Apply It 1, 2
• The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey | Book Summary | 🔒 Premium Summary
• Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann | Book Summary | 🔒 Premium Summary
• The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli | Book Summary | 🔒 Premium Summary
• The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe by Steven Novella | Book Summary | 🔒 Premium Summary
• Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows | Book Summary | 🔒 Premium Summary
• Creating Freedom by Raoul Martinez | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• Free Will by Sam Harris | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman | Book Summary 1, 2
• The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist | Book Summary
• Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor | Book Summary
• The Great Mental Models Volume 1 by Farnam Street | Book Summary 
• The Grand Redesign by Sam McRoberts | Book Summary
• Conscious by Annaka Harris | Book Summary
• SQ21 (Spiritual Intelligence) by Cindy Wigglesworth | Book Summary
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin | Book Summary
• Lying by Sam Harris | Book Summary
• Sum by David Eagleman | Book Summary

☯️ Timeless Wisdom Book Summaries

Pair with: Sloww Stage 4: How do I embody wisdom?

Philosophy book summaries:

• Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Stephen Mitchell Version) | Book Summary
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Michael Nylan Version) | Book Summary
• A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• How to Live by Derek Sivers | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• This is Water by David Foster Wallace | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant | Book Summary 1, 2 | 🔒 How to Apply It
• The Egg by Andy Weir | Book Summary
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius | Book Summary 1, 2
• On The Shortness Of Life by Seneca | Book Summary
• Enchiridion by Epictetus | Book Summary
• As a Man Thinketh by James Allen | Book Summary
• Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday | Book Summary
• The Existentialist’s Survival Guide by Gordon Marino | Book Summary
• A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber | Book Summary
• A Theory of Everything by Ken Wilber | Book Summary
• The Integral Vision by Ken Wilber | Book Summary

Spirituality book summaries:

• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply it
• Awareness by Anthony De Mello | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply It
• Spiritual Enlightenment by Jed McKenna | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply it
• Being Myself by Rupert Spira | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply it
• Be As You Are by Ramana Maharshi | Book Summary | 🔒 How to Apply it
• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz | Book Summary
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse | Book Summary
• The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso & Hudson | Book Summary 1, 2
• Thought as a System by David Bohm | Book Summary
• On Having No Head by Douglas Harding | Book Summary
• The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello | Book Summary
• Who Am I? by Sri Ramana Maharshi | Book Summary

You May Also Enjoy:

• Book Recommendations

• Full Reading List (Google Sheet)