Brian Portnoy cleverly writes on “the investor’s paradox”--a phenomenon we all face--in which it seems desirable to have as many choices available as possible, when, in reality, we feel overwhelmed and disempowered given this much freedom. His book shows the reader what to do in order to best simplify life in the midst of complex markets and never-ending choice.

In Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling book: Thinking, Fast and Slow, he analyzes us as human beings and introduces a new way of thinking about the way we make decisions. He writes of system 1, a fast, intuition-based, emotional system, and system 2, a slow, logic-based system. Kahneman’s book shows us how these systems paired with cognitive biases can so greatly affect lives, from the day to day choices we make to how we invest in the markets.

George Akerlof and Robert Shiller write about the importance of active governance when it comes to economic policymaking by bringing back the concept of animal spirits, an expression John Maynard Keynes coined to encapsulate the despair and hopelessness that led up to the Great Depression and the altering mind-set that followed the recovery. Akerlof and Shiller provide detailed accounts of the most universal effects of animal spirits regarding our relationship with the economy―confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a desire for fairness, and the tales we tell ourselves about our economic gains.

We’ve always thought the ways in which we act make sense—but do they really? We like to think we make our choices solely based on logic and careful thought out reasoning, but, much of the time, we make our decisions based on our emotions. Dan Ariely writes about this irrationality in Predictably Irrational, and shares his expertise on the explanation behind our irrationality.

Terry Burnham, economist, explains the complex notions regarding our brains and irrationality in an easily accessible and comprehensive way. For so long, traditional economics solely drove what was believed to be true in how we invest our money and interact with the stock market. Dr. Burnham shows us how this is not true because of our “lizard brains”. The psychological instincts we evolved helped our ancestors in a very different time—when merely surviving was a success. But these ancient reflexes can cause a lot of trouble for us financially. Burnham analyzes why this is the case in Mean Markets and Lizard Brains, providing for the audience a wonderful account of behavioral finance, and how our primal instincts don’t work in our best interest when it comes to the stock market, the economy, real estate, bonds, mortgages, inflation, and savings.

This one truly changed my life. Fooled by Randomness is a book about luck: how we understand and interact with it in our lives and in business. Luck is something very difficult to understand, and we often mistakenly believe that those who have had a run of good luck are simply the best in their line of work. Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about significant intellectual issues in connection with our ignorance of the degree to which chance plays a role in our lives.

In Your Money and Your Brain, Jason Zweig tells us why some of the most intelligent people can make incredibly stupid decisions in their financial lives and what we can do to best avoid these misjudgements. Zweig, using the latest research in neuroeconomics, provides us with an explanation for why we so frequently misunderstand risk and why we have the tendency to be too confident in our investment decision-making.

Crazy About Money: How Emotions Confuse Our Money Choices and What To Do About It, helps the reader pinpoint the subconscious emotions and beliefs we all hold that most often form in childhood, and control our decisions when it comes to money as adults. Additionally, the book shows the reader how to alter unhelpful perspectives that result in financial trouble for so many people. Author Maggie Baker uses real examples that are derived from her 30 years of clinical psychology experience in order to show us how much of an impact, and a negative one at that, our emotions and ideas about money can make.

Pairing recent findings in psychology with a practical comprehension of incentives and market behavior, Richard H. Thaler shows readers how to make better decisions, financial or otherwise, in today’s world. He explains how analyzing a subject via a behavioral economic lens allows us to look at everything from household finances to TV game shows in a new light.

When psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of papers that invented the field of behavioral economics, they changed economics and finance forever. In his book: The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis demonstrates how their revolutionary work focusing on the theory of the mind changed our perceptions of our lives, our money, and ourselves.

Jonathan Clements, a personal-finance writer for The Wall Street Journal, aims to provide his readers with a comprehensive way to think about their finances, so they worry less, make better choices, and gain more happiness from their money in his book How To Think About Money.

The saying goes “money can’t buy happiness”, but in The Geometry of Wealth, Brian Portnoy makes a very important distinction between simply chasing after more, and having the resources to lead a meaningful life. The Geometry of Wealth: How to shape a life of money and meaning, shows us examples of how money can allow us to achieve meaning in our lives, even if we may think this wealth is out of reach.