Books: Health, sleep and staying upright
Including two of the most recommended books of the last decade, both of which have real and specific criticisms attached. Every entry says who it is not for, which is the useful part and the part nobody else prints.
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Health, sleep and staying upright: 9 books
Ordered by how well evidenced they are rather than by how good they are, because those are different questions and the second one depends on who you are.
Emily Nagoski, Blanca González Villegas · Knaur Taschenbuch · first published 2015 · 432 pages
Emily Nagoski holds a PhD in health behavior with a certificate in human sexuality and taught sex education at the college level before writing this book.
A synthesis of sex research — particularly the ‘dual control model’ of sexual response (separate accelerator and brake systems) — aimed at explaining ordinary variation in desire, especially why desire commonly drops under stress.
Read it if Someone rebuilding their sense of their own sexuality after divorce, or trying to understand why stress killed their desire during the marriage’s decline.
Do not read it if A reader looking for the broader stress-and-burnout self-help of Burnout (Burnout) — same author, different book: this one is specifically about sexual response and stays closer to the underlying research; Burnout is a general exhaustion book co-written with her non-scientist sister.
Well evidenced Grounded in an established body of sex research (the dual control model derives from real, peer-reviewed work by Bancroft and Janssen), presented for a general audience with real citation to that literature.
Open Library 4.3333335 from 9 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
David D. Burns · Espasa · first published 1980 · 416 pages
David D. Burns is a psychiatrist who trained under Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and helped popularize CBT for a general audience.
A self-help introduction to CBT for depression — identifying and challenging the specific distorted thought patterns (all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, and similar) that drive low mood, with exercises to counter them.
Read it if Someone experiencing depression or persistent negative thinking during or after divorce who wants a structured, exercise-based way to work on it themselves.
Do not read it if Someone in crisis or with suicidal thoughts — this is a self-help workbook, not a substitute for a clinician, and its self-directed format isn’t built for acute risk.
Well evidenced CBT is one of the most extensively researched and validated forms of psychotherapy; the book is old (1980) and some peripheral material (medication information in particular) is dated, but its core cognitive techniques remain clinically current.
One caution. If you’re having thoughts of self-harm, this book is not the right tool on its own — reach out to a crisis line or a clinician directly.
Open Library 4.625 from 8 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Dennis Greenberger · Guilford Press · first published 2016 · 341 pages
Dennis Greenberger and Christina Padesky (not separately listed here) are both clinical psychologists specializing in CBT; the book is a standard workbook recommended by many therapists to their clients.
A structured CBT workbook with worksheets for tracking thoughts, moods, and evidence for and against negative beliefs — designed to be used alongside therapy or on its own.
Read it if Someone already in therapy who wants structured homework to reinforce it, or a self-motivated reader who does well with worksheets rather than prose.
Do not read it if A reader who wants to just read a book, not do written exercises — this only works if you actually fill in the worksheets.
Well evidenced A standard, widely therapist-recommended CBT workbook built on the same well-validated cognitive therapy research base as Feeling Good.
Open Library 4.0 from 1 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski · BestSeller · first published 2019 · 304 pages
Emily Nagoski holds a PhD in health behavior with a focus on sex education (see also(Come As You Are); her twin sister and co-author Amelia Nagoski is a choral conductor and doctor of musical arts, not a scientist.
A stress-and-exhaustion book built around the idea that stress is a physiological cycle that must be actively ‘completed’ (through movement, connection, or other release) rather than just endured, aimed particularly at women juggling caregiving and work.
Read it if A divorcing parent who is exhausted and overloaded and needs practical, low-effort strategies for discharging accumulated stress, not just managing their schedule better.
Do not read it if Someone looking for Emily Nagoski’s research-grounded sex-science writing — that’s the different book at(Come As You Are)(Come As You Are); this one is a broader self-help synthesis co-written with her non-scientist sister, more accessible and more general than research-dense.
Practitioner experience, not research Synthesizes real stress physiology research into accessible practice, but functions more as translational self-help than as a research monograph — lighter on citation-level rigor than Come As You Are.
Open Library 4.0 from 9 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Lori Gottlieb · Brilliance Audio · first published 2019 · 432 pages
Lori Gottlieb is a licensed psychotherapist and journalist.
A memoir, not a how-to book: Gottlieb interweaves her own experience going into therapy after a breakup with stories of several of her own patients, showing what therapy actually looks like from both chairs.
Read it if Someone curious about what therapy is actually like, or who wants to feel less alone in going through something hard, told through narrative rather than instruction.
Do not read it if A reader looking for practical tools or exercises — there are none here; this is narrative nonfiction, not a workbook.
Practitioner experience, not research A memoir drawing on the author’s own clinical and personal experience, not a research-based or instructional text.
Open Library 3.8285713 from 35 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Russ Harris · Trumpeter · first published 2007 · 288 pages
Russ Harris is a physician and trainer who teaches Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
An introduction to ACT, which focuses on accepting difficult thoughts and feelings rather than fighting them, and committing to actions aligned with your values even while those feelings are present.
Read it if Someone who has tried to just ‘think positive’ their way through the divorce and found it doesn’t work, and wants a different approach that doesn’t require feeling better first.
Do not read it if Someone who wants the thought-challenging, evidence-weighing approach of classic CBT (Feeling Good, Mind Over Mood) — ACT deliberately takes a different, acceptance-based approach and the two philosophies don’t mix well in the same week.
Practitioner experience, not research ACT has a real and growing evidence base from clinical trials, though it is smaller and newer than the research base behind classic CBT, and this particular book is a popularization rather than a primary research text.
Open Library 5.0 from 2 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Susan Cain · Goldmann · first published 2012 · 368 pages
Susan Cain is a writer and former corporate lawyer, not a psychologist, though the book draws on personality psychology research.
An argument that introversion is undervalued in a culture built for extroverts, covering workplaces, schools, and relationships, and making the case for introverts’ particular strengths.
Read it if Someone rebuilding a social and dating life post-divorce who has always felt pressured to be more outgoing than they are, and wants permission to not perform extroversion.
Do not read it if A reader who wants a scientifically rigorous account of personality — the book leans on the popular introvert/extrovert binary, which is a simplification; most personality researchers today treat traits like this as continuous spectrums rather than two fixed types, even though it draws on genuinely real research along the way.
Popular, weakly evidenced Draws on real personality-psychology research but presents introversion/extroversion as a cleaner binary than most current trait research supports; treat it as a well-sourced argument for a perspective, not a clinical account.
Open Library 4.122449 from 98 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Bessel van der Kolk · Editorial Eleftheria S.L. · first published 2014 · 520 pages
Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist and trauma researcher who has published extensively in the trauma field.
An argument that trauma is stored physically in the body and nervous system, not just remembered mentally, and that body-based treatments (yoga, EMDR, neurofeedback) can matter as much as talk therapy. It mixes van der Kolk’s own case histories with neuroscience explanation.
Read it if Someone whose divorce involved trauma — abuse, betrayal, a frightening custody fight — who wants a framework for why they feel it physically and not just emotionally.
Do not read it if A reader who wants the neuroscience taken as settled fact — some of the book’s specific brain-scan claims and case narratives have been challenged by other researchers and journalists as overstated or, in at least one widely discussed case, inaccurately described, and its emphasis on somatic treatments over talk therapy is more van der Kolk’s clinical judgment than a consensus finding.
Popular, weakly evidenced The core observation — that trauma has physical, bodily effects — is well supported broadly, but critics have documented specific overstated or disputed claims in the book (including questions about the accuracy of a case narrative involving a real legal matter, and criticism that some neuroscience claims go beyond what the cited studies show). Treat the framework as useful and the specific scientific claims with some skepticism.
Open Library 4.131579 from 38 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Matthew P. Walker, Matthew Walker · Simon & Schuster Audio and Blackstone Audio · first published 2017 · 360 pages
Matthew Walker is a sleep scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology.
A wide-ranging case for the importance of sleep, covering memory, disease risk, and performance, aimed at convincing readers to prioritize sleep.
Read it if Someone whose divorce has wrecked their sleep and needs motivation to actually prioritize it again.
Do not read it if A reader who wants every statistic in the book taken at face value — a widely circulated, detailed public critique (by researcher Alexey Guzey, in 2019) documented specific factual errors and misrepresented studies in the book, including exaggerated claims about sleep deprivation and mortality risk; Walker did not fully retract the disputed claims. The core message that sleep matters is not in question, but specific numbers in the book should be treated with caution.
Popular, weakly evidenced A well-documented public critique identified specific factual errors and overstated claims in the book, particularly around some sleep-and-mortality statistics — the general thesis that sleep is important is well supported elsewhere, but this particular book’s specific claims have been disputed.
Open Library 4.516129 from 31 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Every title, author, publisher, year, page count and ISBN here was checked against a bibliographic database rather than typed from memory, and the candidates that could not be confirmed were dropped rather than guessed at. Ratings are shown only where we could see them at source, which is why several books have none — a blank is honest and an invented four-point-three is not. The judgments about what a book is worth are ours, they are opinions, and you are entitled to disagree with them. Tell us when we are wrong.
Compiled 31 August 2026. Bibliographic data from Open Library. Prices, editions and availability change constantly; the links go to the current listing.