WSJ’s Top Book Recommendations-Cary Regional

Discover the best books of the year, handpicked by the editors of The Wall Street Journal. From thought-provoking nonfiction to engrossing fiction, our Top Book Recommendations offer a curated list of exceptional reads that will inform, inspire, and entertain. Featuring titles from acclaimed authors and emerging voices, our selection spans genres and subjects, ensuring there's something for every reader. Dive into the world of ideas, stories, and perspectives that will change the way you think, feel, and see the world.

Showing 1 - 20 of 26  There are a total of 302 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"
Star rating for The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:

When it was first published, in 1990, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was an almost instant bestseller—and became a permanent part of the cultural lexicon. With more than 15 million copies sold in over 33 languages and 75 countries since its first publication, this book continues to help millions of people become more effective—both in their personal and professional lives.

What author Stephen R. Covey advocates is

...
Book cover for "All the frequent troubles of our days"
Star rating for All the frequent troubles of our days
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Part biography, part political thriller, part scholarly detective story that draws on letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, and other documents, this true story chronicles the life and brutal death of Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany.
Book cover for "The anxious generation"
Star rating for The anxious generation
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children...
Book cover for "Bad blood"
Star rating for Bad blood
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
"In 2014 Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup 'unicorn' promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier ... There was just one problem: The technology didn't work. For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When [the author], working at The Wall...
Book cover for "The bookseller of Florence"
Star rating for The bookseller of Florence
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Against the ... backdrop of Renaissance Florence, [this book] brings to light an extraordinary story about the city and its culture--that of Vespasiano da Bisticci, the 'king of the world's booksellers,' Florence's most indispensable and prolific merchant of knowledge. His bookshop in the heart of Florence was a gathering place for the city's most prominent poets and philosophers, and it was there that Vespasiano and his team of scribes created beautiful...
Book cover for "The CIA book club"
Star rating for The CIA book club
Description:
"Recounts a covert Cold War operation led by George Minden to smuggle banned literature into Eastern Europe, focusing on the cultural and psychological battle against Soviet censorship and the role underground reading networks played in weakening totalitarian control, especially in Poland"--
Book cover for "Dare to lead"
Star rating for Dare to lead
Average Rating:
3.2 stars
Description:
In her number one New York Times best sellers, Brené Brown has taught what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she's showing listeners how to put those ideas into practice so they can step up and lead.
Book cover for "The escape artist"
Star rating for The escape artist
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
"In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz--one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world--and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them at the end of the railway line. Against all odds, he and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the...
Book cover for "Facing the mountain"
Star rating for Facing the mountain
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat, a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and courage: the special Japanese-American Army unit that overcame brutal odds in Europe; their families, incarcerated in camps back home; and a young man who refused to surrender his constitutional rights, even if it meant imprisonment. They came from across the continent and Hawaii. Their parents taught them to embrace both their Japanese...
Book cover for "The fate of the day"
Star rating for The fate of the day
Description:
"In the second volume of the ... American Revolution trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize-winning ... author of The British Are Coming, George Washington's army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat"--
Book cover for "The Greatest Trade Ever"
Star rating for The Greatest Trade Ever
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected—that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall.  Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing.  He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark....
Book cover for "Hidden Valley Road"
Star rating for Hidden Valley Road
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where [they had twelve chidlren] ... In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins, ... and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: ... by the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How...
Book cover for "I seek a kind person"
Star rating for I seek a kind person
Description:
"This gripping family memoir of grief, courage, and hope tells the hidden stories of children who escaped the Holocaust, building connections across generations and continents. In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out advertisements offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life...
Book cover for "An immense world"
Star rating for An immense world
Author:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension: the world as it is truly perceived by other animals. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires (and fireworks), songbirds that can see the Earth's magnetic...
Book cover for "Is a river alive?"
Star rating for Is a river alive?
Description:
An "exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three ... journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada--imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding...
Book cover for "The Kelloggs"
Star rating for The Kelloggs
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"John Harvey Kellogg was one of America's most beloved physicians; a best-selling author, lecturer, and health-magazine publisher; founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; and patron saint of the pursuit of wellness. His youngest brother Will was the founder of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which revolutionized the mass production of food and what we eat for breakfast. In [this book], Howard Markel tells the ... saga of these two ......
Book cover for "Mark Twain"
Star rating for Mark Twain
Author:
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, under Halley's Comet, the rambunctious Twain was an early teller of tall tales. He left his home in Missouri at an early age, piloted steamboats on the Mississippi, and arrived in the Nevada Territory during the silver-mining boom. Before long, he had accepted a job at the local newspaper, where he barged into vigorous discourse and debate, hoaxes and hijinks. After moving to San Francisco, he published stories...
Book cover for "Memorial days"
Star rating for Memorial days
Average Rating:
2.5 stars
Description:
"A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace."--
Book cover for "On the Hippie Trail"
Star rating for On the Hippie Trail
Description:
Stow away with Rick Steves for a glimpse into the unforgettable moments, misadventures, and memories of his 1978 journey on the legendary Hippie Trail.
Book cover for "Poverty, by America"
Star rating for Poverty, by America
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...