Ferriss opens his bestseller with a seductive premise: escape the 9 to 5 grind, join the “New Rich,” and redesign your life so you work less and live more. Naturally, this is extremely appealing to anyone who has ever stared at a spreadsheet and wondered if pigeons have a better work-life balance. His tone is confident—borderline smug—but in a way that makes you think, “Annoying… but what if he’s right?” The book is structured like a productivity boot camp mixed with a travel brochure for your dream life. Ferriss introduces the DEAL framework (Definition, Elimination, Automation, Liberation), which sounds less like a philosophy and more like a suspiciously aggressive board…

Eat, Pray, Love is the story of what happens when you have a perfectly respectable life on paper and decide instead to have an existential crisis with a passport. Freshly divorced and spiritually singed, Elizabeth does what many of us consider daily but rarely commit to: she sells her belongings and embarks on a year-long journey to Italy, India, and Indonesia. Some people buy new bedding after a breakup. Elizabeth buys three international plane tickets. Exactly the kind of plan you come up with when you’re both catastrophically heartbroken and holding an advance from your publisher. The book is part memoir, part travelogue, part spiritual scavenger hunt, and part reminder…