Bookshelf
A library is not a list of books. It is a record of intellectual formation, a map of what has shaped the way you see.
These are the books that have shaped mine. Organised not by genre but by the three layers of the worldview they correspond to.
Layer One, The Cosmic Order
Consciousness, spirit, and the nature of reality
The deepest layer. Books that address the fundamental question of what reality is, what the self is, and what it means to know anything at all.
- David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order
- Bernardo Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney
- Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life
- Pim van Lommel, Eindeloos Bewustzijn
- Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary
- Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics
- Bhagavad Gita, translated by Eknath Easwaran
- Upanishads, translated by Eknath Easwaran
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
- Shunryū Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
- Rumi, Selected Poems
- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
- Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul
- Michael A. Singer, The Surrender Experiment
- Jan Bommerez, Flow — leven in de stroom
- Peter Kampschuur, Spiritualiteit en Energie
- Henry Shukman, One Blade of Grass
- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
- Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads
- Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything
- Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society
- Moore & Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover
Layer Two, The Living Order
Life, ecology, and regenerative systems
The biological expression of the deeper aliveness. Books about how life organises itself — and how human civilisation can learn to do the same.
Systems Thinking
- Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems
- Donella Meadows, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
- Fritjof Capra & Pier Luigi Luisi, The Systems View of Life
- Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline
- Jan Rotmans, Omarm de Chaos
- Nassim Taleb, Antifragile
- Nassim Taleb, Skin in the Game
- Geoffrey West, Scale
Enlivenment
- Andreas Weber, Enlivenment
- Jeremy Lent, The Web of Meaning
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
- Arne Naess, Ecology of Wisdom
- Joanna Macy, Coming Back to Life
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature
- Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels
- E.O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence
- E.O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth
- Charles Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet
- Daniel Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures
- E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
- Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations
- Carol Sanford, The Regenerative Business
- Carol Sanford, The Regenerative Life
- Carol Sanford, The Responsible Business
- Carol Sanford & Ben Haggard, Indirect Work
- Arie de Geus, The Living Company
- Giles Hutchins, Leading by Nature
- Giles Hutchins & Laura Storm, Regenerative Leadership
- Looby Macnamara, People and Permaculture
- C. Otto Scharmer, The Essentials of Theory U
- Vanessa Machado de Oliveira & Peter Senge, Everything Is Nature
Layer Three, The Cultural Order
Culture, politics, and the civilisational diagnosis
Where the deeper pathologies become visible. Books about what has gone wrong in modern Western civilisation — and what a rooted, coherent alternative might look like.
Cultural Diagnosis
- Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
- William Strauss & Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning
- Philipp Blom, Nature's Mutiny
- Philipp Blom, Het Grote Wereldtoneel
- Philipp Blom, De Onderwerping
- Rüdiger Safranski, Nietzsche: Biografie van zijn denken
- Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist
- Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine
- Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
- Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
- Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society
- Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations
- Robert Bly, The Sibling Society
- Ad Verbrugge, De Gezagscrisis
- Hans Boutellier, De Neotribale Samenleving
- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens
- Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus
- Rana Dasgupta, After Nations
Political Economy
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
- Bas van Bavel, De Onzichtbare Hand
- Thijs Lijster, Wat We Gemeen Hebben
- Michael Lind, The New Class War
- David Orrell, Hoe Economie Religie Werd