What books does Brené Brown recommend?

Brené Brown has spent over two decades studying courage, vulnerability, and empathy, and her book recommendations reflect a researcher's habit of following ideas that reshape how we connect. A research professor at the University of Houston and host of the Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead podcasts, she often recommends books after interviewing their authors. The 9 titles here come mostly from those two shows, plus her blog and her own writing, and they concentrate on psychology and human behavior, self-improvement, and society and politics. The most personal is Harriet Lerner's The Dance of Anger, which she calls "my first quote-unquote psychology book," recalling the relief of thinking "I'm not alone!" She also champions Glennon Doyle's Untamed, Adam Grant's Think Again, of which she said "I've never felt so hopeful about what I don't know," and Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, which she names among the foremost examples of compassion.

Last updated February 2026 · Every recommendation cited to its original source.