Controversial Books for bren

This page shows the most "controversial" books in this library, as measured by the highest standard deviation of members' star ratings.

Standard Deviation Average Rating Your Rating Title
1.349 3.64 The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth by Mark Victor Hansen
1.217 3.71 Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block
1.211 3.8 The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith
1.186 3.66 Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions by John S. Hammond
1.183 3.7 A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblica by Brian D. McLaren
1.178 3.79 Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society by Peter Senge
1.178 3.67 The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership by James C. Hunter
1.169 3.33 The Gospel of Thomas: Annotated & Explained (Skylight Illuminations,) by Stevan L. Davies
1.145 3.27 Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't by Ram Charan
1.145 4.07 Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block
1.124 3.56 The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
1.124 3.76 The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works by Ricardo Semler
1.12 3.24 Rocket Man by William Elliott Hazelgrove
1.118 3.48 Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire by Cliff Atkinson
1.113 3.65 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Mistakes We Knew We Were Making by Dave Eggers
1.111 4.01 Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy by Dave Hickey
1.11 3.64 Dharma Punx by Noah Levine
1.109 3.23 Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny
1.108 3.74 The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Miguel Ruiz
1.105 3.55 Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore Zeldin
1.087 3.89 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
1.087 3.63 I Love Dirt!: 52 Activities to Help You and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature by Jennifer Ward
1.084 4.22 Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
1.076 3.65 The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun
1.075 3.55 The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Jeffrey Pfeffer
1.071 3.64 The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
1.066 3.53 What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question by Po Bronson
1.066 3.67 The One Thing You Need to Know: ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success by Marcus Buckingham
1.066 3.65 The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving by Barbara Minto
1.061 3.55 Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy
1.055 3.78 Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web by David Weinberger
1.05 3.6 Out of My Later Years by Albert Einstein
1.05 3.98 The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving by Morgan D. Jones
1.049 3.44 The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale
1.047 3.36 On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
1.044 3.92 Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail by John Gall
1.031 4.08 The Upside-Down Kingdom by Donald B. Kraybill
1.03 3.87 The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle by Steven Pressfield
1.026 3.65 Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi
1.025 3.73 Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein
1.024 3.68 The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman
1.023 3.86 Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing by A. S. Neill
1.022 3.59 You Shall Know Our Velocity! {Vintage} by Dave Eggers
1.021 3.67 Now, Discover Your Strengths: How to Develop Your Talents and Those of the People You Manage by Marcus Buckingham
1.02 3.58 Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace
1.018 3.48 The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch
1.017 3.84 Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
1.016 3.94 The Associated Press Stylebook by Norm Goldstein
1.014 3.75 How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson
1.014 3.64 Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age by David M. Levy
1.005 3.47 In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (Plus) by Carl Honoré
1.004 3.23 Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
1.001 3.93 The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
0.998 3.72 The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts
0.996 3.91 The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister
0.995 3.66 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller
0.995 4.18 Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams
0.994 4 On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
0.994 3.71 The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes
0.988 3.79 The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices by Michael Brower
0.987 3.46 How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom
0.985 3 The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves by Curtis White
0.985 3.63 The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael Watkins
0.984 3.43 Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living by Doug Fine
0.982 4.18 Miracle on 34th Street [1947 film] by George Seaton
0.981 3.36 Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care by John McWhorter
0.978 3.68 Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree
0.975 3.78 The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
0.975 3.89 Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
0.97 3.99 The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown
0.969 3.02 Gunpowder Empire by Harry Turtledove
0.967 3.45 Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism by P. J. O'Rourke
0.964 3.71 The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm by Tom Kelley
0.96 3.61 True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo
0.957 3.93 Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
0.957 3.68 Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels
0.956 4 Bad Dog: 278 Outspoken, Indecent, and Overdressed Dogs by Richard Rosen
0.954 4.04 The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge
0.953 3.75 The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization by Peter Senge
0.952 4.21 The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters by Peter Block
0.951 3.71 The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd
0.95 3.95 The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
0.948 3.82 The Lessons of Saint Francis: How to Bring Simplicity and Spirituality into Your Daily Life by John Michael Talbot
0.948 3.91 The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
0.946 4.13 Renovation of the heart : putting on the character of Christ by Dallas Willard
0.944 3.71 The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
0.944 4.27 Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
0.944 4.1 A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene H. Peterson
0.942 3.74 Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change by William Bridges
0.939 3.37 Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds by Howard Gardner
0.937 3.77 Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim
0.937 3.91 George Macdonald: An Anthology by George MacDonald
0.936 3.67 The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse
0.936 3.84 Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger
0.936 4.17 Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell
0.934 3.61 Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life by Steven Johnson
0.933 3.81 Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
0.933 3.55 Wittgenstein's Poker : The Story of a Ten-minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds
0.933 3.58 Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life by David Allen
0.93 3.17 Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload by Mark Hurst
0.929 4.09 Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer
0.929 4.11 Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency by Tom DeMarco
0.928 4.19 The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
0.927 4.03 The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership by Steven B. Sample
0.927 3.79 Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life by David D. Friedman
0.927 4.04 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream by Francesco Colonna
0.927 3.73 Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
0.926 3.91 Voices of a People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
0.925 4.06 Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters by David Hockney
0.925 3.67 The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization by Jon R. Katzenbach
0.922 4.04 Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
0.921 3.97 A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink
0.92 3.81 Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet---Better, Faster, Easier by Mark Frauenfelder
0.918 3.43 Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon by Chuck Palahniuk
0.918 3.01 The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman
0.917 3.87 In Search of Captain Zero: A Surfer's Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road by Allan Weisbecker
0.916 3.73 The Joy of Not Working: A Book for the Retired, Unemployed and Overworked- 21st Century Edition by Ernie J. Zelinski
0.916 4.13 A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker J. Palmer
0.915 3.62 Mathematics for the Million by Lancelot Hogben
0.913 3.67 Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain by Tom Stafford
0.913 4.17 Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald
0.911 3.99 The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded by Clifton Fadiman
0.911 4.14 The Chosen by Chaim Potok
0.911 3.68 The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play by Neil Fiore
0.91 4.01 Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
0.91 3.85 You: The Owner's Manual by Michael F. Roizen
0.908 3.57 Amarillo Slim in a world full of fat people by Amarillo Slim Preston
0.908 3.92 Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith
0.907 3.69 The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner
0.907 3.9 Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail by John P. Kotter
0.901 4 Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv
0.899 4.06 Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson
0.897 4.2 Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
0.897 3.45 Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking by Thomas E. Kida
0.895 3.67 iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business by Jeffrey S. Young
0.892 3.75 The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz
0.89 3.65 The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill
0.889 3.9 The Little Zen Companion by David Schiller
0.889 3.82 Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence by Paul Feig
0.888 3.85 How to lie with statistics by Darrell Huff
0.887 4.08 Big Russ and Me: Father and Son: Lessons of Life by Tim Russert
0.887 3.98 The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups by Mancur Olson
0.886 4.05 Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard
0.884 4.01 Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough
0.883 4.04 Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
0.883 3.74 The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century by Ross E. Dunn
0.882 3.67 Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson
0.88 3.75 God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson
0.878 3.83 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt
0.874 4.08 The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
0.874 4.15 The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible by Keith Devlin
0.872 3.99 Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
0.872 4.04 The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
0.869 4.01 The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang
0.868 4.25 Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier
0.866 3.65 What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News by Eric Alterman
0.865 3.94 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
0.863 3.85 The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
0.862 4.03 The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done by Peter F. Drucker
0.861 4.16 Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC by Frederick Buechner
0.86 4.04 Straight Man by Richard Russo
0.857 4.3 The Hauerwas Reader by Stanley Hauerwas
0.854 3.94 The Best Things in Life by Peter Kreeft
0.854 4.03 The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
0.853 3.83 The Civilization of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History by Norman Cantor
0.849 3.98 The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World by Lawrence Lessig
0.848 3.92 A Quaker Book of Wisdom: Life Lessons In Simplicity, Service, And Common Sense by Robert Lawrence Smith
0.848 4.33 Gödel, Escher, Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
0.846 4.37 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
0.846 3.81 Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson
0.844 4.2 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
0.844 4.3 The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible by Richard J. Foster
0.842 4.2 My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
0.841 4.05 Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings by Paul Reps
0.841 3.78 Brendan by Frederick Buechner
0.84 4.23 Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini
0.839 3.99 Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks
0.838 3.85 The Good, the Bad & the Difference by Randy Cohen
0.838 3.87 Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard
0.837 3.73 Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser
0.835 4.35 A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly
0.835 4.2 West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief by Steven Kotler
0.831 4.17 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
0.827 3.84 Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner by Dean Karnazes
0.827 4.31 How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand
0.826 4.28 Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages by Harold Bloom
0.824 3.97 The Quiet American by Graham Greene
0.82 4.15 A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman
0.812 4.29 The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
0.812 4.2 Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel
0.81 3.87 Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forster
0.809 3.94 A People's History of the Supreme Court by Peter Irons
0.805 4.21 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
0.801 4.06 The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas by Mahatma Gandhi
0.798 3.5 Die Broke: A Radical Four-Part Financial Plan by Stephen Pollan
0.797 3.73 Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest to Find Zen on the Sea by Jaimal Yogis
0.797 4.09 Fermat's Last Theorem: The Story of a Riddle That Confounded the World's Greatest Minds for 358 Years by Simon Singh
0.796 4.13 Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home by Richard J. Foster
0.795 3.92 Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
0.795 3.77 Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson
0.793 4.19 Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte
0.791 3.89 Dinosaur in a Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould
0.791 4.09 Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher by Richard Feynman
0.786 4.08 Oranges by John McPhee
0.785 3.97 Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction--and Get It Published by Susan Rabiner
0.778 3.74 Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It by Andrea J. Buchanan
0.773 3.84 A Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Fr. H. Svendsen
0.769 3.79 The Tribes of Palos Verdes: A Novel by Joy Nicholson
0.755 3.5 Tattoo Machine by Jeff Johnson
0.746 4.31 Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer by Richard Rohr
0.742 4.3 Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte
0.741 4.11 Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain—and How It Changed the World by Carl Zimmer
0.732 4.35 Infrastructure : a field guide to the industrial landscape by Brian Hayes
0.728 4.45 Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
0.724 4.42 The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte
0.718 4.32 Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte
0.706 4.4 The Water Hole by Graeme Base
0.696 3.97 They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations by Dan Kimball
0.696 4.29 Country Wisdom & Know-How by The Editors of Storey Publishing's Country Wisdom Boards
0.675 4.6 Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro
0.665 4.1 The Practice of Management by Peter F. Drucker
0.633 4.41 The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy by Howard Zinn
0.604 4.33 The Sibley Guide to Trees by David Allen Sibley
0.535 4.8 The Oxford English Dictionary by J.A.H. Murray