Authors

Mark Manson (born March 9, 1984) is an American self-help author and blogger. As of 2022 he has authored or co-authored four books, three of which, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Everything Is Fucked: A Book About Hope, and Will, were The New York Times bestsellers.

Mark Manson was raised in Austin, Texas, in the United States. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts to study, and graduated from Boston University in 2007.

He is married to Fernanda Neute, a wellness influencer who he met while traveling in São Paulo.

Manson started his first blog about dating advice in 2008.

In 2010, he started a new blog called post masculine (now defunct) which provided general life advice for men. Manson moved his blog to markmanson.net in 2013.

Tara Brach is an American psychologist, author, and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is a guiding teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C. (IMCW). Brach also teaches about Buddhist meditation at centers for meditation and yoga in the United States and Europe, including Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California; the Kripalu Center; and the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.

Casandra Brené Brown (born November 18, 1965) is an American professor, lecturer, author, and podcast host. Brown is known in particular for her research on shame, vulnerability, and leadership, and for her widely viewed TEDx talk in 2010. Since then she has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books, hosts two podcasts, and has filmed a lecture for Netflix as well as a series about her latest book, Atlas Of The Heart on HBO Max.

Brown holds the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work and is a visiting professor in management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.

Brown was born on November 18, 1965, in San Antonio, Texas, where her parents Charles Arthur Brown and Casandra Deanne Rogers had her baptized in the Episcopal Church. She is the eldest of four children. Her family then moved to New Orleans.

Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Francis of Assisi, Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

John Ernest Sarno Jr. (June 23, 1923 – June 22, 2017) was Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, and attending physician at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Medical Center. He graduated from Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1943, and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1950. In 1965, he was appointed the director of the Outpatient Department at the Rusk Institute.

Sarno originated the term tension myositis syndrome (TMS) to name a psychosomatic condition producing pain, particularly back pain. Although rejected by his mainstream peers, the theory of TMS and Sarno's treatment of it have been hailed by many lay people as life-changing. A 2017 book on back pain treatments described Sarno as the "rock star of the back world". A documentary on his life and work titled All the Rage (Saved by Sarno) was released in 2016.

Max Ehrmann was an American writer, poet, and attorney from Terre Haute, Indiana, widely known for his 1927 prose poem "Desiderata". He often wrote on spiritual themes.

Thích Nhất Hạnh ( TIK NYUHT HUHN; Vietnamese: [tʰǐk̟ ɲə̌t hâjŋ̟ˀ] (listen); born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo; 11 October 1926 – 22 January 2022) was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition, historically recognized as the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism. Known as the "father of mindfulness", Nhất Hạnh was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism.

In the mid-1960s, Nhất Hạnh co-founded the School of Youth for Social Services and created the Order of Interbeing. He was exiled from South Vietnam in 1966 after expressing opposition to the war and refusing to take sides. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Nhất Hạnh established dozens of monasteries and practice centers and spent many years living at the Plum Village Monastery, which he founded in 1982 in southwest France near Thénac, traveling internationally to give retreats and talks. Nhất Hạnh promoted deep listening as a nonviolent solution to conflict and sought to raise awareness of the interconnectedness of all elements in nature. He coined the term "engaged Buddhism" in his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire.

Marshall Bertram Rosenberg was an American psychologist, mediator, author and teacher. Starting in the early 1960s, he developed nonviolent communication, a process for supporting partnership and resolving conflict within people, in relationships, and in society. He worked worldwide as a peacemaker and in 1984, founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication, an international nonprofit organization for which he served as Director of Educational Services.

The Tolkien family is an English family of German descent whose best-known member is J. R. R. Tolkien, Oxford academic and author of the fantasy books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.

The Tolkien family originated in the East Prussian town Kreuzburg near Königsberg, where the Tolkien name is attested since the 16th century. The verified paternal line of J. R. R. Tolkien starts with Michel Tolkien, born around 1620 in Kreuzburg. Michel's son Christianus Tolkien (1663–1746) was a wealthy miller in Kreuzburg. His son Christian Tolkien (1706–1791) moved from Kreuzburg to nearby Danzig, and his two sons Daniel Gottlieb Tolkien (1747–1813) and Johann (later known as John) Benjamin Tolkien (1752–1819) emigrated to London in the 1770s, and became the ancestors of the English family. The family first appears in English records in 1777. In 1792 John Benjamin Tolkien and William Gravell took over the Erdley Norton manufacture in London, which from then on sold clocks and watches under the name Gravell & Tolkien. Daniel Gottlieb obtained British citizenship in 1794, but John Benjamin apparently never became a British citizen. Their German nephew Daniel Gottlieb Bergmann also joined them in London. Johann (John) Benjamin Tolkien, who died in London in 1819, was the 2nd great-grandfather of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Michael Alan Singer (or Michael A. Singer; born 6 May 1947) is a bestselling author, a meditation center founder, and a former software programmer. His two books, The Untethered Soul (2007) and The Surrender Experiment (2015), were New York Times bestsellers. In 1975, he founded Temple of the Universe, a long-established yoga and meditation center for people of any religion or belief to experience inner peace.

On the business side, Singer is a notable figure in the medical software industry. He created the Medical Manager, one of the very first programs that helped medical practitioners to digitize their medical records. Medical Manager is now a recognized achievement archived in the Smithsonian Institution. When Medical Manager was acquired by WebMD, a billion-dollar public company which focused on medical data management, Singer continued as executive VP, physician software strategies, and head of research and development and chief software architect of WebMD Practice Services. He resigned from WebMD in 2005 and focused on writing.

Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain; 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), also known as Acharya Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and later as Osho (), was an Indian godman, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement. During his lifetime, he was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader and a mystic guru. He rejected institutional religions. Rajneesh emphasised the importance of freethought, meditation, mindfulness, love, celebration, courage, creativity, and humour—qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious dogmas and traditions, and socialization. In advocating a more open attitude to human sexuality he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru".

Charlotte Sophia Kasl, (née Davis, AKA Charlotte Davis Kasl) (1938–2021) was a U.S. psychologist and author.

Born Charlotte Davis on August 19, 1938 in Missoula, Montana, her parents were Mary Shope and Kenneth Pickett Davis. From an early age she showed a talent for piano and at age 17 she was teaching four of her own students. At the University of Michigan she earned her BA in Music and MA in Piano. She pursued piano studies for many years before becoming disillusioned with "the prospects of a music career in a department steeped in patriarchy."

Now using her married name Charlotte Kasl, she began studying psychology and in 1982, received her PhD in Counseling at Ohio University, which allowed her to "merge her deep and profound interests in complex family dynamics and relationships with the cultural context of feminism and sexual politics."

Susan Horowitz Cain (born 1968) is an American writer and lecturer.

She is the author of the 2012 non-fiction book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which argues that modern Western culture misunderstands and undervalues the traits and capabilities of introverted people. In 2015, she co-founded Quiet Revolution, a mission-based company with initiatives in the areas of children (parenting and education), lifestyle, and the workplace. Her 2016 follow-on book, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, focused on introverted children and teens, the book also being directed to their educators and parents.

Her book Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (2022) focused on accepting feelings of sorrow and longing as inspiration to experience sublime emotions—such as beauty and wonder and transcendence—to counterbalance the "normative sunshine" of society's pressure to constantly be positive.