Best Emotional Intelligence Books: The 40 BEST Books on EQ

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by Arthur Worsley
M.A. Psychology, Oxford. McKinsey Alum. Founder & Editor at TAoL.

Looking for the best emotional intelligence books of all time?

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Master Your Emotions Today!

In the ranked list of book recommendations below you’ll find the best emotional intelligence books ever written.

How do I know? Because I spent hours building a huge master list of the best emotional intelligence books from hundreds of sources before carefully curating the results with TAoL‘s data-driven, in-house ranking algorithm.

Result? Whether you’re hoping to understand your emotions, build better relationships, improve your self-management or increase self-awareness you’ll find something among the emotional intelligence books below that’ll help.

Don’t let the list overwhelm you.

Scan from the top, pick a title that excites you and start reading.

And keep an eye out for updates! I’ll be adding new book summaries and books about emotional intelligence as I find/write them in the coming months and years.

Until next time, then, embrace your emotions, lean into life’s sharp bits and go well.

The 40 Best Emotional Intelligence Books Ever Written

Why these best emotional intelligence books and not others? To stay objective, I rank all my book recommendations by what’s most loved (Goodreads rating), what’s most popular (Goodreads review count) and what’s proven timelessly relevant (first publication date).

This isn’t a whimsical list. It’s a data-driven, crowdsourced collection of the best emotional intelligence books ever published as decided by book lovers just like you. (Note: To maximise diversity, I only include the top ranking book from any series in a list.)

And if you think something's missing? I LOVE book recommendations so if there are any other best emotional intelligence books that you think deserve mentioning, email me and I’ll be sure to include them in the next round of updates.

Until then, enjoy this ultimate list of the 40 best emotional intelligence books of all time...

Books 1-10: The Top 10 Best Emotional Intelligence Books of All Time

The top 10 best emotional intelligence books of all time are...

1. Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman

Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

Published 1995 // 384 pages // Rated 4.0 over 99,500 reviews on Goodreads

2. Molecules of Emotion - Candace B. Pert

The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine

Published 1997 // 368 pages // Rated 4.2 over 3,800 reviews on Goodreads

3. Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child - John M. Gottman

Published 1997 // 240 pages // Rated 4.2 over 4,300 reviews on Goodreads

4. Descartes' Error - António R. Damásio

Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

Published 1994 // 336 pages // Rated 4.0 over 8,100 reviews on Goodreads

5. The Body Keeps the Score - Bessel A. van der Kolk (FREE Summary)

Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

The Body Keeps the Score is a fascinating dive into the hidden epidemic of trauma, what we've learned about it in the last 30 years and how to better diagnose, face and heal it - by psychiatrist, author and post-traumatic stress researcher, Bessel van der Kolk.

Published 2014 // 443 pages // Rated 4.4 over 72,200 reviews on Goodreads

6. Emotional Blackmail - Susan Forward

When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Published 1997 // 272 pages // Rated 4.1 over 2,900 reviews on Goodreads

7. Emotions Revealed - Paul Ekman

Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life

Published 2003 // 304 pages // Rated 4.0 over 6,700 reviews on Goodreads

8. Destructive Emotions - Daniel Goleman

A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama

Published 2000 // 448 pages // Rated 4.1 over 2,500 reviews on Goodreads

9. The Emotion Thesaurus - Angela Ackerman

A Writer's Guide to Character Expression

Published 2012 // 170 pages // Rated 4.5 over 5,200 reviews on Goodreads

10. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents - Lindsay C. Gibson

Published 2015 // 201 pages // Rated 4.4 over 14,700 reviews on Goodreads

Books 11-40: The Best Emotional Intelligence Books to Read Next

Here are the next best emotional intelligence books from my database...

More Book Recommendations

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Or, you can read all my book recommendations.

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