This is the most tightly themed list on the site, and given who wrote The Game, the theme is the point. Every one of the seven is about the same thing: what happened to you early, why it keeps happening, and what to do about it.

Two Cheri Hubers, two Pia Mellodys, two James Hollises. That is not a man sampling a genre; that is someone who worked through specific authors thoroughly. Strauss has written publicly about sex addiction treatment and about the collapse of the persona he built in The Game, and this list reads like the reading from that period rather than a set of picks assembled for a podcast.

Worth noting what isn’t here: nothing about seduction, persuasion, journalism or music, all of which he has written books about.