What We Are Reading Today: ‘Make Your Bed’

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Updated 04 February 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Make Your Bed’

  • The author argues that discipline, resilience and hard work are essential for personal improvement and growth

Author: William H. McRaven

Published in 2017, “Make Your Bed: Small Things That Can Change Your Life … And Maybe The World” by retired US navy four-star admiral, William H. McRaven, is an exploration of discipline and self-control.

According to McRaven, attending diligently to simple daily tasks, such as making one’s bed in the morning, create a sense of discipline and accomplishment.

In addition, having a sense of order and purpose in life can help motivate one to push beyond initial goals.

The author argues that discipline, resilience and hard work are essential for personal improvement and growth.

In the book’s 10 chapters, McRaven outlines specific lessons which include the value of teamwork, perseverance, and the importance of facing adversity.

His style of writing is engaging and he emphasizes some of his own struggles and wins, while elaborating on how the principles he learned can be applied.

The book provides valuable insights that could inspire people to go and “make their bed” if they want to change their own lives, and maybe even the world.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Snakes of Australia’

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Updated 13 February 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Snakes of Australia’

  • It features introductions to each family, species descriptions, type locations, distribution maps, and quick-identification keys to each family and genera

Authors: TIE EIPPER AND SCOTT EIPPER 

With more than 1,000 photographs, Snakes of Australia illustrates and describes in detail all 240 of the continent’s species and subspecies—from file snakes, pythons, colubrids, and natricids to elapids, marine elapids, homalopsids, and blind snakes.

It features introductions to each family, species descriptions, type locations, distribution maps, and quick-identification keys to each family and genera. It also covers English and scientific names, appearance, range, ecology, disposition, danger level, and IUCN Red List Category.