Author Guide · Self-Inquiry
Books Written by
In 1986 Byron Kathleen Reid, a 43-year-old from Barstow, California, who had built a career in real estate, was taken by her husband to a halfway house in Los Angeles after about ten years of depression. Believing she did not deserve a bed, she slept on the floor. One morning a cockroach crawled across her foot, and she woke, by her own account, free of the thoughts that had held her. What she took from that morning became The Work: four questions and a “turnaround”, applied to any thought that causes stress. She began holding workshops in the early 1990s, and her books are that teaching on the page: dialogues, commentaries, quotations and two picture books. This guide covers her eight key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 2002–2017 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Byron Katie’s best-known book is Loving What Is (2002), written with her husband Stephen Mitchell, which sets out The Work. Her other key books include I Need Your Love—Is That True? (2005), A Thousand Names for Joy (2007) and A Mind at Home with Itself (2017). Start with Loving What Is: the dialogues in it show what the four questions do with a real problem.
Where to Start with Byron Katie
If you want the method itself
→ Loving What Is (2002) — the four questions, explained and shown in dialogues.
If you want it applied to love and approval
→ I Need Your Love—Is That True? (2005) — dating, marriage, work and friendship.
If you want the spiritual side
→ A Thousand Names for Joy (2007) — her responses to the Tao Te Ching.
If you want to share it with children
→ The Four Questions (2016) — Henny Penny and the four questions.
8 Byron Katie Books, in Order
Loving What Is
The book that sets out The Work. Katie describes how her depression ended, then gives the four questions — “Is it true?”, “Can you absolutely know it’s true?”, “How do you react—what happens—when you believe that thought?” and “Who would you be without the thought?” — and the turnaround. Most of the book is transcribed dialogues with people working through problems with partners, parents, work and fear. A revised edition with seven new dialogues followed nearly twenty years later.
I Need Your Love—Is That True?
The Work applied to the need for love and approval, in dating, marriage, work and friendship. Katie argues that the usual advice on winning love, which relies on self-marketing and tactics, does not work and leaves people feeling unworthy, and questions the belief that love means need. Harmony published it in April 2005.
A Thousand Names for Joy
Stephen Mitchell, a translator of the Tao Te Ching, read her its chapters and recorded her responses; the book follows the chapters in order, each opening with a passage followed by Katie’s commentary on it. An appendix explains how to do The Work. Publishers Weekly found the result somewhat repetitive.
Question Your Thinking, Change the World
A short collection of key quotations from her teaching, published by Hay House and grouped in five chapters: love, sex and relationships; health, sickness and death; parents and children; work and money; and self-realisation.
Who Would You Be Without Your Story?
Fifteen dialogues held in front of audiences in the United States and Europe, edited by Carol Williams. People bring painful illness, failed relationships, divorce, irritations at work and worries about money, and question the thoughts they believe cause their suffering, with the audience invited to ask themselves the same questions.
Tiger-Tiger, Is It True?
A picture book for ages four to ten. When Tiger-Tiger is sad, Turtle suggests four questions, and by answering them he turns his tears into smiles. It ends with a note from Katie explaining the four questions and the turnaround for adults.
The Four Questions
A retelling of the Chicken Little folktale. Henny Penny is hit on the head and decides the sky is falling; Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey and Turkey Lurkey help her question whether the thought is true, before Foxy Loxy tests her reasoning. Published by TarcherPerigee.
A Mind at Home with Itself
Katie reads The Work through the Diamond Sutra, the Buddhist text on non-self, emptiness and non-attachment, with Stephen Mitchell. Published by HarperOne in September 2017. Publishers Weekly was critical, calling the worldview that follows from it solipsistic and advising new readers to approach the book with caution.
In What Order to Read Byron Katie
Every book teaches the same method, so there is no series to follow and no need for publication order. Loving What Is is the one that explains The Work in full; the later books assume it and apply it to a subject: love and approval, the Tao Te Ching, the Diamond Sutra.
After Loving What Is, go to Who Would You Be Without Your Story? if you want more dialogues, or to I Need Your Love—Is That True? if your questions are about relationships. Leave the two spiritual commentaries until the method is familiar; they are more about Katie’s view of the world than about how to do The Work.
A reading path
1. Loving What Is (2002)
2. Who Would You Be Without Your Story? (2008)
3. I Need Your Love—Is That True? (2005)
4. A Thousand Names for Joy (2007)
5. A Mind at Home with Itself (2017)
Everything Else Byron Katie Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early book and gift book
2
2 books · 1998–2010
- 1998Losing the Moonher first book, edited by Ellen J. Mack
- 2010Peace in the Present Momenta gift book pairing Michele Penn’s flower photographs with quotations from Katie’s A Thousand Names for Joy and Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth
The years · 1942–2017
Quick facts about Byron Katie
- Known for
- The Work, her method of questioning stressful thoughts with four questions and a turnaround, set out in Loving What Is (2002)
- 1942
- Born in Breckenridge, Texas
- 1963
- Marries at 19 and starts a career in real estate
- 1986
- Wakes in a halfway house in Los Angeles; the start of The Work
- 2002
- Loving What Is
- Born
- 6 December 1942, Breckenridge, Texas; grew up in and around Barstow, California
- Birth name
- Byron Kathleen Reid
- Turning point
- 1986, after about ten years of depression, in a halfway house in Los Angeles
- Method
- The Work: four questions and a turnaround
- Married
- Robert Robinson in 1963, with whom she had three children; now married to the writer and translator Stephen Mitchell
- Organisation
- Byron Katie International, including the School for The Work and Turnaround House in Ojai, California
The red mark is 2002: Loving What Is, the book that set out The Work.
How Byron Katie Writes: Four Questions on the Page
Most of her books are built from transcripts. A person reads out a stressful thought, often from her Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet; Katie asks the four questions; then the thought is turned around into its opposites, and the person looks for examples of how each might be as true. Loving What Is and Who Would You Be Without Your Story? are largely these exchanges, recorded in front of audiences, so you read the method being used rather than described.
She rarely writes alone. Stephen Mitchell, her husband and a translator of the Tao Te Ching, shaped three of the books: for A Thousand Names for Joy he read her the chapters and recorded what she said, and A Mind at Home with Itself is organised around the Diamond Sutra. Michael Katz co-wrote I Need Your Love—Is That True?. Her own voice is short and plain, often a single line — “It’s not the situation that causes our suffering; it’s our thoughts about the situation” — which is why one of her books is a collection of quotations.
The method does not change from book to book; the subject does, from relationships to Taoism and Buddhism to picture books for children. The books describe and demonstrate; they do not cite research or argue with other approaches, and Katie has no clinical training. That plainness is what readers value, and it is also what her critics question.
Watch
Byron Katie in conversation with Iain McNay
Iain McNay interviews Katie for Conscious TV in a long conversation titled “The Story of the One”.
Frequently asked questions about Byron Katie’s books
How many books has Byron Katie written?
Ten books under her name are listed on this page: the eight key books, from Loving What Is (2002) to A Mind at Home with Itself (2017), plus her first book, Losing the Moon (1998), and the gift book Peace in the Present Moment (2010) with Eckhart Tolle. Several are co-written, with Stephen Mitchell, Michael Katz or the illustrator Hans Wilhelm.
What are Byron Katie’s books in order?
Loving What Is (2002), I Need Your Love—Is That True? (2005), A Thousand Names for Joy (2007), Question Your Thinking, Change the World (2007), Who Would You Be Without Your Story? (2008), Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? (2009), The Four Questions (2016) and A Mind at Home with Itself (2017).
Where should I start with Byron Katie?
With Loving What Is (2002). It is the only book that explains The Work in full, and the dialogues show the four questions used on real problems. The later books build on it.
What is Byron Katie’s most famous book?
Loving What Is (2002), written with Stephen Mitchell. It is the book that sets out The Work, and it was reissued in a revised edition with seven new dialogues nearly twenty years later.
What are Byron Katie’s four questions?
“Is it true?”, “Can you absolutely know it’s true?”, “How do you react—what happens—when you believe that thought?” and “Who would you be without the thought?” After the questions comes the turnaround: the thought is turned into its opposites, and you look for ways each could be as true.
What happened to Byron Katie in 1986?
After about ten years of depression, her husband drove her to a halfway house in Los Angeles. Feeling she did not deserve a bed, she slept on the floor, and one morning, as a cockroach crawled across her foot, she woke without the stressful thoughts that had held her. She has said she found that suffering is optional. The Work grew out of that experience.
Is The Work of Byron Katie controversial?
It has critics. The writer Be Scofield, who covers cults and gurus, argued in The Guru Magazine in 2019 that the turnaround can lead survivors of abuse to blame themselves, pointed out that Katie has no clinical training, and, citing former participants, described the nine-day School for The Work as high-pressure. Publishers Weekly, reviewing A Mind at Home with Itself in 2017, called the book’s worldview solipsistic and advised new readers to approach it with caution.
Who is Byron Katie married to?
The writer and translator Stephen Mitchell, known for his versions of the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita and Gilgamesh. He co-wrote three of her books: Loving What Is, A Thousand Names for Joy and A Mind at Home with Itself. Her first husband was Robert Robinson, whom she married in 1963.
Has Byron Katie written books for children?
Yes, two picture books illustrated by Hans Wilhelm: Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? (2009), in which Turtle teaches Tiger-Tiger the four questions, and The Four Questions (2016), a retelling of the Henny Penny story.
Is Byron Katie still alive?
Yes. She was born on 6 December 1942 in Breckenridge, Texas, and her website lists regular online sessions with her.
Footnotes
- Byron Katie — Wikipedia
- About — The Work of Byron Katie
- Can These Four Questions Change Your Life? — Oprah.com
- Loving What Is — Stephen Mitchell
- A Mind at Home with Itself — Publishers Weekly, 2017
- How Byron Katie accidentally discovered joy — Big Think
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 percent of the time.”
— Byron Katie, Loving What Is (2002)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations