The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

A Wall Street Journal bestseller.

In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler decodes the mystery of ultimate human performance. Drawing on over a decade of research and firsthand reporting with dozens of top action and adventure sports athletes like big wave legend Laird Hamilton, big mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, Kotler explores the frontier science of “flow,” an optimal state of consciousness in which we perform and feel our best.

Building a bridge between the extreme and the mainstream, The Rise of Superman explains how these athletes are using flow to do the impossible and how we can use this information to radically accelerate performance in our own lives.

At its core, this is a book about profound possibility; about what is actually possible for our species; about where―if anywhere―our limits lie.

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the executive director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. He is the author of nine bestsellers (out of thirteen books total), including The Art of Impossible, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, Bold, and Abundance. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, been translated into over forty languages, and appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, TIME, and the Harvard Business Review. Steven is also the cohost of Flow Research Collective Radio, a top-ten iTunes science podcast. Along with his wife, author Joy Nicholson, he is the cofounder of the Rancho de Chihuahua, a hospice and special needs dog sanctuary.