R/W Book Club

Since 2003

A reading journey.

Since April 2003, the R/W Book Club has been reading together — mostly non-fiction, with members rotating who picks the next book. Scroll back through every book we've read together — newest first, all the way to the beginning.

180 books and counting.

Currently reading

Blindsight

by Peter Watts

Meeting July 2026

Picked by Loren

Recent reviews

2026

  1. June 2026

    A World Appears

    A Journey into Consciousness

    Michael Pollan

    Picked by Jamie

  2. May 2026

    Patterns in Nature

    Why the Natural World Looks the Way it Does

    Philip Ball

    Picked by Tom

  3. January 2026

    The Overstory

    Richard Powers

    Picked by Erik

2025

  1. November 2025

    Enshittification

    Cory Doctorow

    Picked by Tom

  2. September 2025

    Heart of Darkness

    Joseph Conrad

    Picked by Nick

  3. August 2025

    The Origins of Totalitarianism

    Hannah Arendt

    Picked by Loren

  4. June 2025

    Co-Intelligence

    Living and Working with AI

    Ethan Mollick

    Picked by Jamie

  5. May 2025

    How to Do Nothing

    Resisting the Attention Economy

    Jenny Odell

    Picked by Erik

2024

  1. October 2024

    Through the Language Glass

    Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

    Guy Deutscher

    Picked by Erik

  2. September 2024

    Army of None

    Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War

    Paul Scharre

    Picked by Tom

  3. May 2024

    The Power Law

    Venture Capital and the Making of a New Future

    Sebastian Mallaby

    Picked by Nick

  4. April 2024

    Dictionary People

    Sarah Ogilvie

    Picked by Loren

  5. February 2024

    Medici Money

    Tim Parks

    Picked by Jamie

2023

  1. December 2023

    Dawn of Everything

    A New History of Humanity

    David Graeber and David Wengrow

    Picked by Erik

  2. August 2023

    Otherlands

    A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds

    Thomas Halliday

    Picked by Tom

  3. July 2023

    Nation of Takers

    America's Entitlement Epidemic

    Nicholas Eberstadt

    Picked by Nick

  4. July 2023

    Men Without Work

    Nicholas Eberstadt

    Picked by Nick

  5. May 2023

    A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

    Essays and Arguments

    David Foster Wallace

    Picked by Loren

  6. April 2023

    To Shake the Sleeping Self

    A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret

    Jedidiah Jenkins

    Picked by Jamie

2022

  1. December 2022

    Mni Sota Makoce

    The Land of the Dakota

    Gwen Westerman and Bruce White

    Picked by Erik

  2. September 2022

    Addiction by Design

    Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

    Natasha Dow Schüll

    Picked by Tom

  3. June 2022

    The Florentines

    From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization

    Paul Strathern

    Picked by Nick

  4. June 2022

    Aeschylus I

    The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound

    Aeschylus

    Picked by Nick

  5. April 2022

    Empire of Pain

    The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

    Patrick Radden Keefe

    Picked by Loren

  6. January 2022

    The Blocksize War

    The battle over who controls Bitcoin’s protocol rules

    Jonathan Bier

    Picked by Jamie

2021

  1. December 2021

    Caste

    Isabel Wilkerson

    Picked by Erik

  2. October 2021

    Nature & Walking

    Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Picked by Nick

  3. September 2021

    Evicted

    Matthew Desmond

    Picked by Loren

  4. July 2021

    A Man at Arms

    Steven Pressfield

    Picked by Jamie

  5. June 2021

    Klara and the Sun

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    Picked by Tom

  6. May 2021

    The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

    How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

    David Anthony

    Picked by Loren

  7. March 2021

    Running with Sherman

    The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero

    Christopher McDougall

    Picked by Jamie

  8. February 2021

    The WEIRDest People in the World

    How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

    Joseph Henrich

    Picked by Erik

  9. January 2021

    Mama's Last Hug

    Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

    Frans De Waal

    Picked by Tom

2020

  1. November 2020

    Unflattening

    Nick Sousanis

    Picked by Nick

  2. September 2020

    Bending Adversity

    Japan and the Art of Survival

    David Pilling

    Picked by Loren

  3. August 2020

    The Rise of Big Data Policing

    Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement

    Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

    Picked by Jamie

  4. June 2020

    Benjamin Franklin

    An American Life

    Walter Isaacson

    Picked by Erik

  5. April 2020

    Replay

    Ken Grimwood

    Picked by Tom

  6. March 2020

    The Roman Republic

    A Very Short Introduction

    David M. Gwynn

    Picked by Nick

  7. March 2020

    The Hundred-Year Marathon

    China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower

    Michael Pillsbury

    Picked by Nick

  8. January 2020

    The Master Algorithm

    How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World

    Pedro Domingos

    Picked by Loren & Jamie

  9. January 2020

    The Nordic Theory of Everything

    In Search of a Better Life

    Anu Partanen

    Picked by Loren & Jamie

2019

  1. November 2019

    Genesis

    The Deep Origin of Societies

    Edward O. Wilson

    Picked by Erik

  2. September 2019

    How to Read a Book

    The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

    Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

    Picked by Tom

  3. August 2019

    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

    Robert Pirsig

    Picked by Nick

  4. July 2019

    Educated

    A Memoir

    Tara Westover

    Picked by Loren

  5. June 2019

    Growing a Revolution

    Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

    David R. Montgomery

    Picked by Jamie & Erik

  6. June 2019

    Cræft

    An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts

    Alexander Langlands

    Picked by Jamie & Erik

  7. January 2019

    Scale

    The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

    Geoffrey West

    Picked by Tom

2018

  1. November 2018

    Life After Google

    The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

    George Gilder

    Picked by Nick

  2. October 2018

    How to Change Your Mind

    What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

    Michael Pollan

    Picked by Jamie

  3. August 2018

    Freedom™

    Daniel Suarez

    Picked by Loren

  4. July 2018

    Collapse

    How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

    Jared Diamond

    Picked by Erik

  5. June 2018

    Sapiens

    A Brief History of Humankind

    Yuval Noah Harari

    Picked by Loren

  6. May 2018

    Why We Sleep

    Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

    Matthew Walker

    Picked by Nick

  7. March 2018

    Why Buddhism is True

    The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

    Robert Wright

    Picked by Tom

  8. January 2018

    Walkaway

    Cory Doctorow

    Picked by Loren

2017

  1. December 2017

    Daemon

    Daniel Suarez

    Picked by Jamie

  2. October 2017

    A Crack in Creation

    Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

    Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg

    Picked by Erik

  3. September 2017

    How to Live

    Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

    Sarah Bakewell

    Picked by Tom

  4. August 2017

    Peak

    Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

    Anders Ericsson

    Picked by Nick

  5. July 2017

    The Epigenetics Revolution

    How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance

    Nessa Carey

    Picked by Loren

  6. June 2017

    Stuff Matters

    Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

    Mark Miodownik

    Picked by Jamie

  7. April 2017

    Norse Mythology

    Neil Gaiman

    Picked by Erik

  8. March 2017

    All Art Is Propaganda

    George Orwell

    Picked by Tom

  9. February 2017

    The Vital Question

    Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

    Nick Lane

    Picked by Nick

  10. January 2017

    Shadow Elite

    How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

    Janine R. Wedel

    Picked by Loren

2016

  1. December 2016

    Hillbilly Eligy

    A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

    J. D. Vance

    Picked by Jamie

  2. September 2016

    Ancillary Justice

    Ann Leckie

    Picked by Erik

  3. August 2016

    The Metaphysical Club

    A Story of Ideas in America

    Louis Menand

    Picked by Tom

  4. May 2016

    American Nations

    A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

    Colin Woodard

    Picked by Nick

  5. March 2016

    The Rise and Fall of American Growth

    The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War

    Robert J. Gordon

    Picked by Loren

  6. February 2016

    Elon Musk

    Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

    Ashlee Vance

    Picked by Jamie

2015

  1. December 2015

    Superforecasting

    The Art and Science of Prediction

    Philip E. Tetlock

    Picked by Erik

  2. November 2015

    Being Mortal

    Medicine and What Matters in the End

    Atul Gawande

  3. October 2015

    The World Until Yesterday

    What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

    Jared Diamond

    Picked by Nick

  4. August 2015

    Amusing Ourselves to Death

    Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

    Neil Postman

    Picked by Tom

  5. July 2015

    Roadside Picnic

    Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky

    Picked by Loren

  6. June 2015

    The Innovators

    How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

    Walter Isaacson

    Picked by Jamie

  7. May 2015

    Complexity

    A Very Short Introduction

    John H. Holland

  8. April 2015

    No Place to Hide

    Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

    Glenn Greenwald

    Picked by Erik

  9. March 2015

    The Age of Cryptocurrency

    How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order

    Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey

    Picked by Tom

  10. January 2015

    The Structure and Dynamics of Networks

    Mark Newman and Duncan J. Watts

    Picked by Nick

2014

  1. December 2014

    Love Sense

    The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships

    Sue Johnson

  2. September 2014

    Far from the Tree

    Andrew Solomon

    Picked by Erik & Jamie

  3. August 2014

    Thinking in Systems

    Donella Meadows

    Picked by Tom

  4. July 2014

    The Everything Store

    Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

    Brad Stone

    Picked by Nick

  5. June 2014

    Antifragile

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    Picked by Jamie

  6. April 2014

    The Martian

    A Novel

    Andy Weir

    Picked by Erik

  7. March 2014

    A History of God

    The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

    Karen Armstrong

    Picked by Tom

  8. January 2014

    Quiet

    The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

    Susan Cain

    Picked by Nick

2013

  1. December 2013

    Powering the Dream

    The History and Promise of Green Technology

    Alexis Madrigal

    Picked by Jamie

  2. December 2013

    The Emperor of All Maladies

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Picked by Dan

  3. November 2013

    Behind the Beautiful Forevers

    Katherine Boo

    Picked by Jamie

  4. September 2013

    This Machine Kills Secrets

    How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information

    Andy Greenberg

    Picked by Erik

  5. August 2013

    The Real North Korea

    Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia

    Andrei Lankov

    Picked by Tom

  6. May 2013

    The Joy of x

    A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

    Steven Strogatz

    Picked by John

  7. April 2013

    The Willpower Instinct

    How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

    Kelly McGonigal

    Picked by Jamie

  8. March 2013

    The Signal and the Noise

    Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

    Nate Silver

    Picked by Erik

  9. January 2013

    To Say Nothing of the Dog

    Connie Willis

    Picked by Dan

2012

  1. December 2012

    Liars and Outliers

    Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive

    Bruce Schneier

    Picked by Dan

  2. November 2012

    Join the Club

    How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World

    Tina Rosenberg

    Picked by Tom

  3. October 2012

    Flagrant Conduct

    The Story of Lawrence v. Texas

    Dale Carpenter

    Picked by John

  4. September 2012

    The Devil in the White City

    Erik Larson

    Picked by Jamie & Erik

  5. September 2012

    A Canticle for Leibowitz

    Walter M. Miller, Jr.

    Picked by Jamie & Erik

  6. July 2012

    The Mystery of Banking

    Murray N. Rothbard

    Picked by Dan

  7. May 2012

    Count Zero

    William Gibson

    Picked by Tom

  8. April 2012

    Thinking Fast and Slow

    Daniel Kahneman

    Picked by John

  9. March 2012

    The Most Human Human

    What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive

    Brian Christian

    Picked by Jamie

  10. January 2012

    Republic, Lost

    How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It

    Lawrence Lessig

    Picked by Erik

2011

  1. December 2011

    Darwin's Radio

    Greg Bear

    Picked by Dan

  2. October 2011

    The Selfish Gene

    Richard Dawkins

    Picked by Tom

  3. September 2011

    The Checklist Manifesto

    How to Get Things Right

    Atul Gawande

    Picked by John

  4. July 2011

    Ant Encounters

    Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior

    Deborah Gordon

    Picked by Jamie

  5. June 2011

    Never Let Me Go

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    Picked by Erik

  6. April 2011

    Triumph of the City

    How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

    Edward Glaeser

    Picked by Dan

  7. March 2011

    The Master Switch

    The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

    Tim Wu

    Picked by Tom

2010

  1. December 2010

    In a Sunburned Country

    Bill Bryson

    Picked by John

  2. November 2010

    Hegemony or Survival

    America's Quest for Global Dominance

    Noam Chomsky

    Picked by Jamie

  3. September 2010

    A Distant Mirror

    The Calamitous 14th Century

    Barbara Tuchman

    Picked by Dan

  4. July 2010

    Wetware

    A Computer in Every Living Cell

    Dennis Bray

    Picked by Tom

  5. June 2010

    Team of Rivals

    The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

    Doris Kearns Goodwin

    Picked by John

  6. April 2010

    The Golden Age

    John C. Wright

    Picked by Jamie

  7. March 2010

    Don't Make Me Think

    A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

    Steve Krug

    Picked by Erik

  8. February 2010

    Creating a World without Poverty

    How Social Business Can Transform Our Lives

    Muhammad Yunus

    Picked by Dan

  9. January 2010

    Influence

    The Psychology of Persuasion

    Robert B. Cialdini

    Picked by Tom

2009

  1. December 2009

    Play

    How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

    Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan

    Picked by John

  2. October 2009

    Creativity

    Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

    Picked by Jamie

  3. September 2009

    Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air

    David MacKay

    Picked by Erik

  4. August 2009

    The China Study

    Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health

    Thomas Campbell and T. Colin Campbell

    Picked by Dan

  5. May 2009

    Honest Signals

    How They Shape Our World

    Alexander (Sandy) Pentland

    Picked by Tom

  6. April 2009

    Doomsday Book

    Connie Willis

    Picked by John

  7. March 2009

    Money-Driven Medicine

    The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much

    Maggie Mahar

    Picked by Jamie

  8. February 2009

    The Nine

    Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

    Jeffrey Toobin

    Picked by Erik

2008

  1. December 2008

    The Looming Tower

    Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9-11

    Lawrence Wright

    Picked by Dan

  2. November 2008

    Traffic

    Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

    Tom Vanderbilt

    Picked by Tom

  3. October 2008

    Nudge

    Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

    Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

    Picked by John

  4. August 2008

    Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

    A Year of Food Life

    Barbara Kingsolver

    Picked by Jamie

  5. July 2008

    Shaping Things

    Bruce Sterling

    Picked by Erik

  6. May 2008

    The Black Swan

    The Impact of the Highly Improbable

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb

    Picked by Dan

  7. April 2008

    Cheating

    Gaining Advantage in Videogames

    Mia Consalvo

    Picked by Tom

  8. March 2008

    How Doctors Think

    Jerome Groopman

    Picked by John

  9. January 2008

    The World Without Us

    Alan Weisman

    Picked by Jamie

2007

  1. December 2007

    Beautiful Evidence

    Edward Tufte

    Picked by Erik

  2. October 2007

    Musicophilia

    Tales of Music and the Brain

    Oliver Sacks

    Picked by Dan

  3. September 2007

    The Box

    How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

    Marc Levinson

    Picked by Tom

  4. July 2007

    Beautiful Code

    Leading Programmers Explain How They Think

    Marc Levinson

    Picked by John

  5. June 2007

    Understanding Comics

    The Invisible Art

    David Gibbons

    Picked by Erik

  6. June 2007

    Watchmen

    Alan Moore

    Picked by Erik

  7. April 2007

    The Mythical Man-Month

    Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

    Picked by David

  8. March 2007

    Happiness

    A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

    Matthieu Ricard

    Picked by Dan

  9. January 2007

    The Long Tail

    Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

    Chris Anderson

    Picked by Tom

  10. January 2007

    The Road

    Cormac McCarthy

    Picked by John

2006

  1. October 2006

    The Omnivore's Dilemma

    A Natural History of Four Meals

    Michael Pollan

    Picked by Erik

  2. October 2006

    Stumbling on Happiness

    Daniel Gilbert

    Picked by David

  3. July 2006

    Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

    Jack Weatherford

    Picked by Dan

  4. June 2006

    Bowling Alone

    The Collapse and Revival of American Community

    Robert Putnam

    Picked by Tom

  5. May 2006

    Across Realtime

    Vernor Vinge

    Picked by John

  6. March 2006

    The Success of Open Source

    Steve Weber

    Picked by David

  7. March 2006

    Democratizing Innovation

    Eric von Hippel

    Picked by Erik

2005

  1. December 2005

    Beyond Oil

    The View from Hubbert's Peak

    Kenneth S. Deffeyes

    Picked by Dan

  2. November 2005

    The Search

    How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

    John Battelle

    Picked by Tom

  3. October 2005

    The Complexity of Cooperation

    Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration

    Robert Axelrod

    Picked by John

  4. August 2005

    Freakonomics

    A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

    Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

    Picked by David

  5. June 2005

    The Plot Against America

    Philip Roth

    Picked by Erik

  6. April 2005

    Hackers and Painters

    Big Ideas from the Computer Age

    Paul Graham

    Picked by Dan

  7. March 2005

    Free Culture

    The Nature and Future of Creativity

    Lawrence Lessig

    Picked by John

  8. January 2005

    Divorce Among the Gulls

    An Uncommon Look at Human Nature

    William Jordan

    Picked by David

2004

  1. December 2004

    Sailing Alone Around the Room

    New and Selected Poems

    Billy Collins

    Picked by Erik

  2. October 2004

    The Paradox of Choice

    Why More Is Less

    Barry Schwartz

    Picked by John

  3. October 2004

    When We Were Orphans

    Kazuo Ishiguro

    Picked by Scott

  4. July 2004

    Wisdom of Crowds

    James Surowiecki

    Picked by Dan

  5. May 2004

    Over the Edge of the World

    Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

    Laurence Bergreen

    Picked by John

  6. April 2004

    Pompeii

    Robert Harris

    Picked by Brad

2003

  1. September 2003

    Quicksilver

    Neal Stephenson

    Picked by Erik

  2. August 2003

    The Blank Slate

    The Modern Denial of Human Nature

    Steven Pinker

    Picked by John

  3. April 2003

    My Tiny Life

    Crime and Passion in a Virtual World

    Julian Dibbell

    Picked by John

  4. April 2003

    The Lexus and the Olive Tree

    Understanding Globalization

    Thomas L. Friedman

    Picked by John