# R/W Book Club — Full Reading History > This file is designed for LLM consumption. It includes synopses, reviews, > and all available metadata. For a compact version: https://rwbookclub.com/llms.txt > Human-readable site: https://rwbookclub.com ## About the club The R/W Book Club has been meeting since April 2003. The "R/W" stands for Read / Write — the members are technically minded and many blog. The club reads about 8 books per year, mostly non-fiction (~88%). Members rotate picking the next book and hosting the discussion. Reviews are member-submitted and optional; absence of a review does not indicate the book was poorly received. As of this build there are 179 books across 24 years of reading. ## Meeting cadence - Meets roughly monthly (about 8 meetings per year) - Members rotate picking the next book - The picker usually hosts the discussion - Meetings are in-person in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area ## Current book #### The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future - **Author:** Joel Miller - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Read:** May 2026 - **Picked by:** Jamie **Synopsis:** Books are our first and most lasting form of information technology. Books preserve ideas, yes, but they also provoke new ones— they are true tools for thinking. In The Idea Machine, Joel J. Miller shows that books are one of the most important but overlooked factors in the making of our contemporary world. And they still have lessons to teach us. Polls indicate reading is on the decline, but as we deal with concerns about artificial intelligence and social and political division, the history of the book offers a path of understanding and patterns for engagement. They can even help us navigate what’s coming next. Starting with the surge of book culture in ancient Athens and then moving through the centuries, from monks and militaries to rebellions and the Renaissance, and even to more modern-day implications of books as tools of liberation and the novel’s impact on our humanity, Miller highlights the features and functions that make books indispensable to cultural evolution. Subject to its own periods of technological upheaval and social unrest, the history of the book can point us away from failed past responses and toward more fruitful adaptations that will benefit us all. The Idea Machine reframes the history of the book as the eye-opening story of humanity’s first mobile information device. Books do more than record thinking; they serve as tools to facilitate it. More than a history of the book as an object or a simple consideration of the literature it has contained, The Idea Machine is the history of the book as a technology that transformed the peoples and societies that embraced it, and which maintains a vital role in a world where technological advancements seem to render it obsolete and ideological division might render our shared future untenable. ## Next up Not yet announced. ## Current members - Nick (17 picks) - Erik (37 picks) - Tom (35 picks) - Jamie (34 picks) - Loren (16 picks) ## Topic distribution - History & Economics: 27 books - Politics & Social Sciences: 25 books - Science Fiction & Fiction: 24 books - Brain & Psychology: 24 books - Science and Math: 23 books - Technology: 22 books - Current Events & People: 12 books - Essays & Literature: 7 books - Health & Medicine: 6 books - Travel & Memoir: 5 books - Philosophy & Religion: 3 books ## Reading history (full) Books are listed newest-first, grouped by year. Each entry includes all available metadata, synopsis, and member reviews. ### 2026 #### The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future - **Author:** Joel Miller - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Published:** 2025 - **Pages:** 344 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** May 2026 - **ISBN-13:** 978-1493088935 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org **Synopsis:** Books are our first and most lasting form of information technology. Books preserve ideas, yes, but they also provoke new ones— they are true tools for thinking. In The Idea Machine, Joel J. Miller shows that books are one of the most important but overlooked factors in the making of our contemporary world. And they still have lessons to teach us. Polls indicate reading is on the decline, but as we deal with concerns about artificial intelligence and social and political division, the history of the book offers a path of understanding and patterns for engagement. They can even help us navigate what’s coming next. Starting with the surge of book culture in ancient Athens and then moving through the centuries, from monks and militaries to rebellions and the Renaissance, and even to more modern-day implications of books as tools of liberation and the novel’s impact on our humanity, Miller highlights the features and functions that make books indispensable to cultural evolution. Subject to its own periods of technological upheaval and social unrest, the history of the book can point us away from failed past responses and toward more fruitful adaptations that will benefit us all. The Idea Machine reframes the history of the book as the eye-opening story of humanity’s first mobile information device. Books do more than record thinking; they serve as tools to facilitate it. More than a history of the book as an object or a simple consideration of the literature it has contained, The Idea Machine is the history of the book as a technology that transformed the peoples and societies that embraced it, and which maintains a vital role in a world where technological advancements seem to render it obsolete and ideological division might render our shared future untenable. #### Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way it Does - **Author:** Philip Ball - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 288 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** April 2026 - **ISBN-13:** 978-0226332420 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org **Synopsis:** Though at first glance the natural world may appear overwhelming in its diversity and complexity, there are regularities running through it, from the hexagons of a honeycomb to the spirals of a seashell and the branching veins of a leaf. Revealing the order at the foundation of the seemingly chaotic natural world, Patterns in Nature explores not only the math and science but also the beauty and artistry behind nature’s awe-inspiring designs. Unlike the patterns we create in technology, architecture, and art, natural patterns are formed spontaneously from the forces that act in the physical world. Very often the same types of pattern and form – spirals, stripes, branches, and fractals, say—recur in places that seem to have nothing in common, as when the markings of a zebra mimic the ripples in windblown sand. That’s because, as Patterns in Nature shows, at the most basic level these patterns can often be described using the same mathematical and physical principles: there is a surprising underlying unity in the kaleidoscope of the natural world. Richly illustrated with 250 color photographs and anchored by accessible and insightful chapters by esteemed science writer Philip Ball, Patterns in Nature reveals the organization at work in vast and ancient forests, powerful rivers, massing clouds, and coastlines carved out by the sea. By exploring similarities such as those between a snail shell and the swirling stars of a galaxy, or the branches of a tree and those of a river network, this spectacular visual tour conveys the wonder, beauty, and richness of natural pattern formation. #### The Overstory - **Author:** Richard Powers - **Topic:** (Fiction) - **Published:** 2019 - **Pages:** 512 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** January 2026 - **ISBN-13:** 978-0393356687 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org **Synopsis:** The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours―vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe. ### 2025 #### Enshittification - **Author:** Cory Doctorow - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2025 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** November 2025 - **ISBN-13:** 9781836742227 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL42455337W **Synopsis:** **It’s not your imagination. Life online really does get worse by the day, and that is by intent.** Misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet. For the monopolists who dominate online – X, TikTok, Amazon, Meta, Apple – this is all part of the playbook. The process is what leading tech critic Cory Doctorow has dubbed ‘enshittification’. First, the platform attracts users with some bait, such as free access; then the activity is monetized, bringing in the business customers and degrading the user experience; then, once everyone is trapped and competitors eradicated, the platform wrings out all the value and transfers it to their executives and shareholders. As a result, online public squares have become places of torment, and online retailers are hellish dumpster fires. The virtual gathering places where we once imagined the world’s problems might be resolved are now a sewer of hatred and abuse – thoroughly enshittified. Doctorow enumerates the symptoms, lays out the diagnosis, and identifies the best responses to these diseased platforms: the monopolies online must be shattered. Companies too big to fail or to jail – and much too big to care – must be cut down to size. Only an attack on corporate power will permit effective regulation and real privacy. Tech unions must protect the workers who should, in turn, defend us against their bosses’ sadism and greed. #### Heart of Darkness - **Author:** Joseph Conrad - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1899 - **Pages:** 120 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** September 2025 - **ISBN-13:** 9780613837712 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL38663W **Synopsis:** Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. Joseph Conrad is one of the greatest English writers, and Heart of Darkness is considered his best. His readers are brought to face our psychological selves to answer, ‘Who is the true savage?’. Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century’s most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad’s grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. #### The Origins of Totalitarianism - **Author:** Hannah Arendt - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 1951 - **Pages:** 440 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** August 2025 - **ISBN-13:** 9780063354487 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL10460640W **Synopsis:** **Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history** The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in her time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination. **Reviews:** - Jamie (Did Not Finish) #### Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI - **Author:** Ethan Mollick - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2024 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** June 2025 - **ISBN-13:** 9780593716724 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL37565105W **Synopsis:** Something new entered our world in November 2022 — the first general purpose AI that could pass for a human and do the kinds of creative, innovative work that only humans could do previously. After millions of years on our own, humans had developed a kind of co-intelligence that could augment, or even replace, human thinking. Through his writing, speaking, and teaching, Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. **Reviews:** - Jamie — 5/5 #### How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - **Author:** Jenny Odell - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2019 - **Pages:** 256 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** May 2025 - **ISBN-13:** 9781612197494 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20078135W **Synopsis:** Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity . . . doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is a four-course meal in the age of Soylent. ### 2024 #### Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages - **Author:** Guy Deutscher - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 296 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** October 2024 - **ISBN-13:** 978-0805081954 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15413083W **Synopsis:** This book confronts the thorny question of how and whether culture shapes language and language, culture. Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence languageand vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for "blue"? Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions isyes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water -- a "she" -- becomes a "he" once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery. - Publisher. #### Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War - **Author:** Paul Scharre - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2018 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** September 2024 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393608991 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19746016W **Synopsis:** "What happens when a Predator drone has as much autonomy as a Google car? Although it sounds like science fiction, the technology to create weapons that could hunt and destroy targets on their own already exists. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in emerging weapons technologies, draws on incisive research and firsthand experience to explore how increasingly autonomous weapons are changing warfare. This far-ranging investigation examines the emergence of fully autonomous weapons, the movement to ban them, and the legal and ethical issues surrounding their use. Scharre spotlights the role of artificial intelligence in military technology, spanning decades of innovation from German noise-seeking Wren torpedoes in World War II--antecedents of today's armed drones--to autonomous cyber weapons. At the forefront of a game-changing debate, Army of None engages military history, global policy, and bleeding-edge science to explore what it would mean to give machines authority over the ultimate decision: life or death."--Provided by publisher. **Reviews:** - Jamie — 5/5 #### The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of a New Future - **Author:** Sebastian Mallaby - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2022 - **Pages:** 496 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** May 2024 - **ISBN-13:** 9780141988948 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL25328015W #### Dictionary People - **Author:** Sarah Ogilvie - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2023 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** April 2024 - **ISBN-13:** 9780593469989 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL34024127W #### Medici Money - **Author:** Tim Parks - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 288 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** February 2024 - **ISBN-13:** 9781861977571 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL25645767W ### 2023 #### Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity - **Author:** David Graeber and David Wengrow - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2021 - **Pages:** 752 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** December 2023 - **ISBN-13:** 9780771049828 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24663287W **Synopsis:** The renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with the professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of "the state"? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. #### Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds - **Author:** Thomas Halliday - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2022 - **Pages:** 112 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** August 2023 - **ISBN-13:** 9780241611241 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24831204W #### Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic - **Author:** Nicholas Eberstadt - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2012 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** July 2023 - **ISBN-13:** 9781283692038 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17851924W **Synopsis:** In A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic, one of our country’s foremost demographers, Nicholas Eberstadt, details the exponential growth in entitlement spending over the past fifty years. As he notes, in 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays. Today, entitlement spending accounts for a full two-thirds of the federal budget. Drawing on an impressive array of data and employing a range of easy- to- read, four color charts, Eberstadt shows the unchecked spiral of spending on a range of entitlements, everything from medicare to disability payments. But Eberstadt does not just chart the astonishing growth of entitlement spending, he also details the enormous economic and cultural costs of this epidemic. He powerfully argues that while this spending certainly drains our federal coffers, it also has a very real,long-lasting, negative impact on the character of our citizens. Also included in the book is a response from one of our leading political theorists, William Galston. In his incisive response, he questions Eberstadt’s conclusions about the corrosive effect of entitlements on character and offers his own analysis of the impact of American entitlement growth. #### Men Without Work - **Author:** Nicholas Eberstadt - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 206 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** July 2023 - **ISBN-13:** 9781599475981 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17851917W **Synopsis:** By one reading, things look pretty good for Americans today: the country is richer than ever before and the unemployment rate is down by half since the Great Recession—lower today, in fact, than for most of the postwar era. But a closer look shows that something is going seriously wrong. This is the collapse of work—most especially among America’s men. Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, shows that while “unemployment” has gone down, America’s work rate is also lower today than a generation ago—and that the work rate for US men has been spiraling downward for half a century. Astonishingly, the work rate for American males aged twenty-five to fifty-four—or “men of prime working age”—was actually slightly lower in 2015 than it had been in 1940: before the War, and at the tail end of the Great Depression. Today, nearly one in six prime working age men has no paid work at all—and nearly one in eight is out of the labor force entirely, neither working nor even looking for work. This new normal of “men without work,” argues Eberstadt, is “America’s invisible crisis.” So who are these men? How did they get there? What are they doing with their time? And what are the implications of this exit from work for American society? Nicholas Eberstadt lays out the issue and Jared Bernstein from the left and Henry Olsen from the right offer their responses to this national crisis. For more information, please visit http://menwithoutwork.com. #### A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments - **Author:** David Foster Wallace - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Published:** 1997 - **Pages:** 353 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** May 2023 - **ISBN-13:** 978-0316925280 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2943597W **Synopsis:** A collection of stories from David Foster Wallace is occasion to celebrate. These stories -- which have been prominently serialized in Harper's, Esquire, the Paris Review, and elsewhere -- explore intensely immediate states of mind, with the attention to voice and the extraordinary creative daring that have won Wallace his reputation as one of the most talented fiction writer of his generation.Among the stories are "The Depressed Person", a dazzling portrayal of a woman's mental state; "Adult World", which reveals a woman's agonized consideration of her confusing sexual relationship with her husband; and "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men", a dark, hilarious series of portraits of men whose fear of women renders them grotesque. #### To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret - **Author:** Jedidiah Jenkins - **Topic:** Travel & Memoir - **Published:** 2018 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** April 2023 - **ISBN-13:** 978-1524761400 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19763522W **Synopsis:** "From travel writer and Instagram phenomenon Jedidiah Jenkins, a long-awaited memoir of adventure, failure, and lessons learned while bicycling the 10,000 miles from Oregon to Patagonia. On the eve of turning thirty, terrified of being sucked into a life he didn't choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent the next sixteen months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and profound reflections on life soon attracted hundreds of thousands of followers and got him featured by National Geographic and The Paris Review. In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates the adventure that started it all: the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world, and the internal journey that prompted it--the question of what it means to be an adult; his struggle to reconcile his sexual identity with his conservative Christian upbringing; and his belief in travel as a way to "wake us up" to our lives back home. As he writes in his inspiring search for wonder and a life he could believe in, 'It's not about the bike. It's about getting out of your routine--and that could look like anything'"-- ### 2022 #### Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota - **Author:** Gwen Westerman and Bruce White - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 296 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** December 2022 - **ISBN-13:** 9780873518697 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16681765W **Reviews:** - Jamie (Did Not Finish) #### Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas - **Author:** Natasha Dow Schüll - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 472 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** September 2022 - **ISBN-13:** 9780691160887 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20900698W #### The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo: The Transformation of Western Civilization - **Author:** Paul Strathern - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2021 - **Pages:** 400 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** June 2022 - **ISBN-13:** 9781643137322 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24778288W **Synopsis:** "Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born--or emerge in an entirely new guise. The ideas that broke this mold began, and continued to flourish, in the city of Florence in northern central Italy. These ideas, which placed an increasing emphasis on the development of our common humanity--rather than other-worldly spirituality--coalesced in what came to be known as humanism. This philosophy and its new ideas would eventually spread across Italy, yet wherever they took hold they would retain an element essential to their origin. And as they spread further across Europe, this element would remain. Transformations of human culture throughout western history have remained indelibly stamped by their origins. The Reformation would always retain something of central and northern Germany. The Industrial Revolution soon outgrew its British origins, yet also retained something of its original template. Closer to the present, the IT revolution that began in Silicon Valley remains indelibly colored by its Californian origins. Paul Strathern shows how Florence, and the Florentines themselves, played a similarly unique and transformative role in the Renaissance."--Amazon. #### Aeschylus I: The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound - **Author:** Aeschylus - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 256 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** June 2022 - **ISBN-13:** 9780226311449 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21049995W #### Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - **Author:** Patrick Radden Keefe - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2021 - **Pages:** 720 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** April 2022 - **ISBN-13:** 9780385545686 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24218388W #### The Blocksize War: The battle over who controls Bitcoin’s protocol rules - **Author:** Jonathan Bier - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2021 - **Pages:** 228 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** January 2022 - **ISBN-13:** 9798721895609 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL30747417W ### 2021 #### Caste - **Author:** Isabel Wilkerson - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2020 - **Pages:** 496 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** December 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9780593230251 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20878310W **Synopsis:** “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today. --https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/653196/caste-oprahs-book-club-by-isabel-wilkerson/9780593230268 #### Nature & Walking - **Author:** Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 76 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** October 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9781463727277 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL39919089W #### Evicted - **Author:** Matthew Desmond - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 464 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** September 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9780553447453 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17828326W **Synopsis:** Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a 2016 non-fiction book by American author Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the book follows eight families struggling to pay rent to their landlords during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Through a year of ethnographic fieldwork, Desmond's goal in the book is to highlight the issues of extreme poverty, affordable housing, and economic exploitation in the United States. Evicted was well-received and won multiple book awards such as the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. The Pulitzer committee selected the book "for a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty." #### A Man at Arms - **Author:** Steven Pressfield - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2021 - **Pages:** 336 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** July 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393540970 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21971441W **Synopsis:** Jerusalem and the Sinai desert, AD 55. In the turbulent aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus, agents of the Roman Empire receive information about a pilgrim bearing an incendiary letter from a religious fanatic calling himself Paul the Apostle to insurrectionists in Corinth. What's in the letter could bring down an empire. The Romans hire a former legionary, a solitary man-at-arms named Telamon to intercept the letter and destroy the courier. Telamon fights for money, not principles. He's been promised a rich reward; should he fail, the punishment is death by crucifixion. But once he meets the courier, Telamon experiences an extraordinary conversion, and instead of carrying out the mission, takes on the Empire. In his first novel of the ancient world in 13 years, the best-selling author of Gates of Fire and Tides of War returns with a gripping saga of conquest and rebellion, bloodshed and faith. #### Klara and the Sun - **Author:** Kazuo Ishiguro - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2019 - **Pages:** 419 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** June 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9780593318171 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20883297W **Synopsis:** Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love? In its award citation in 2017, the Nobel committee described Ishiguro's books as "novels of great emotional force" and said he has "uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." #### The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World - **Author:** David Anthony - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 568 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** May 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9780691148182 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19366956W **Synopsis:** Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now, their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization. Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David W. Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of Central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European and shows how their innovative use of the ox wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication, commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining, warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth reveals the origins of horseback riding. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries - the source of the Indo-European languages and English - and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past. **Reviews:** - Jamie (Did Not Finish) #### Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero - **Author:** Christopher McDougall - **Topic:** Travel & Memoir - **Published:** 2019 - **Pages:** 496 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** March 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9781524732363 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20334758W **Synopsis:** When Chris McDougall agreed to take in a donkey from an animal hoarder, he thought it would be no harder than the rest of the adjustments he and his family had made after moving from Philadelphia to the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country. But when he arrived, Sherman was in such bad shape he could barely move, and his hair was coming out in clumps. Chris decided to undertake a radical rehabilitation program designed not only to heal Sherman's body but to heal his mind as well. It turns out the best way to soothe a donkey is to give it a job, and so Chris decided to teach Sherman how to run. He'd heard about burro racing--a unique type of race where humans and donkeys run together in a call-back to mining days--and decided he and Sherman would enter the World Championship in Colorado. Easier said than done. In the course of Sherman's training, Chris would have to recruit several other runners, both human and equine, and call upon the wisdom of burro racers, goat farmers, Amish running club members, and a group of irrepressible female long-haul truckers. An entire community comes together to help save Sherman and, along the way, Chris shows us the joy of a life with animals. #### The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous - **Author:** Joseph Henrich - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2020 - **Pages:** 704 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** February 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9780374173227 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20844844W **Synopsis:** Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. **Reviews:** - Jamie — 5/5 — Would recommend — Discussion quality: 5/5 This is one of my favorite books that we have ever read as a book club. I've come back to this book over and over again with concepts and models that apply to everyday things that I’m encountering. I've recommended it to dozens of people. Very good read! #### Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves - **Author:** Frans De Waal - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2019 - **Pages:** 396 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** January 2021 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393635065 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20162907W **Synopsis:** Mama's Last Hug opens with the dramatic farewell between Mama, a dying 59-year-old chimpanzee matriarch, and biologist Jan Van Hooff. This heartfelt final meeting of two longtime friends, widely shared as a video, offers a window into how deep and instantly recognizable these bonds can be. So begins Frans de Waal's whirlwind tour of new ideas and findings about animal emotions, based on his renowned studies of the social and emotional lives of chimpanzees, bonobos, and other primates. De Waal discusses facial expressions, animal sentience and consciousness, Mama's life and death, the emotional side of human politics, and the illusion of free will. He distinguishes between emotions and feelings, all the while emphasizing the continuity between our species and other species. And he makes the radical proposal that emotions are like organs: We don't have a single organ that other animals don't have, and the same is true for our emotions. ### 2020 #### Unflattening - **Author:** Nick Sousanis - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Published:** 2015 - **Pages:** 208 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** November 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9780674744431 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17924067W **Synopsis:** The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in meaning-making? Written and drawn entirely as comics, Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge. Unflattening is an insurrection against the fixed viewpoint. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science, philosophy, art, literature, and mythology, it uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. While its vibrant, constantly morphing images occasionally serve as illustrations of text, they more often connect in nonlinear fashion to other visual references throughout the book. They become allusions, allegories, and motifs, pitting realism against abstraction and making us aware that more meets the eye than is presented on the page. In its graphic innovations and restless shape-shifting, Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow, rigid thinking that Sousanis calls “flatness.” Just as the two-dimensional inhabitants of Edwin A. Abbott’s novella Flatland could not fathom the concept of “upwards,” Sousanis says, we are often unable to see past the boundaries of our current frame of mind. Fusing words and images to produce new forms of knowledge, Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understanding beyond what we normally apprehend. #### Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival - **Author:** David Pilling - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2014 - **Pages:** 382 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** September 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9781594205842 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17582325W **Synopsis:** Financial Times Asia editor David Pilling presents a fresh vision of Japan, drawing on his own deep experience, as well as observations from a cross section of Japanese citizenry, including novelist Haruki Murakami, former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, industrialists and bankers, activists and artists, teenagers and octogenarians. Through their voices, Pilling captures the dynamism and diversity of contemporary Japan. #### The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement - **Author:** Andrew Guthrie Ferguson - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2017 - **Pages:** 259 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** August 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9781479892822 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19764034W **Synopsis:** In a high-tech command center in downtown Los Angeles, a digital map lights up with 911 calls, television monitors track breaking news stories, surveillance cameras sweep the streets, and rows of networked computers link analysts and police officers to a wealth of law enforcement intelligence. This is just a glimpse into a future where software predicts future crimes, algorithms generate virtual "most-wanted" lists, and databanks collect personal and biometric information. The Rise of Big Data Policing introduces the cutting-edge technology that is changing how the police do their jobs and shows why it is more important than ever that citizens understand the far-reaching consequences of big data surveillance as a law enforcement tool. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson reveals how these new technologies - viewed as race-neutral and objective - have been eagerly adopted by police departments hoping to distance themselves from claims of racial bias and unconstitutional practices. After a series of high-profile police shootings and federal investigations into systemic police misconduct, and in an era of law enforcement budget cutbacks, data-driven policing has been billed as a way to "turn the page" on racial bias. But behind the data are real people, and difficult questions remain about racial discrimination and the potential to distort constitutional protections. In this first book on big data policing, Ferguson offers an examination of how new technologies will alter the who, where, when and how we police. These new technologies also offer data-driven methods to improve police accountability and to remedy the underlying socio-economic risk factors that encourage crime. The Rise of Big Data Policing is a must read for anyone concerned with how technology will revolutionize law enforcement and its potential threat to the security, privacy, and constitutional rights of citizens. -- #### Benjamin Franklin: An American Life - **Author:** Walter Isaacson - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2003 - **Pages:** 626 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** June 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9780743258074 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4288868W **Synopsis:** Chronicles the founding father's life and his multiple careers as a shopkeeper, writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, business strategist, and political leader, while showing how his faith in the wisdom of the common citizen helped forge an American national identity based on the virtues of its middle class. #### Replay - **Author:** Ken Grimwood - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction - **Published:** 1986 - **Pages:** 519 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** April 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9780688161125 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2252098W **Synopsis:** Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn't know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again—in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle—each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: "What if you could live your life over again?" #### The Roman Republic: A Very Short Introduction - **Author:** David M. Gwynn - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 144 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** March 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9780199595112 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21041666W #### The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - **Author:** Michael Pillsbury - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2015 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** March 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9781627790109 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19994559W **Synopsis:** One of the US government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise - and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower. For more than 40 years, the United States has played an indispensable role in helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage in the belief that China's rise will bring us cooperation, diplomacy, and free trade. But what if the "China dream" is to replace us, just as America replaced the British Empire, without firing a shot? Based on interviews with Chinese defectors and newly declassified, previously undisclosed national security documents, The Hundred-Year Marathon reveals China's secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world's dominant power and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has served in senior national security positions in the US government since the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, draws on his decades of contact with the "hawks" in China's military and intelligence agencies and translates their documents, speeches, and books to show how the teachings of traditional Chinese statecraft underpin their actions. He offers an inside look at how the Chinese really view America and its leaders - as barbarians who will be the architects of their own demise. Pillsbury also explains how the US government has helped - sometimes unwittingly and sometimes deliberately - to make this "China dream" come true, and he calls for the United States to implement a new, more competitive strategy toward China as it really is and not as we might wish it to be. The Hundred-Year Marathon is a wake-up call as we face the greatest national security challenge of the 21st century. #### The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World - **Author:** Pedro Domingos - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2015 - **Pages:** 333 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** January 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9780465065707 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19663805W **Synopsis:** In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible. #### The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life - **Author:** Anu Partanen - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 448 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** January 2020 - **ISBN-13:** 9780062316554 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20028831W **Synopsis:** A Finnish journalist and naturalized American citizen compares and contrasts life in the U.S. with life in the Nordic region to encourage Americans to draw on practices from the Nordic way of life to create a fairer, happier, more secure, and less stressful society. At a 2012 conference on social mobility, where experts discussed whether people worldwide were attaining a better life than their parents', Ed Miliband, the leader of the British Labour Party, made a surprising quip: "If you want the American dream, go to Finland." For decades, the country best known for opportunity had been the United States. No longer, said Miliband. Anu Partanen, however, had recently left Finland and moved to America for the love of her life, a man who would ultimately become her husband. Their relationship flourished, but she found that navigating the basics of everyday life--from health insurance and taxes to education and child care--was much more complicated and stressful than in her homeland. At first she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered that they shared her deep apprehensions. To understand why life in Finland is so drastically different from the way things are in the United States, Partanen began to look closely at both countries. In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Partanen compares living in the United States with life in the Nordic region, focusing on four key relationships--parents and children, men and women, employees and employers, and government and citizens. She debunks criticism that Nordic countries are socialist "nanny states," revealing instead that it is we Americans who are far more enmeshed in unhealthy dependencies than we realize. Step by step, Partanen explains how the Nordic approach allows citizens to enjoy more individual freedom and equality than we do. She wants to open Americans' eyes to how much better things can be--to show her beloved new country what it can learn from her homeland to reinvigorate and fulfill the promise of the American dream. Offering insights, advice, and solutions, The Nordic Theory of Everything makes a convincing argument that we can rebuild our society, rekindle our optimism, and restore independence to our relationships and lives. --Adapted from dust jacket. **Reviews:** - Jamie — 5/5 ### 2019 #### Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies - **Author:** Edward O. Wilson - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2019 - **Pages:** 160 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** November 2019 - **ISBN-13:** 9781631495540 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20148876W **Synopsis:** Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least 17 - among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge-dwelling shrimp - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation. Whether writing about midges who "dance about like acrobats" or schools of anchovies who protectively huddle "to appear like a gigantic fish", or proposing that human society owes a debt of gratitude to "postmenopausal grandmothers" and "childless homosexuals", Genesis is a pithy yet path-breaking work of evolutionary theory, braiding 21st-century scientific theory with the lyrical biological and humanistic observations for which Wilson is known. #### How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - **Author:** Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 1940 - **Pages:** 385 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** September 2019 - **ISBN-13:** 9780671212094 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL487444W **Synopsis:** Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text. Also included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works. Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests you can use measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension, and speed. #### Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - **Author:** Robert Pirsig - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1974 - **Pages:** 373 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** August 2019 - **ISBN-13:** 9780688171667 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL827357W **Synopsis:** "The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young son, it becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions. A true modern classic, it remains at once touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward. #### Educated: A Memoir - **Author:** Tara Westover - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2018 - **Pages:** 464 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** July 2019 - **ISBN-13:** 9781984854858 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18139176W **Synopsis:** *Educated* is a 2018 memoir by the American author Tara Westover. Westover recounts overcoming her survivalist Mormon family in order to go to college, and emphasizes the importance of education in enlarging her world. She details her journey from her isolated life in the mountains of Idaho to completing a PhD program in history at Cambridge University. She started college at the age of 17 having had no formal education. She explores her struggle to reconcile her desire to learn with the world she inhabited with her father. #### Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life - **Author:** David R. Montgomery - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2017 - **Pages:** 320 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** June 2019 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393356090 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20179092W #### Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts - **Author:** Alexander Langlands - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2017 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** June 2019 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393356571 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20162539W #### Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies - **Author:** Geoffrey West - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2015 - **Pages:** 479 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** January 2019 - **ISBN-13:** 9781594205583 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17826327W **Synopsis:** "From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. The former head of the Sante Fe Institute, visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term "complexity" can be misleading, however, because what makes West's discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by issues of aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science, creating a new understanding of energy use and metabolism: West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal's circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient--and lives 25% longer. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism's body"-- ### 2018 #### Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy - **Author:** George Gilder - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2018 - **Pages:** 320 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** November 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9781621575764 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19764274W **Synopsis:** "The Age of Google, built on big data and machine intelligence, has been an awesome era. But it's coming to an end. In Life after Google, George Gilder--the peerless visionary of technology and culture--explains why Silicon Valley is suffering a nervous breakdown and what to expect as the post-Google age dawns. Google's astonishing ability to 'search and sort' attracts the entire world to its search engine and countless other goodies--videos, maps, email, calendars.... And everything it offers is free, or so it seems. Instead of paying directly, users submit to advertising. The system of 'aggregate and advertise' works--for a while--if you control an empire of data centers, but a market without prices strangles entrepreneurship and turns the Internet into a wasteland of ads. The crisis is not just economic. Even as advances in artificial intelligence induce delusions of omnipotence and transcendence, Silicon Valley has pretty much given up on security. The Internet firewalls supposedly protecting all those passwords and personal information have proved hopelessly permeable. The crisis cannot be solved within the current computer and network architecture. The future lies with the 'cryptocosm'--The new architecture of the blockchain and its derivatives. Enabling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, NEO and Hashgraph, it will provide the Internet a secure global payments system, ending the aggregate-and-advertise Age of Google. Silicon Valley, long dominated by a few giants, faces a 'great unbundling,' which will disperse computer power and commerce and transform the economy and the Internet"--Dust jacket. #### How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence - **Author:** Michael Pollan - **Topic:** Health & Medicine - **Published:** 2018 - **Pages:** 528 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** October 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9781594204227 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20159801W **Synopsis:** When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research. #### Freedom™ - **Author:** Daniel Suarez - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 499 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** August 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9780451231895 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14996932W **Synopsis:** The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times bestseller DaemonIn one of the most buzzed-about debuts of 2009, Daniel Suarez introduced a terrifying vision of a new world order, controlled by the Daemon, an insidious computer program unleashed by a hi-tech wunderkind, Daemon captured the attention of the tech community, became a New York Times and Indie bestseller, and left readers hungry for more.Well, more is here, and it's even more gripping than its predecessor.In the opening chapters of Freedom(tm), the Daemon is firmly in control, using an expanded network of real-world, dispossessed darknet operatives to tear apart civilization and rebuild it anew. Soon civil war breaks out in the American Midwest, in a brutal wave of violence that becomes known as the Corn Rebellion. Former detective Pete Sebeck, now the Daemon's most powerful-though reluctant-operative, must lead a small band of enlightened humans toward a populist movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all.In a world of conflicted loyalties, rapidly diminishing human power, and the possibility that anyone can be a spy, what's at stake is nothing less than human freedom's last hope to survive the technology revolution. #### Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - **Author:** Jared Diamond - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 515 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** July 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9780143036555 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL276557W **Synopsis:** "In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the formerly flourishing Native American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, the doomed medieval Viking colony on Greenland, and finally to the modern world, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and when we reproduce too fast or cut down too many trees. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, unstable trade partners, and pressure from enemies were all factors in the demise of the doomed societies, but other societies found solutions to those same problems and persisted."--BOOK JACKET #### Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - **Author:** Yuval Noah Harari - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 456 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** June 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9780062316110 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17075811W **Synopsis:** From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become? Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem. #### Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams - **Author:** Matthew Walker - **Topic:** Health & Medicine - **Published:** 2017 - **Pages:** 485 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** May 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9781501144318 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20168133W **Synopsis:** With two appearances on CBS This Morning and Fresh Air's most popular interview of 2017, Matthew Walker has made abundantly clear that sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when it is absent. Compared to the other basic drives in life—eating, drinking, and reproducing—the purpose of sleep remains more elusive. Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity. In this “compelling and utterly convincing” (The Sunday Times) book, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night’s sleep every night. #### Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment - **Author:** Robert Wright - **Topic:** Philosophy & Religion - **Published:** 2017 - **Pages:** 336 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** March 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9781508235408 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20917487W #### Walkaway - **Author:** Cory Doctorow - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2017 - **Pages:** 560 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** January 2018 - **ISBN-13:** 9780765392763 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17801248W **Synopsis:** Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza―known to his friends as Hubert, Etc―was too old to be at that Communist party. But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be―except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society―and walk away. After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life―food, clothing, shelter―from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system. It’s still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it’s war – a war that will turn the world upside down. Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years…and the very human people who will live their consequences. ### 2017 #### Daemon - **Author:** Daniel Suarez - **Topic:** Technology (Fiction) - **Published:** 2009 - **Pages:** 640 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** December 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780451228734 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL13646905W **Synopsis:** Already an underground sensation, a high-tech thriller for the wireless age that explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running without human control—a daemon—designed to dismantle society and bring about a new world order. Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can't always be said for the people who design them. Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer—the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company's stock price. But Sobol's fans aren't the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol's secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it's up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy—or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control... Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson. #### A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution - **Author:** Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2017 - **Pages:** 248 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** October 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780544716940 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17765779W **Synopsis:** **A trailblazing biologist grapples with her role in the biggest scientific discovery of our era: a cheap, easy way of rewriting genetic code, with nearly limitless promise and peril.** Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new gene-editing tool CRISPR—a revolutionary new technology that she helped create—to make heritable changes in human embryos. The cheapest, simplest, most effective way of manipulating DNA ever known, CRISPR may well give us the cure to HIV, genetic diseases, and some cancers, and will help address the world’s hunger crisis. Yet even the tiniest changes to DNA could have myriad, unforeseeable consequences—to say nothing of the ethical and societal repercussions of intentionally mutating embryos to create “better” humans. Writing with fellow researcher Samuel Sternberg, Doudna shares the thrilling story of her discovery, and passionately argues that enormous responsibility comes with the ability to rewrite the code of life. With CRISPR, she shows, we have effectively taken control of evolution. What will we do with this unfathomable power? [(Source)][1] #### How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer - **Author:** Sarah Bakewell - **Topic:** Philosophy & Religion - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 416 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** September 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9781590514832 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL25463670W #### Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise - **Author:** Anders Ericsson - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 307 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** August 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780544456235 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19664939W **Synopsis:** Draws on the examples of chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens to outline a powerful approach to learning that enables proficiency through strategic goal setting, self-motivation, and feedback exercises. #### The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance - **Author:** Nessa Carey - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** July 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9781848313477 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16184574W **Synopsis:** "Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. Surveying the twenty-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innovations, this volume provides a readily understandable introduction to the foundations of epigenetics. Nessa Carey, a leading epigenetics researcher, connects the field's arguments to such diverse phenomena as how ants and queen bees control their colonies; why tortoiseshell cats are always female; why some plants need cold weather before they can flower; and how our bodies age and develop disease. Reaching beyond biology, epigenetics now informs work on drug addiction, the long-term effects of famine, and the physical and psychological consequences of childhood trauma. Carey concludes with a discussion of the future directions for this research and its ability to improve human health and well-being."--Amazon.com. #### Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World - **Author:** Mark Miodownik - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 272 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** June 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780544236042 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17778974W **Synopsis:** "Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paperclip bend? Why does any material look and behave the way it does?With clarity and humor, world-leading materials scientist Mark Miodownik answers all the questions you've ever had about your pens, spoons, and razor blades, while also introducing a whole world full of materials you've never even heard of: the diamond five times the size of Earth; concrete cloth that can be molded into any shape; and graphene, the thinnest, strongest, stiffest material in existence--only a single atom thick.Stuff Matters tells enthralling stories that explain the science and history of materials. From the teacup to the jet engine, the silicon chip to the paper clip, the plastic in our appliances to the elastic in our underpants, Miodownik reveals the miracles of engineering that permeate our lives. As engaging as it is incisive, Stuff Matters will make you see the materials that surround you with new eyes"-- #### Norse Mythology - **Author:** Neil Gaiman - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 272 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** April 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393609097 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17619634W **Synopsis:** Neil Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura rendition of the great northern tales. In Norse Mythology, Gaiman stays true to the myths in envisioning the major Norse pantheon: Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin’s son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki―son of a giant―blood brother to Odin and a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator. Gaiman fashions these primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds and delves into the exploits of deities, dwarfs, and giants. Once, when Thor’s hammer is stolen, Thor must disguise himself as a woman―difficult with his beard and huge appetite―to steal it back. More poignant is the tale in which the blood of Kvasir―the most sagacious of gods―is turned into a mead that infuses drinkers with poetry. The work culminates in Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods and rebirth of a new time and people. Through Gaiman’s deft and witty prose emerge these gods with their fiercely competitive natures, their susceptibility to being duped and to duping others, and their tendency to let passion ignite their actions, making these long-ago myths breathe pungent life again. #### All Art Is Propaganda - **Author:** George Orwell - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Published:** 2008 - **Pages:** 374 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** March 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780151013555 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1167992W **Synopsis:** Collects critical essays written by George Orwell in the 1940s, in which he discusses the work of Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, T. S. Eliot, Salvador Dali, and others; and also covers propaganda, politics, and more. #### The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life - **Author:** Nick Lane - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2001 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** February 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393352979 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19663289W **Synopsis:** A biochemist, building on the pillars of evolutionary theory and drawing on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and genes, argues that the evolution of multicellular life was the result of a single event. #### Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market - **Author:** Janine R. Wedel - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 283 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** January 2017 - **ISBN-13:** 9780465022014 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL27083522W ### 2016 #### Hillbilly Eligy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis - **Author:** J. D. Vance - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 256 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** December 2016 - **ISBN-13:** 9780062300546 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17357665W **Synopsis:** From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, this book is a probing look at the struggles of America's white working class through the author's own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town. Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. #### Ancillary Justice - **Author:** Ann Leckie - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 444 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** September 2016 - **ISBN-13:** 9780316246620 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17062644W **Synopsis:** On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the *Justice of Toren*--a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance. Sequels: Ancillary Sword; Ancillary Mercy. #### The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America - **Author:** Louis Menand - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2001 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** August 2016 - **ISBN-13:** 9780007126903 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20452875W #### American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America - **Author:** Colin Woodard - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** May 2016 - **ISBN-13:** 9780143122029 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20272183W #### The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War - **Author:** Robert J. Gordon - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2016 - **Pages:** 762 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** March 2016 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17343962W **Synopsis:** The trajectory and impetus of American growth from the end of the Civil War until now. #### Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future - **Author:** Ashlee Vance - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 402 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** February 2016 - **ISBN-13:** 9780753555620 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17184556W **Synopsis:** In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs -- a real-life Tony Stark -- and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new "makers." Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius's life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits. Vance uses Musk's story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk -- one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history -- is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy. Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans. - Publisher. ### 2015 #### Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction - **Author:** Philip E. Tetlock - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2015 - **Pages:** 326 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** December 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9780771070525 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18233878W **Synopsis:** Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week’s meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts’ predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight, and Tetlock has spent the past decade trying to figure out why. What makes some people so good? And can this talent be taught? In Superforecasting, Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction, drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, government-funded forecasting tournament. The Good Judgment Project involves tens of thousands of ordinary people—including a Brooklyn filmmaker, a retired pipe installer, and a former ballroom dancer—who set out to forecast global events. Some of the volunteers have turned out to be astonishingly good. They’ve beaten other benchmarks, competitors, and prediction markets. They’ve even beaten the collective judgment of intelligence analysts with access to classified information. They are "superforecasters." In this groundbreaking and accessible book, Tetlock and Gardner show us how we can learn from this elite group. Weaving together stories of forecasting successes (the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound) and failures (the Bay of Pigs) and interviews with a range of high-level decision makers, from David Petraeus to Robert Rubin, they show that good forecasting doesn’t require powerful computers or arcane methods. It involves gathering evidence from a variety of sources, thinking probabilistically, working in teams, keeping score, and being willing to admit error and change course. Superforecasting offers the first demonstrably effective way to improve our ability to predict the future—whether in business, finance, politics, international affairs, or daily life—and is destined to become a modern classic. #### Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End - **Author:** Atul Gawande - **Topic:** Health & Medicine - **Published:** 2014 - **Pages:** 287 - **Read:** November 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9781510015036 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17079567W **Synopsis:** Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End is a 2014 non-fiction book by American surgeon Atul Gawande. The book addresses end-of-life care, hospice care, and also contains Gawande's reflections and personal stories. He suggests that medical care should focus on well-being rather than survival. Being Mortal has won awards, appeared on lists of best books, and been featured in a documentary. #### The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? - **Author:** Jared Diamond - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 592 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** October 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9781101606001 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16637581W **Synopsis:** Overview: Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday-in evolutionary time-when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions. The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years-a past that has mostly vanished-and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond's most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn't romanticize traditional societies-after all, we are shocked by some of their practices-but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. A characteristically provocative, enlightening, and entertaining book, The World Until Yesterday will be essential and delightful reading. #### Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business - **Author:** Neil Postman - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 1985 - **Pages:** 214 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** August 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9780136006466 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL137916W **Synopsis:** Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals. #### Roadside Picnic - **Author:** Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1978 - **Pages:** 256 - **Picked by:** Loren - **Read:** July 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9781473208735 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL7967812W **Synopsis:** [Comment by Hari Kunru in The Guardian] > Soviet-era Russian science fiction deserves a wider audience in English. The Strugatsky brothers collaborated on numerous novels and stories, the best known of which is this, partly because it was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker, in 1977. The novel takes place 10 years after a mysterious alien visitation, which seems to have no rational explanation. No one saw the visitors. Their presence caused disease and blindness in the areas where they landed. Now, in the six "Zones", the laws of physics (and, seemingly, of reality) are disturbed by anomalies, and littered with inexplicable, deadly wreckage. Only a few brave "stalkers" risk their lives to enter the zones to gather alien artefacts for sale. Some of these artefacts offer the promise of extraordinary powers. Unlike Tarkovsky's film, which concentrates on the hallucinatory, vacated landscape of the zones, the novels portray a society adapting to an inexplicable, terrifying event, an eruption of the unknown. Though written in 1971 and published in English in 1977, the novel was heavily bowdlerised by Soviet censors, and an authoritative text wasn't available in Russian until 2000. It's a book with an extraordinary atmosphere – and a demonstration of how science fiction, by using a single bold central metaphor, can open up the possibilities of the novel. Original Title: Пикник на обочине #### The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution - **Author:** Walter Isaacson - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2014 - **Pages:** 608 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** June 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9781471138799 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17074268W **Synopsis:** Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail? In his masterly saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page. This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It’s also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative. For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, The Innovators shows how they happen. #### Complexity: A Very Short Introduction - **Author:** John H. Holland - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2014 - **Pages:** 112 - **Read:** May 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9780199662548 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17785073W #### No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State - **Author:** Glenn Greenwald - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 333 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** April 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9780241146705 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16819228W **Synopsis:** The story of one of the greatest national security leaks in US history. In June 2013, reporter and political commentator Glenn Greenwald published a series of reports in the Guardian which rocked the world. The reports revealed shocking truths about the extent to which the National Security Agency had been gathering information about US citizens and intercepting communication worldwide, and were based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden to Greenwald. Including new revelations from documents entrusted to Greenwald by Snowden. #### The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order - **Author:** Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2015 - **Pages:** 368 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** March 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9781250073082 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20001821W **Synopsis:** "Bitcoin became a buzzword overnight. A cyber-enigma with an enthusiastic following, it pops up in headlines and fuels endless media debate. You can apparently use it to buy anything from coffee to cars, yet few people seem to truly understand what it is. This raises the question: Why should anyone care about bitcoin? In The Age of Cryptocurrency, Wall Street journalists Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey deliver the definitive answer to this question. Cybermoney is poised to launch a revolution, one that could reinvent traditional financial and social structures while bringing the world's billions of "unbanked" individuals into a new global economy. Cryptocurrency holds the promise of a financial system without a middleman, one owned by the people who use it and one safeguarded from the devastation of a 2008-type crash. But bitcoin, the most famous of the cybermonies, carries a reputation for instability, wild fluctuation, and illicit business; some fear it has the power to eliminate jobs and to upend the concept of a nation-state. It implies, above all, monumental and wide-reaching change--for better and for worse. But it is here to stay, and you ignore it at your peril.Vigna and Casey demystify cryptocurrency--its origins, its function, and what you need to know to navigate a cyber-economy. The digital currency world will look very different from the paper currency world; The Age of Cryptocurrency will teach you how to be ready."-- #### The Structure and Dynamics of Networks - **Author:** Mark Newman and Duncan J. Watts - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 592 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** January 2015 - **ISBN-13:** 9781400841356 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19002758W ### 2014 #### Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships - **Author:** Sue Johnson - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 352 - **Read:** December 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9781306759069 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24574308W #### Far from the Tree - **Author:** Andrew Solomon - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 464 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** September 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9781481440905 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16654793W **Synopsis:** Solomon’s startling proposition in *Far from the Tree* is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, and who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, and Solomon documents triumphs of love over prejudice in every chapter. All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on ten years of research and interviews with more than three-hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges. Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original and compassionate thinker, *Far from the Tree* explores how people who love each other must struggle to accept each other, a theme in every family’s life. #### Thinking in Systems - **Author:** Donella Meadows - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2008 - **Pages:** 256 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** August 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9781136551406 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3737036W **Synopsis:** A clear, thoughtful, and wide-reaching exploration of complex systems, in theory and in practice. Meadows was a masterful and elegant writer and researcher, and an early voice in systems analysis at MIT and elsewhere. This book, completed from draft manuscript after Meadows' death, is both accessible and deeply thought-provoking. She connects the dots between careful descriptions of systems analysis and systems insights, and the personal, social, societal, and political implications of systems thinking. #### The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon - **Author:** Brad Stone - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 416 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** July 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9780552167833 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16808249W **Synopsis:** This book is the definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos. Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators -- Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg -- Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing. The Everything Store will be the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read. - Publisher. #### Antifragile - **Author:** Nassim Nicholas Taleb - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 656 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** June 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9781846141577 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16726829W **Synopsis:** "The acclaimed author of the influential bestseller The Black Swan, Nicholas Nassim Taleb takes a next big step with a deceptively simple concept: the "antifragile." Like the Greek hydra that grows two heads for each one it loses, people, systems, and institutions that are antifragile not only withstand shocks, they benefit from them. In a modern world dominated by chaos and uncertainty, Antifragile is a revolutionary vision from one of the most subversive and important thinkers of our time. Praise for Nicholas Nassim Taleb "[This] is the lesson of Taleb. and also the lesson of our volatile times. There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable."--Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point "[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne."--The Wall Street Journal "The most prophetic voice of all. [Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher. someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone."--GQ "Changed my view of how the world works."--Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate"-- "Examples of Antifragility: When you stress your body by lifting a big weight, your body gets stronger. New York has the best restaurants in the world because particular restaurants are always going bust, making the aggregate stronger and stronger, or antifragile. Evolution is antifragile. Certain business and investment strategies are antifragile. Older things tend to be more antifragile than newer ones - because they've been exposed to more Black Swans"-- #### The Martian: A Novel - **Author:** Andy Weir - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** April 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9780804139021 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17091839W **Synopsis:** The Martian is a 2011 science fiction novel written by Andy Weir. It was his debut novel under his own name. It was originally self-published in 2011; Crown Publishing purchased the rights and re-released it in 2014. The story follows an American astronaut, Mark Watney, as he becomes stranded alone on Mars in 2035 and must improvise in order to survive. **Reviews:** - Jamie — 5/5 — Would recommend — Discussion quality: 4/5 Page turner of a book. Great read! #### A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - **Author:** Karen Armstrong - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 1993 - **Pages:** 528 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** March 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9780099273677 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3280815W **Synopsis:** As soon as they became recognizably human, men and women - in their hunger to understand their own presence on earth and the mysteries within and around them - began to worship gods. Karen Armstrong's masterly and illuminating book explores the ways in which the idea and experience of God evolved among the monotheists - Jews, Christians and Muslims. Weaving a multicolored fabric of historical, philosophical, intellectual and social developments and insights, Armstrong shows how, at various times through the centuries, each of the monotheistic religions has held a subtly different concept of God. At the same time she draws our attention to the basic and profound similarities among them, making it clear that in all of them God has been and is experienced intensely, passionately and often - especially in the West - traumatically. Some monotheists have seen darkness, desolation and terror, where others have seen light and transfiguration; the reasons for these inherent differences are examined, and the people behind them are brought to life. We look first at the gradual move away from the pagan gods to the full-fledged monotheism of the Jews during the exile in Babylon. Next considered is the development of parallel, yet different, perceptions and beliefs among Christians and Muslims. The book then moves "generationally" through time to examine the God of the philosophers and mystics in all three traditions, the God of the Reformation, the God of the Enlightenment and finally the nineteenth- and twentieth-century challenges of skeptics and atheists, as well as the fiercely reductive faith of the fundamentalists of our own day. Armstrong suggests that any particular idea of God must - if it is to survive - work for the people who develop it, and that ideas of God change when they cease to be effective. She argues that the concept of a personal God who behaves like a larger version of ourselves was suited to mankind at a certain stage but no longer works for an increasing number of people. Understanding the ever-changing ideas of God in the past and their relevance and usefulness in their time, she says, is a way to begin the search for a new concept for the twenty-first century. Her book shows that such a development is virtually inevitable, in spite of the despair of our increasingly "Godless" world, because it is a natural aspect of our humanity to seek a symbol for the ineffable reality that is universally perceived. #### Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - **Author:** Susan Cain - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 368 - **Picked by:** Nick - **Read:** January 2014 - **ISBN-13:** 9780606320825 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16484595W **Synopsis:** Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Taking the reader on a journey from Dale Carnegie's birthplace to Harvard Business School, from a Tony Robbins seminar to an evangelical megachurch, Susan Cain charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in the twentieth century and explores its far-reaching effects. She talks to Asian-American students who feel alienated from the brash, backslapping atmosphere of American schools. She questions the dominant values of American business culture, where forced collaboration can stand in the way of innovation, and where the leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked. And she draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience to reveal the surprising differences between extroverts and introverts. Perhaps most inspiring, she introduces us to successful introverts–from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Finally, she offers invaluable advice on everything from how to better negotiate differences in introvert-extrovert relationships to how to empower an introverted child to when it makes sense to be a "pretend extrovert." This extraordinary book has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how introverts see themselves. - Publisher. ### 2013 #### Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology - **Author:** Alexis Madrigal - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2011 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** December 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9780306819773 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17803533W #### The Emperor of All Maladies - **Author:** Siddhartha Mukherjee - **Topic:** Health & Medicine - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 712 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** December 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9780007367481 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15540668W **Synopsis:** The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is a book written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist. Published on 16 November 2010 by Scribner, it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. #### Behind the Beautiful Forevers - **Author:** Katherine Boo - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 290 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** November 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9780679643951 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16262891W **Synopsis:** The dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities. In this fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees fortune in the recyclable garbage of richer people. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a rural childhood, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to good times. But then, as the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. #### This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information - **Author:** Andy Greenberg - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** September 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9780142180495 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16499532W **Synopsis:** Who Are The Cypherpunks? This is the unauthorized telling of the revolutionary cryptography story behind the motion picture The Fifth Estate in theatres this October, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, a documentary out now. WikiLeaks brought to light a new form of whistleblowing, using powerful cryptographic code to hide leakers’ identities while they spill the private data of government agencies and corporations. But that technology has been evolving for decades in the hands of hackers and radical activists, from the libertarian enclaves of Northern California to Berlin to the Balkans. And the secret-killing machine continues to evolve beyond WikiLeaks, as a movement of hacktivists aims to obliterate the world’s institutional secrecy. Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg has traced its shadowy history from the cryptography revolution of the 1970s to Wikileaks founding hacker Julian Assange, Anonymous, and beyond. This is the story of the code and the characters—idealists, anarchists, extremists—who are transforming the next generation’s notion of what activism can be. With unrivaled access to such major players as Julian Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and WikiLeaks’ shadowy engineer known as the Architect, never before interviewed, Greenberg unveils the world of politically-motivated hackers—who they are and how they operate. #### The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia - **Author:** Andrei Lankov - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2013 - **Pages:** 283 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** August 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9780199964291 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17643839W **Synopsis:** "In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque state. After providing an accessible history of the nation, he turns his focus to what North Korea is, what its leadership thinks, and how its people cope with living in such an oppressive and impoverished place. He argues that North Korea is not irrational, and nothing shows this better than its continuing survival against all odds. A living political fossil, it clings to existence in the face of limited resources and a zombie economy, manipulating great powers despite its weakness. Its leaders are not ideological zealots or madmen, but perhaps the best practitioners of Machiavellian politics that can be found in the modern world. Even though they preside over a failed state, they have successfully used diplomacy - including nuclear threats - to extract support from other nations. But while the people in charge have been ruthless and successful in holding on to power, Lankov contends that this cannot continue forever. The old system is slowly falling apart, and in the long run the regime is unsustainable - with or without reform. Indeed, reforms, if attempted, will most likely trigger a dramatic implosion of the regime. They will not prolong its existence."--Book jacket. #### The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity - **Author:** Steven Strogatz - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 336 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** May 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9781848878433 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16681334W **Synopsis:** Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, insight, and brilliant illustrations. Whether he is illuminating how often you should flip your mattress to get the maximum lifespan from it, explaining just how Google searches the internet, or determining how many people you should date before settling down, Strogatz shows how math connects to every aspect of life. Discussing pop culture, medicine, law, philosophy, art, and business, Strogatz is the math teacher you wish you’d had. Whether you aced integral calculus or aren’t sure what an integer is, you’ll find profound wisdom and persistent delight in The Joy of x. #### The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It - **Author:** Kelly McGonigal - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 288 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** April 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9781583335086 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16184230W **Synopsis:** The first book to explain the new science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity. After years of watching her students struggling with their choices, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., realized that much of what people believe about willpower is actually sabotaging their success. Committed to sharing what the scientific community already knew about self-control, McGonigal created a course called "The Science of Willpower" for Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. The course was an instant hit and spawned the hugely successful Psychology Today blog with the same name. Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, McGonigal's book explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. Readers will learn: Willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are healthier, happier, have more satisfying relationships, and make more money. Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. Temptation and stress hijack the brain's systems of self-control, and that the brain can be trained for greater willpower. In the groundbreaking tradition of Getting Things Done, The Willpower Instinct combines life-changing prescriptive advice and complementary exercises to help readers with goals ranging from a healthier life to more patient parenting, from greater productivity at work to finally finishing the basement. #### The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't - **Author:** Nate Silver - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 656 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** March 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9780606368056 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16700318W **Synopsis:** Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. The New York Times now publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future. In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science. Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise. With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read. #### To Say Nothing of the Dog - **Author:** Connie Willis - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1997 - **Pages:** 512 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** January 2013 - **ISBN-13:** 9781399617192 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14858392W **Synopsis:** Connie Willis' entertaining comedy inspired by Jerome K. Jerome's [Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)][1]. [Robert A. Heinlein][2] mentioned the earlier work in [Have Spacesuit will Travel][3] as Kip's father's favorite. ### 2012 #### Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive - **Author:** Bruce Schneier - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 366 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** December 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9781118143308 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16626501W **Synopsis:** In today's hyper-connected society, understanding the mechanisms of trust is crucial. Issues of trust are critical to solving problems as diverse as corporate responsibility, global warming, and the political system. In this insightful and entertaining book, Schneier weaves together ideas from across the social and biological sciences to explain how society induces trust. He shows the unique role of trust in facilitating and stabilizing human society. He discusses why and how trust has evolved, why it works the way it does, and the ways the information society is changing everything. - Publisher. #### Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World - **Author:** Tina Rosenberg - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 402 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** November 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9781848313002 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15686817W **Synopsis:** This book identifies a brewing social revolution that is changing the way people live, based on harnessing the positive force of peer pressure, and shows how peer pressure has reduced teen smoking in the United States, made villages in India healthier and more prosperous, helped minority students get top grades in college calculus, and even led to the fall of Slobodan Milosevic. #### Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas - **Author:** Dale Carpenter - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** October 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9780393081961 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16299424W **Synopsis:** No one could have predicted that the night of September 17, 1998, would be anything but routine in Houston, Texas. Even the call to police that a black man was "going crazy with a gun" was hardly unusual in this urban setting. Nobody could have imagined that the arrest of two men for a minor criminal offense would reverberate in American constitutional law, exposing a deep malignity in our judicial system and challenging the traditional conception of what makes a family. Indeed, when Harris County sheriff’s deputies entered the second-floor apartment, there was no gun. Instead, they reported that they had walked in on John Lawrence and Tyron Garner having sex in Lawrence’s bedroom. So begins Dale Carpenter’s "gripping and brilliantly researched" Flagrant Conduct, a work nine years in the making that transforms our understanding of what we thought we knew about Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark Supreme Court decision of 2003 that invalidated America’s sodomy laws. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Carpenter has taken on the "gargantuan" task of extracting the truth about the case, analyzing the claims of virtually every person involved. Carpenter first introduces us to the interracial defendants themselves, who were hardly prepared "for the strike of lightning" that would upend their lives, and then to the Harris County arresting officers, including a sheriff’s deputy who claimed he had "looked eye to eye" in the faces of the men as they allegedly fornicated. Carpenter skillfully navigates Houston’s complex gay world of the late 1990s, where a group of activists and court officers, some of them closeted themselves, refused to bury what initially seemed to be a minor arrest. The author charts not only the careful legal strategy that Lambda Legal attorneys adopted to make the case compatible to a conservative Supreme Court but also the miscalculations of the Houston prosecutors who assumed that the nation’s extant sodomy laws would be upheld. Masterfully reenacting the arguments that riveted spectators and Justices alike in 2003, Flagrant Conduct then reaches a point where legal history becomes literature, animating a Supreme Court decision as few writers have done. In situating Lawrence v. Texas within the larger framework of America’s four-century persecution of gay men and lesbians, Flagrant Conduct compellingly demonstrates that gay history is an integral part of our national civil rights story. #### The Devil in the White City - **Author:** Erik Larson - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2003 - **Pages:** 362 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** September 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9780553813531 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20262W **Synopsis:** From back cover: Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spell-binding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men - the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. #### A Canticle for Leibowitz - **Author:** Walter M. Miller, Jr. - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1959 - **Pages:** 294 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** September 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9780553121803 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2626638W **Synopsis:** Highly unusual After the Holocaust novel. In the far future, 20th century texts are preserved in a monastery, as "sacred books". The monks preserve for centuries what little science there is, and have saved the science texts and blueprints from destruction many times, also making beautifully illuminated copies. As the story opens to a world run on a basically fuedal lines, science is again becoming fashionable, as a hobby of rich men, at perhaps 18th or early 19th century level of comprehesion. A local lord, interested in science, comes to the monastery. What happens after that is an exquisitely told tale, stunning and extremely moving, totally different from any other After the Holocaust story #### The Mystery of Banking - **Author:** Murray N. Rothbard - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2012 - **Pages:** 168 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** July 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9781388173838 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL34894655W #### Count Zero - **Author:** William Gibson - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1986 - **Pages:** 320 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** May 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9781473217409 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL27256W **Synopsis:** Turner, corporate mercenary, wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him for a mission more dangerous than the one he's recovering from: Maas-Neotek's chief of R&D is defecting. Turner is the one assigned to get him out intact, along with the biochip he's perfected. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties--some of whom aren't remotely human. Bobby Newmark is entirely human: a rustbelt data-hustler totally unprepared for what comes his way when the defection triggers war in cyberspace. With voodoo on the Net and a price on his head, Newmark thinks he's only trying to get out alive. The second novel of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, *Count Zero* is a stylish, streetsmart, frighteningly probable parable of the future and sequel to Neuromancer. #### Thinking Fast and Slow - **Author:** Daniel Kahneman - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 400 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** April 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9781535535830 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15992072W **Synopsis:** In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers. #### The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive - **Author:** Brian Christian - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 320 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** March 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9780385533065 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16163232W **Synopsis:** "The Most Human Human" is a provocative exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can "think." #### Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It - **Author:** Lawrence Lessig - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 370 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** January 2012 - **ISBN-13:** 9781306756686 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16202595W **Synopsis:** In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government—driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature. With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic—and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left—Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted—but redeemable—representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness. While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear—he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it. *Source:* [Twelve Books][1] ### 2011 #### Darwin's Radio - **Author:** Greg Bear - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1999 - **Pages:** 488 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** December 2011 - **ISBN-13:** 9780345464927 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16508W **Synopsis:** "Virus hunter" Christopher Dicken is a man on a mission, following a trail of rumors, government cover-ups, and dead bodies around the globe in search of a mysterious disease that strikes only pregnant women and invariably results in miscarriage. But when Dicken finds what he's looking for, the answer proves to be stranger--and far deadlier--than he ever could have imagined. Something that has slept in human DNA for millions of years is waking up.Molecular biologist Kaye Lang has spent her career tracing ancient retroviruses in the human genome. She believes these microscopic fossils can come to life again. But when Dicken's discovery becomes public, Lang's theory suddenly turns to chilling fact. As the outbreak of this terrifying disease threatens to become a deadly epidemic, Dicken and Lang must race against time to assemble the pieces of a puzzle only they are equipped to solve--an evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race . . . if a future exists at all. #### The Selfish Gene - **Author:** Richard Dawkins - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 1976 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** October 2011 - **ISBN-13:** 9780195690668 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1966488W **Synopsis:** As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published. This 40th anniversary edition includes a new epilogue from the author discussing the continuing relevance of these ideas in evolutionary biology today, as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think. #### The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right - **Author:** Atul Gawande - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 209 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** September 2011 - **ISBN-13:** 9780143423225 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15436462W **Synopsis:** Reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist now being used in medicine, aviation, the armed services, homeland security, investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds. #### Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior - **Author:** Deborah Gordon - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 167 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** July 2011 - **ISBN-13:** 9780691138794 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL12762964W #### Never Let Me Go - **Author:** Kazuo Ishiguro - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2005 - **Pages:** 296 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** June 2011 - **ISBN-13:** 9780571328475 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL59038W **Synopsis:** Ishiguro explores what it means to have a soul and how art distinguishes man from other life forms. But above all, *Never Let Me Go* is a study of friendship and the bonds we form which make or break while we come of age. #### Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier - **Author:** Edward Glaeser - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2011 - **Pages:** 456 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** April 2011 - **ISBN-13:** 9780330458078 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19873317W **Synopsis:** **A pioneering urban economist offers fascinating, even inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest invention and our best hope for the future.** America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly... Or are they? As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole. More than half of America's income is earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers use, on average, 40 percent less energy than suburbanites. Glaeser travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Even the worst cities-Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos- confer surprising benefits on the people who flock to them, including better health and more jobs than the rural areas that surround them. Glaeser visits Bangalore and Silicon Valley, whose strangely similar histories prove how essential education is to urban success and how new technology actually encourages people to gather together physically. He discovers why Detroit is dying while other old industrial cities-Chicago, Boston, New York-thrive. He investigates why a new house costs 350 percent more in Los Angeles than in Houston, even though building costs are only 25 percent higher in L.A. He pinpoints the single factor that most influences urban growth-January temperatures-and explains how certain chilly cities manage to defy that link. He explains how West Coast environmentalists have harmed the environment, and how struggling cities from Youngstown to New Orleans can "shrink to greatness." And he exposes the dangerous anti-urban political bias that is harming both cities and the entire country. Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and eloquent argument, Glaeser makes an impassioned case for the city's import and splendor. He reminds us forcefully why we should nurture our cities or suffer consequences that will hurt us all, no matter where we live. (*Source: Penguin Press blurb*) #### The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires - **Author:** Tim Wu - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2010 - **Pages:** 388 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** March 2011 - **ISBN-13:** 9780307269935 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15118227W **Synopsis:** In this age of an open internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel. With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the internet- the entire flow of American information- come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of "the master switch"? That is the big question that the author presents in this pathbreaking book. As Wu's sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century- radio, telephone, television, and film- was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Explaining how invention begets industry and industry begets empire- a progress often blessed by government, typically with stifling consequences for free expression and technical innovation alike- Wu identifies a time-honored pattern in the maneuvers of today's great information powers: Apple, Goggle, and an eerily resurgent AT & T.A battle royal looms for the internet's future, and with almost every aspect of our lives now dependent on that network, this is one war we dare not tune out. Part industrial expose, part meditation of what freedom requires in the information age, this book is a stirring illumination of a drama that has played out over decades in the shadows of our national life and now culminates with terrifying implications for our future. -- from Book Jacket. ### 2010 #### In a Sunburned Country - **Author:** Bill Bryson - **Topic:** Travel & Memoir - **Published:** 2000 - **Pages:** 411 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** December 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9781409095644 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL74115W **Synopsis:** *In a Sunburned Country* is the 2000 travelogue book about Australia written by best-selling travel writer Bill Bryson. The title is taken from the famous Australian poem, "My Country". In other countries, including Britain, the book was titled *Down Under*. In this book, Bill Bryson describes his travels by railway and car throughout Australia, his conversations with people in all walks of life about the history, geography, unusual plants and animals of the country, and his wry impressions of the life, culture and amenities (or lack thereof) in each locality. In a style similar to his book *A Walk in the Woods*, Bryson's research enabled him to include many stories about Australia's 19th-century explorers and settlers who suffered extreme deprivations, as well as details about its natural resources, culture, and economy. His writings are intertwined with recurring humorous themes, notably, in the chapter Crossing Australia he makes constant reference to drinking of urine to survive, as was done by many 19th century explorers. #### Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance - **Author:** Noam Chomsky - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2003 - **Pages:** 319 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** November 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9780241142509 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL71680W **Synopsis:** From the world's foremost intellectual activist, here is an irrefutable analysis of America's pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow. The United States is in the process of staking out not just the globe, but the last unarmed spot in our neighbourhood - the skies - as a militarized sphere of influence. Our earth and its skies are, for the Bush administration, the final frontiers of imperial control. In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky explains how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in, and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species. In our era, Chomsky argues, empire is a recipe for an earthly wasteland. #### A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century - **Author:** Barbara Tuchman - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 1600 - **Pages:** 726 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** September 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9781439558577 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3378547W **Synopsis:** Amazon.com Review In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One of the latter, whose life informs much of Tuchman's book, was the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, who enjoyed the opulence and elegance of the courtly tradition while ruthlessly exploiting the peasants under his thrall. Tuchman looks into such events as the Hundred Years War, the collapse of the medieval church, and the rise of various heresies, pogroms, and other events that caused medieval Europeans to wonder what they had done to deserve such horrors. #### Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell - **Author:** Dennis Bray - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2009 - **Pages:** 267 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** July 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9780300141733 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16018523W **Synopsis:** "How does a single-cell creature, such as an amoeba, lead such a sophisticated life? How does it hunt living prey, respond to lights, sounds, and smells, and display complex sequences of movements without the benefit of a nervous system? This book offers a startling and original answer. The author taps the findings of the new discipline of systems biology to show that the internal chemistry of living cells is a form of computation. Cells are built out of molecular circuits that perform logical operations, as electronic devices do, but with unique properties. Bray argues that the computational juice of cells provides the basis of all the distinctive properties of living systems: it allows organisms to embody in their internal structure an image of the world, and this accounts for their adaptability, responsiveness, and intelligence."--Book jacket. #### Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - **Author:** Doris Kearns Goodwin - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2003 - **Pages:** 1308 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** June 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9780141043722 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1856010W **Synopsis:** Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a 2005 book by Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, published by Simon & Schuster. The book is a biographical portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his cabinet from 1861 to 1865. Three of his Cabinet members had previously run against Lincoln in the 1860 election: Attorney General Edward Bates, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of State William H. Seward. The book focuses on Lincoln's mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to abolition and victory in the American Civil War. Goodwin's sixth book, Team of Rivals was well received by critics and won the 2006 Lincoln Prize and the inaugural Book Prize for American History of the New-York Historical Society. US President Barack Obama cited it as one of his favorite books and was said to have used it as a model for constructing his own cabinet, although he later wrote this was not the reason he chose Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State. In 2012, a Steven Spielberg film based on the book was released to critical acclaim. #### The Golden Age - **Author:** John C. Wright - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2002 - **Pages:** 320 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** April 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9780812579840 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5725219W **Synopsis:** "The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale - the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia - Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion." "Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he meets first an old man who accuses him of being an impostor and then a being from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government that Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself." And so Phaethon embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system - Jupiter is now a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal - among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre lifeforms that are partly both, to recover his memory, and to learn what crime he planned that warranted such preemptive punishment. His quest is to regain his true identity. #### Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - **Author:** Steve Krug - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2000 - **Pages:** 200 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** March 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9780321965516 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8578577W **Synopsis:** Yesterday's Web looked far different from today's Web, and tomorrow's Web will look more different still. Amidst all of this change, however, one aspect of Web use remains the same: The sites that offer the best, easiest, most intuitive experience are the ones people visit again and again. To ensure that your sites provide that experience, this guide from usability guru Krug distills his years of on-the-job experience into a practical primer on the do's and don'ts of good Web design. The second edition of this classic adds three new chapters that explain why people really leave Web sites, how to make sites usable and accessible, and the art of surviving executive design whims, plus a new preface and updated recommended reading.--From publisher description #### Creating a World without Poverty: How Social Business Can Transform Our Lives - **Author:** Muhammad Yunus - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 1999 - **Pages:** 320 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** February 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9781586484934 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1079340W **Synopsis:** The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize outlines his vision for a new business model that combines the power of free markets with the quest for a more humane world--and he tells the inspiring stories of companies that are doing this work today. In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve problems like inequality and poverty, because it is hampered by a narrow view of human nature in which people are one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit. In fact, human beings have many other drives and passions, including the spiritual, the social, and the altruistic. Welcome to the world of social business, where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet.--From publisher description. #### Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - **Author:** Robert B. Cialdini - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 1983 - **Pages:** 272 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** January 2010 - **ISBN-13:** 9780320087318 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3902892W **Synopsis:** Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book. You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success. Some images that appeared in the print edition of this book are unavailable in the electronic edition due to rights reasons. ### 2009 #### Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul - **Author:** Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2009 - **Pages:** 229 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** December 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9781583333334 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6431320W **Synopsis:** From a leading expert, a groundbreaking book on the science of play, and its essential role in fueling our intelligence and happiness throughout our lives.We’ve all seen the happiness in the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing with glee across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless and all-consuming. And, most important, it’s fun.As we become adults, taking time to play feels like a guilty pleasure—a distraction from “real” work and life. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. In fact, our ability to play throughout life is the single most important factor in determining our success and happiness.Dr. Brown has spent his career studying animal behavior and conducting more than six thousand “play histories” of humans from all walks of life—from serial murderers to Nobel Prize winners. Backed by the latest research, Play explains why play is essential to our social skills, adaptability, intelligence, creativity, ability to problem solve, and more. Play is hardwired into our brains—it is the mechanism by which we become resilient, smart, and adaptable people.Beyond play’s role in our personal fulfillment, its benefits have profound implications for child development and the way we parent, education and social policy, business innovation, productivity, and even the future of our society. From new research suggesting the direct role of three-dimensional-object play in shaping our brains to animal studies showing the startling effects of the lack of play, Brown provides a sweeping look at the latest breakthroughs in our understanding of the importance of this behavior. A fascinating blend of cutting-edge neuroscience, biology, psychology, social science, and inspiring human stories of the transformative power of play, this book proves why play just might be the most important work we can ever do. #### Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention - **Author:** Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 1996 - **Pages:** 464 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** October 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9780060928209 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL506563W **Synopsis:** Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. The author's objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world. #### Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air - **Author:** David MacKay - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2009 - **Pages:** 384 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** September 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9781906860011 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16797804W **Synopsis:** Provides an overview of the sustainable energy crisis that is threatening the world's natural resources, explaining how energy consumption is estimated and how those numbers have been skewed by various factors and discussing alternate forms of energy that can and should be used. #### The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health - **Author:** Thomas Campbell and T. Colin Campbell - **Topic:** Health & Medicine - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 417 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** August 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9781932100389 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15176142W **Synopsis:** Referred to as the "Grand Prix of epidemiology" by The New York Times, this study examines more than 350 variables of health and nutrition with surveys from 6,500 adults in more than 2,500 counties across China and Taiwan, and conclusively demonstrates the link between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. While revealing that proper nutrition can have a dramatic effect on reducing and reversing these ailments as well as curbing obesity, this text calls into question the practices of many of the current dietary programs, such as the Atkins diet, that are widely popular in the West. The politics of nutrition and the impact of special interest groups in the creation and dissemination of public information are also discussed. #### Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World - **Author:** Alexander (Sandy) Pentland - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2008 - **Pages:** 184 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** May 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9780262162562 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL11903988W **Synopsis:** "How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Sandy Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based "honest signaling," evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates." "Pentland, an MIT professor, has used a specially designed digital sensor worn like an ID badge - a "sociometer"--To monitor and analyze the back-and-forth patterns of signaling among groups of people. He and his researchers found that this second channel of communication, revolving not around words but around social relations, profoundly Influences major decisions in our lives - even though we are largely unaware of it. Pentland presents the scientific background necessary for understanding this form of communication, applies it to examples of group behavior in real organizations, and shows how by "reading" our social networks we can become more successful at pitching an idea, getting a job, or closing a deal. Using this "network intelligence" theory of social signaling, Pentland describes how we can harness the intelligence of our social network to become better managers, workers, and communicators."-- #### Doomsday Book - **Author:** Connie Willis - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1992 - **Pages:** 559 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** April 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9780739487136 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14858406W **Synopsis:** Somewhere in the future, ordinary history students must travel back in time as part of their university degree. An award-winning best-seller in the United States, this is the first of Connie Willis' brilliant Oxford trilogy.Kivrin knows everything about the Middle Ages - she's read all the books. She knows it's dangerous: cutthroats in the woods, witch hunts, cholera, and millions dying in the plague. For a young historian, it's fascinating.When Kivrin's tutors in Oxford's history lab finally agree to send her on an on-site study trip, she jumps at the chance to observe medieval life first-hand. But a crisis that strangely links the past and future leaves her stranded in the most deadly and terrifying era in human history, face to face with the heart-rending reality behind the statistics. And while she fights for her own life, Kivrin finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope in this dark time.Five years in the writing, Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the timeless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit. #### Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much - **Author:** Maggie Mahar - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 480 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** March 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9780061873829 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL274903W **Synopsis:** Why is medical care in the United States so expensive? For decades, Americans have taken it as a matter of faith that we spend more because we have the best health care system in the world. But as costs levitate, that argument becomes more difficult to make. Today, we spend twice as much as Japan on health care — yet few would argue that our health care system is twice as good.Instead, startling new evidence suggests that one out of every three of our health care dollars is squandered on unnecessary or redundant tests; unproven, sometimes unwanted procedures; and overpriced drugs and devices that, too often, are no better than the less expensive products they have replaced.How did this happen? In Money-Driven Medicine, Maggie Mahar takes the reader behind the scenes of a $2 trillion industry to witness how billions of dollars are wasted in a Hobbesian marketplace that pits the industry's players against each other. In remarkably candid interviews, doctors, hospital administrators, patients, health care economists, corporate executives, and Wall Street analysts describe a war of "all against all" that can turn physicians, hospitals, insurers, drugmakers, and device makers into blood rivals. Rather than collaborating, doctors and hospitals compete. Rather than sharing knowledge, drugmakers and device makers divide value. Rather than thinking about long-term collective goals, the imperatives of an impatient marketplace force health care providers to focus on short-term fiscal imperatives. And so investments in untested bleeding-edge medical technologies crowd out investments in information technology that might, in the long run, not only reduce errors but contain costs.In theory, free market competition should tame health care inflation. In fact, Mahar demonstrates, when it comes to medicine, the traditional laws of supply and demand do not apply. Normally, when supply expands, prices fall. But in the health care industry, as the number and variety of drugs, devices, and treatments multiplies, demand rises to absorb the excess, and prices climb. Meanwhile, the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service system reward health care providers for doing more, not less.In this superbly written book, Mahar shows why doctors must take responsibility for the future of our health care industry. Today, she observes, "physicians have been stripped of their standing as professionals: Insurers address them as vendors (‘Dear Health Care Provider'), drugmakers and device makers see them as customers (someone you might take to lunch or a strip club), while . . . consumers (aka patients) are encouraged to see their doctors as overpaid retailers. . . . Before patients can reclaim their rightful place as the center—and indeed as the raison d'etre—of our health care system," Mahar suggests, "we must once again empower doctors . . . to practice patient-centered medicine—based not on corporate imperatives, doctors' druthers, or even patients' demands," but on the best scientific research available. #### The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court - **Author:** Jeffrey Toobin - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 369 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** February 2009 - **ISBN-13:** 9780385516402 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL119176W **Synopsis:** Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important--and secret--legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.Just in time for the 2008 presidential election--where the future of the Court will be at stake--Toobin reveals an institution at a moment of transition, when decades of conservative disgust with the Court have finally produced a conservative majority, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, presidential power, and church-state relations.Based on exclusive interviews with justices themselves, The Nine tells the story of the Court through personalities--from Anthony Kennedy's overwhelming sense of self-importance to Clarence Thomas's well-tended grievances against his critics to David Souter's odd nineteenth-century lifestyle. There is also, for the first time, the full behind-the-scenes story of Bush v. Gore--and Sandra Day O'Connor's fateful breach with George W. Bush, the president she helped place in office. The Nine is the book bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin was born to write. A CNN senior legal analyst and New Yorker staff writer, no one is more superbly qualified to profile the nine justices. ### 2008 #### The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9-11 - **Author:** Lawrence Wright - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 502 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** December 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9780141029351 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL193645W **Synopsis:** National Book Award FinalistA Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times Book Review Best Book of the YearA gripping narrative that spans five decades, The Looming Tower explains in unprecedented detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Lawrence Wright re-creates firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O'Neill as he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track this new threat. Packed with new information and a deep historical perspective, The Looming Tower is the definitive history of the long road to September 11.From the Trade Paperback edition. #### Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) - **Author:** Tom Vanderbilt - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2008 - **Pages:** 402 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** November 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9780307264787 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6209302W **Synopsis:** A New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the YearThe Washington Post - The Cleveland Plain-Dealer - Rocky Mountain NewsIn this brilliant, lively, and eye-opening investigation, Tom Vanderbilt examines the perceptual limits and cognitive underpinnings that make us worse drivers than we think we are. He demonstrates why plans to protect pedestrians from cars often lead to more accidents. He uncovers who is more likely to honk at whom, and why. He explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our quest for safety, and even identifies the most common mistake drivers make in parking lots. Traffic is about more than driving: it's about human nature. It will change the way we see ourselves and the world around us, and it may even make us better drivers.From the Trade Paperback edition. #### Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness - **Author:** Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2008 - **Pages:** 324 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** October 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9780141040011 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3936258W **Synopsis:** Thaler and Sunstein develop libertarian paternalism as a middle path between command-and-control and strict-neutrality choice architectures. Libertarian paternalism protects humans against their damaging psychological traits (inertia, bounded rationality, undue influence) by exploiting those habits to nudge people into making better choices. #### Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life - **Author:** Barbara Kingsolver - **Topic:** Travel & Memoir - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 370 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** August 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9780062020062 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1846871W **Synopsis:** Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain."Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ."Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet."This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air." #### Shaping Things - **Author:** Bruce Sterling - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2005 - **Pages:** 149 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** July 2008 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1888034W #### The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - **Author:** Nassim Nicholas Taleb - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 2005 - **Pages:** 475 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** May 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9780593243657 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3295030W **Synopsis:** From the critically acclaimed author of Fooled by Randomness, a book about the impact of improbable events on every aspect of life. #### Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames - **Author:** Mia Consalvo - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 240 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** April 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9780262251211 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL9281256W **Synopsis:** "In Cheating, Mia Consalvo investigates how players choose to play games and what happens when they can't always play the way they'd like. She explores a broad range of player behavior, including cheating (alone and in groups); examines the varying ways that players and industry define cheating; describes how the game industry itself has helped systematize cheating; and studies online cheating in context in an online ethnography of Final Fantasy XI."--Jacket. #### How Doctors Think - **Author:** Jerome Groopman - **Topic:** Health & Medicine - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 320 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** March 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9780739491676 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL7976337W **Synopsis:** A physician discusses the thought patterns and actions that lead to misdiagnosis on the part of healthcare providers and suggests methods that patients can use to help doctors assess conditions more accurately. #### The World Without Us - **Author:** Alan Weisman - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 428 - **Picked by:** Jamie - **Read:** February 2008 - **ISBN-13:** 9781429917216 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2746364W **Synopsis:** The World Without Us, an intriguing peek inside the impact homo sapiens have on the world around us and what will be left when we cease to exist. Alan Weisman intelligently intertwines the affect we have on the Earth and its ecosystems and the way we have damaged it, the things nature can't undo. A tremendous report on the ways we have killed the flora and fauna and how we will ultimately exterminate ourselves, bringing all that is left of human civilization with us. ~ Written by an 11 year old ### 2007 #### Beautiful Evidence - **Author:** Edward Tufte - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 213 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** December 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9781930824164 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2824008W **Synopsis:** Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates visual information. Beautiful Evidence is about how seeing turns into showing, how data and evidence turn into explanation. The book identifies excellent and effective methods for showing nearly every kind of information, suggests many new designs (including sparklines), and provides analytical tools for assessing the credibility of evidence presentations (which are seen from both sides: how to produce and how to consume presentations). For alert consumers of presentations, there are chapters on diagnosing evidence corruption and PowerPoint pitches. Beautiful Evidence concludes with two chapters that leave the world of pixel and paper flatland representations - and move onto seeing and thinking in space land, the real-land of three-space and time. Edward Rolf Tufte (born 1942 in Kansas City, Missouri to Virginia and Edward E. Tufte), a professor emeritus of statistics, graphic design, and political economy at Yale University has been described by The New York Times as "the Leonardo da Vinci of Data". He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Tufte has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. Tufte currently resides in Cheshire, Connecticut. He periodically travels around the United States to offer one-day workshops on data presentation and information graphics. http://www.edwardtufte.com #### Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain - **Author:** Oliver Sacks - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 382 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** October 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9781035068371 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL277255W **Synopsis:** Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does–humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people–from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth; from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds–for everything but music. Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia. Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why. #### The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - **Author:** Marc Levinson - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 400 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** September 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9780691170817 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4988033W **Synopsis:** In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.--From publisher description. #### Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think - **Author:** Marc Levinson - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 824 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** July 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9780596515980 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19396663W **Synopsis:** How do the experts solve difficult problems in software development? In this unique and insightful book, leading computer scientists offer case studies that reveal how they found unusual, carefully designed solutions to high-profile projects. You will be able to look over the shoulder of major coding and design experts to see problems through their eyes. This is not simply another design patterns book, or another software engineering treatise on the right and wrong way to do things. The authors think aloud as they work through their project's architecture, the tradeoffs made in its construction, and when it was important to break rules. Beautiful Code is an opportunity for master coders to tell their story. All author royalties will be donated to Amnesty International. #### Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - **Author:** David Gibbons - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Published:** 1993 - **Pages:** 215 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** June 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9781563897597 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL276032W **Synopsis:** Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form. #### Watchmen - **Author:** Alan Moore - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1987 - **Pages:** 416 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** June 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9780606357425 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2897798W **Synopsis:** "This book examines each of the series' twelve issues in unprecedented detail, moving page by page and panel by panel to reveal the hidden foundations of this milestone in modern storytelling. Edited with notes by Leslie S. Klinger, this new edition draws upon critical and scholastic commentary, in-depth interviews with Dave Gibbons, and previously unseen original source material. Klinger provides the reader with a unique and comprehensive view of Watchmen as both a singular artistic achievement and a transformative event in the history of comics as a medium. Set in a world in which history has been forever altered by the existence of superheroes, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' monumental graphic novel Watchmen is one of the most influential comic book series of all time. Following two generations of masked crime-fighters from the end of World War II to the height of the Cold War, this compelling tale unfolds from a simple murder mystery into an epic saga of power, corruption and the ultimate meaning of humanity. More than 30 years after it was first published, Moore and Gibbons' masterpiece continues to inspire and entertain readers around the world. Named one of Time magazine's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, Watchmen has won countless critical accolades and honors, including the Eisner Award and the Hugo Award"-- #### The Mythical Man-Month - **Author:** Frederick P. Brooks Jr. - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 1975 - **Pages:** 195 - **Picked by:** David - **Read:** April 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9780201835953 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3510570W **Synopsis:** Classic text on the human side of software engineering, containing essays on the management of software teams, projections about how computer languages and tools will evolve, and philosophical speculation. Unlike most other books about computing, Brooks' work has been remarkably enduring, remaining in print for at least four decades. The book is most famous for its statement of Brooks' Law: "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". #### Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill - **Author:** Matthieu Ricard - **Topic:** Philosophy & Religion - **Published:** 2007 - **Pages:** 304 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** March 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9780316376532 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21562807W **Synopsis:** "In his ... book, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard shows that happiness is not just an emotion, but a skill that can be developed. Free of jargon, Happiness contains simple exercises that will train the mind to recognize and pursue happiness by concentrating on the fundamental things in life, and in doing so change the way we view the world"-- Back cover. #### The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More - **Author:** Chris Anderson - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 224 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** January 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9781401302375 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4091759W **Synopsis:** The New York Times bestseller that introduced the business world to a future that’s already here—now in a new edition with a new chapter about Long Tail Marketing and a new epilogue.Winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book of the YearIn the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses—the endlessly long tail of that same curve. #### The Road - **Author:** Cormac McCarthy - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 200 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** January 2007 - **ISBN-13:** 9780330447539 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL40873W **Synopsis:** Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods. Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father hope to avoid the marauders, reach a milder climate, and perhaps locate some remnants of civilization still worthy of that name. They possess only what they can scavenge to eat, and the rags they wear and the heat of their own bodies are all the shelter they have. A pistol with only a few bullets is their only defense besides flight. Before them the father pushes a shopping cart filled with blankets, cans of food and a few other assets, like jars of lamp oil or gasoline siphoned from the tanks of abandoned vehicles—the cart is equipped with a bicycle mirror so that they will not be surprised from behind. Through encounters with other survivors brutal, desperate or pathetic, the father and son are both hardened and sustained by their will, their hard-won survivalist savvy, and most of all by their love for each other. They struggle over mountains, navigate perilous roads and forests reduced to ash and cinders, endure killing cold and freezing rainfall. Passing through charred ghost towns and ransacking abandoned markets for meager provisions, the pair battle to remain hopeful. They seek the most rudimentary sort of salvation. However, in The Road, such redemption as might be permitted by their circumstances depends on the boy’s ability to sustain his own instincts for compassion and empathy in opposition to his father’s insistence upon their mutual self-interest and survival at all physical and moral costs. The Road was the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. ### 2006 #### The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - **Author:** Michael Pollan - **Topic:** Travel & Memoir - **Published:** 2006 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** October 2006 - **ISBN-13:** 9781504044844 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL28339036W #### Stumbling on Happiness - **Author:** Daniel Gilbert - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2006 - **Pages:** 336 - **Picked by:** David - **Read:** October 2006 - **ISBN-13:** 9780676978582 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15840192W **Synopsis:** A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we're so lousy at predicting what will make us happy -- and what we can do about it.Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn't gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off?Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.From the Hardcover edition. #### Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - **Author:** Jack Weatherford - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** July 2006 - **ISBN-13:** 9781491513705 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8162628W **Synopsis:** The name Genghis Khan often conjures the image of a relentless, bloodthirsty barbarian on horseback leading a ruthless band of nomadic warriors in the looting of the civilized world. But the surprising truth is that Genghis Khan was a visionary leader whose conquests joined backward Europe with the flourishing cultures of Asia to trigger a global awakening, an unprecedented explosion of technologies, trade, and ideas. In Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford, the only Western scholar ever to be allowed into the Mongols' "Great Taboo"--Genghis Khan's homeland and forbidden burial site--tracks the astonishing story of Genghis Khan and his descendants, and their conquest and transformation of the world. Fighting his way to power on the remote steppes of Mongolia, Genghis Khan developed revolutionary military strategies and weaponry that emphasized rapid attack and siege warfare, which he then brilliantly used to overwhelm opposing armies in Asia, break the back of the Islamic world, and render the armored knights of Europe obsolete. Under Genghis Khan, the Mongol army never numbered more than 100,000 warriors, yet it subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans conquered in four hundred. With an empire that stretched from Siberia to India, from Vietnam to Hungary, and from Korea to the Balkans, the Mongols dramatically redrew the map of the globe, connecting disparate kingdoms into a new world order. But contrary to popular wisdom, Weatherford reveals that the Mongols were not just masters of conquest, but possessed a genius for progressive and benevolent rule. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan's accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination. Genghis Khan was an innovative leader, the first ruler in many conquered countries to put the power of law above his own power, encourage religious freedom, create public schools, grant diplomatic immunity, abolish torture, and institute free trade. The trade routes he created became lucrative pathways for commerce, but also for ideas, technologies, and expertise that transformed the way people lived. The Mongols introduced the first international paper currency and postal system and developed and spread revolutionary technologies like printing, the cannon, compass, and abacus. They took local foods and products like lemons, carrots, noodles, tea, rugs, playing cards, and pants and turned them into staples of life around the world. The Mongols were the architects of a new way of life at a pivotal time in history. In Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford resurrects the true history of Genghis Khan, from the story of his relentless rise through Mongol tribal culture to the waging of his devastatingly successful wars and the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed. This dazzling work of revisionist history doesn't just paint an unprecedented portrait of a great leader and his legacy, but challenges us to reconsider how the modern world was made.From the Hardcover edition. #### Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community - **Author:** Robert Putnam - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2000 - **Pages:** 544 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** June 2006 - **ISBN-13:** 9781982130848 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4291077W **Synopsis:** "Updated to include a new chapter about the influence of social media and the Internet—the 20th anniversary edition of Bowling Alone remains a seminal work of social analysis, and its examination of what happened to our sense of community remains more relevant than ever in today’s fractured America. Twenty years, ago, Robert Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolized a significant social change that became the basis of the acclaimed bestseller, Bowling Alone, which The Washington Post called “a very important book” and Putnam, “the de Tocqueville of our generation.” Bowling Alone surveyed in detail Americans’ changing behavior over the decades, showing how we had become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether it’s with the PTA, church, clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. In the revised edition of his classic work, Putnam shows how our shrinking access to the “social capital” that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing still poses a serious threat to our civic and personal health, and how these consequences have a new resonance for our divided country today. He includes critical new material on the pervasive influence of social media and the internet, which has introduced previously unthinkable opportunities for social connection—as well as unprecedented levels of alienation and isolation. At the time of its publication, Putnam’s then-groundbreaking work showed how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction, and how the loss of social capital is felt in critical ways, acting as a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, and affecting our health in other ways. While the ways in which we connect, or become disconnected, have changed over the decades, his central argument remains as powerful and urgent as ever: mending our frayed social capital is key to preserving the very fabric of our society"--Simon & Schuster. #### Across Realtime - **Author:** Vernor Vinge - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 1986 - **Pages:** 534 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** May 2006 - **ISBN-13:** 9780671720988 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1975717W **Synopsis:** Anthology containing *The Peace War* and *Marooned in Realtime*. #### The Success of Open Source - **Author:** Steve Weber - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 312 - **Picked by:** David - **Read:** March 2006 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15840214W #### Democratizing Innovation - **Author:** Eric von Hippel - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2005 - **Pages:** 216 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** March 2006 - **ISBN-13:** 9780262285636 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5275396W **Synopsis:** Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centred innovation. ### 2005 #### Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak - **Author:** Kenneth S. Deffeyes - **Topic:** Current Events & People - **Published:** 2005 - **Pages:** 224 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** December 2005 - **ISBN-13:** 9780374707026 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5744857W #### The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture - **Author:** John Battelle - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2005 - **Pages:** 311 - **Picked by:** Tom - **Read:** November 2005 - **ISBN-13:** 9781429514811 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8982019W **Synopsis:** How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture• The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek Bestseller• Finalist for the Goldman Sachs/FT Business Book of the Year AwardWhat does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question—in all its shades of meaning—can unlock the most intractable riddles of business and arguably of human culture itself. And for the past few years, that's exactly what Google has been doing.But The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google's triumph. It's a big- picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology and the enormous impact it's starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, international law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest. #### The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration - **Author:** Robert Axelrod - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 1997 - **Pages:** 232 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** October 2005 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2620281W #### Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - **Author:** Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2005 - **Pages:** 336 - **Picked by:** David - **Read:** August 2005 - **ISBN-13:** 9781554686360 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL278022W **Synopsis:** *A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a ground-breaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: Freakonomics. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of … well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking at things. Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. ButFreakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world. First published in the U.S. in 2005, Freakonomics went on to sell more than 4 million copies around the world, in 35 languages. It also inspired a follow-up book, SuperFreakonomics; a high-profile documentary film; a radio program, and an award-winning blog, which has been called “the most readable economics blog in the universe.” #### The Plot Against America - **Author:** Philip Roth - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 415 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** June 2005 - **ISBN-13:** 9781784703097 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL74664W **Synopsis:** The Plot Against America is a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. It is an alternative history in which Franklin D. Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh. The novel follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various levels. The narrator and central character in the novel is the young Philip, and the care with which his confusion and terror are rendered makes the novel as much about the mysteries of growing up as about American politics. Roth based his novel on the isolationist ideas espoused by Lindbergh in real life as a spokesman for the America First Committee, and on his own experiences growing up in Newark, New Jersey. The novel received praise for the realism of its world and its treatment of topics such as antisemitism, trauma, and the perception of history. The novel depicts the Weequahic section of Newark which includes Weequahic High School from which Roth graduated. In 2005, the novel won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction given by the Society of American Historians. It won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and came in 11th for the 2005 Locus Awards. #### Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age - **Author:** Paul Graham - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 2004 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** April 2005 - **ISBN-13:** 9780596550660 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL27071402W **Synopsis:** This seems to be a duplicate entry of https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2973119W/Hackers_painters #### Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity - **Author:** Lawrence Lessig - **Topic:** Politics & Social Sciences - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 304 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** March 2005 - **ISBN-13:** 9781549608186 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6037024W **Synopsis:** Lessig details the history of copyright law as it pertains to digital media, how it has affected creativity and expression online. Title for the hardcover and PDF versions: Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity #### Divorce Among the Gulls: An Uncommon Look at Human Nature - **Author:** William Jordan - **Topic:** Science and Math - **Published:** 1991 - **Pages:** 205 - **Picked by:** David - **Read:** January 2005 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4128080W ### 2004 #### Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems - **Author:** Billy Collins - **Topic:** Essays & Literature - **Published:** 2001 - **Pages:** 171 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** December 2004 - **ISBN-13:** 9781588360953 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL108869W **Synopsis:** Offers a collection of witty, emotional, and direct poems by the popular and critically acclaimed poet, including selections from his four previous collections and new works such as "Man Listening to a Disc," about headphones. #### The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less - **Author:** Barry Schwartz - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 273 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** October 2004 - **ISBN-13:** 9780061461545 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL272375W **Synopsis:** In the spirit of [Alvin Toffler](/authors/OL433058A)’s [*Future Shock*](/works/OL2869043W), a social critique of our obsession with choice, and how it contributes to anxiety, dissatisfaction and regret. This paperback includes a new P.S. section with author interviews, insights, features, suggested readings, and more.Whether we’re buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions--both big and small--have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented.We assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression.In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice--the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish--becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice--from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs--has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make. #### When We Were Orphans - **Author:** Kazuo Ishiguro - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2000 - **Pages:** 401 - **Picked by:** Scott - **Read:** October 2004 - **ISBN-13:** 9780571225408 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL59042W **Synopsis:** 'You seldom read a novel that so convinces you it is extending the possibilities of fiction.' Sunday TimesEngland, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Moving between London and Shanghai of the inter-war years, When We Were Orphans is a remarkable story of memory, intrigue and the need to return. #### Wisdom of Crowds - **Author:** James Surowiecki - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2004 - **Pages:** 336 - **Picked by:** Dan - **Read:** July 2004 - **ISBN-13:** 9780385721707 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8036447W **Synopsis:** In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant — better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future. Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world. The story is told of the first observations of this effect, through to anecdotes of the effect in modern economics and psychology. The book not heavy on statistics, and has prompted much research since its publication. The title is an allusion to the famous phrase, the "madness of crowds". #### Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe - **Author:** Laurence Bergreen - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 2003 - **Pages:** 512 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** May 2004 - **ISBN-13:** 9780062890481 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2655768W #### Pompeii - **Author:** Robert Harris - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction - **Published:** 2003 - **Pages:** 368 - **Picked by:** Brad - **Read:** April 2004 - **ISBN-13:** 9780345475671 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4297223W **Synopsis:** Historical fiction about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD from the perspective of Marcus Attilius, an *aquarius* (hydraulic engineer) responsible for Aqua Augusta, the regional aqueduct. ### 2003 #### Quicksilver - **Author:** Neal Stephenson - **Topic:** Science Fiction & Fiction (Fiction) - **Published:** 2003 - **Pages:** 927 - **Picked by:** Erik - **Read:** September 2003 - **ISBN-13:** 9780099410683 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL38495W **Synopsis:** Volume One of The Baroque Cycle (Not to be confused with [Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle #1](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18199543W/Quicksilver)) Quicksilver is a massive, exuberant and wildly ambitious historical novel that's also Neal Stephenson's eagerly awaited prequel to Cryptonomicon--his pyrotechnic reworking of the 20th century, from World War II codebreaking and disinformation to the latest issues of Internet data privacy. Quicksilver, "Volume One of the Baroque Cycle", backtracks to another time of high intellectual ferment: the late 17th century, with the natural philosophers of England's newly formed Royal Society questioning the universe and dissecting everything that moves. One founding member, the Rev John Wilkins, really did write science fiction and a book on cryptography--but this isn't history as we know it, for here his code book is called not Mercury but Cryptonomicon. And although the key political schemers of Charles II's government still have initials spelling the word CABAL, their names are all different... While towering geniuses like Newton and Leibniz decode nature itself, bizarre adventures (merely beginning with the Great Plague and Great Fire) happen to the fictional Royal Society member Daniel Waterhouse, who knows everyone but isn't quite bright enough for cutting-edge science. Two generations of Daniel's family appear in Cryptonomicon, as does a descendant of the Shaftoes who here are soldiers and vagabonds. Other links include the island realm of Qwghlm with its impossible language and the mysterious, seemingly ageless alchemist Enoch Root. As the reign of Charles II gives way to that of James II and then William of Orange, Stephenson traces the complex lines of finance and power that form the 17th-century Internet. Gold and silver, lead and (repeatedly) mercury or quicksilver flow in glittering patterns between centres of marketing and intrigue in England, Germany, France and Holland. Paper flows as well: stocks, shares, scams and letters holding layers of concealed code messages. Binary code? Yes, even that had already been invented and described by Francis Bacon. Quicksilver is crammed with unexpected incidents, fascinating digressions and deep-laid plots. Who'd believe that Eliza, a Qwghlmian slave girl liberated from a Turkish harem by mad Jack Shaftoe (King of the Vagabonds) could become a major player in European finance and politics? Still less believable, but all too historically authentic, are the appalling medical procedures of the time--about which we learn a lot. There are frequent passages of high comedy, like the lengthy description of a foppish earl's costume which memorably explains that someone seemed to have been painted in glue before "shaking and rolling him in a bin containing thousands of black silk doilies". This is a huge, exhausting read, full of rewards and quirky insights that no other author could have created. Fantastic or farcical episodes sometimes clash strangely with the deep cruelty and suffering of 17th-century realism. Recommended, though not to the faint-hearted. ---------- Book One: [Quicksilver](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18199543W/Quicksilver) Book Two: [King of the Vagabonds](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL38479W/King_of_the_Vagabonds) Book Three: [Odalisque](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL38481W/Odalisque) #### The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - **Author:** Steven Pinker - **Topic:** Brain & Psychology - **Published:** 2002 - **Pages:** 550 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** August 2003 - **ISBN-13:** 9780713992564 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL477826W **Synopsis:** In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense. #### My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World - **Author:** Julian Dibbell - **Topic:** Technology - **Published:** 1998 - **Pages:** 352 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** April 2003 - **ISBN-13:** 9781841150574 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1856237W #### The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization - **Author:** Thomas L. Friedman - **Topic:** History & Economics - **Published:** 1999 - **Pages:** 496 - **Picked by:** John - **Read:** April 2003 - **ISBN-13:** 9780965885942 - **Open Library:** https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3740414W **Synopsis:** As the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman has traveled to the four corners of the globe, interviewing people from all walks of contemporary life - Brazilian peasants in the Amazon rain forest, new entrepreneurs in Indonesia, Islamic students in Teheran, and the financial wizards on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. Now Friedman has drawn on his years on the road to produce an engrossing and original look at the new international system that, more than anything else, is shaping world affairs today: globalization. His argument can be summarized quite simply. Globalization is not just a phenomenon and not just a passing trend. It is the international system that replaced the Cold War system. Globalization is the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders, in a way that is creating a single global market and, to some degree, a global village. With vivid stories and a set of original terms and concepts, Friedman shows us how to see this new system. He dramatizes the conflict of "the Lexus and the olive tree" - the tension between the globalization system and ancient forces of culture, geography, tradition, and community. He also details the powerful backlash that globalization produces among those who feel brutalized by it, and he spells out what we all need to do to keep this system in balance.