Grab a book off my shelf.
The New York Times tech columnist goes inside the race to build artificial general intelligence — OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind, from Anthropic's founding to Sam Altman's brief ouster, drawn from more than 150 insider interviews and internal memos.
The marketing classic on winning a place in the prospect's mind — why the first in a category wins, how a follower finds the hole the leader left, and why a crowded mind only makes room for a few names.
A young Moroccan sets out for Mecca in 1325 and doesn't come home for 29 years — some 75,000 miles across the medieval Islamic world from West Africa to China, abridged and annotated by the Arabist who retraced his steps.
A Japanese novelist rides the rails of 1938 colonial Taiwan with her Taiwanese interpreter, eating her way down the island — a novel of food, friendship, and the empire sitting between them, in Lin King's translation.
Harari turns from past and future to right now — 21 short essays on work, war, truth, and meaning in an age of algorithms.
A technologist's read on China as an engineering state versus America's lawyerly one — why one builds fast and the other blocks.
A lone astronaut wakes with no memory, light-years from Earth, as humanity's last hope against an extinction-level threat — Weir at his problem-solving, science-nerd best.
A sweeping history of the CIA's covert operations from its origins onward, tracing the agency's secret wars — and their fallout — in America's pursuit of its ideals abroad.
A psychologist takes apart the 'nerd' stereotype, arguing the way we mock brainy, bookish kids quietly steers them away from science and smarts.
Gladwell traces a small band of WWII airmen obsessed with precision bombing, and how their dream of a more humane way to win a war collided with the firebombing of Tokyo.
Faith Martin's Oxford Detective Society mystery series — a cozy whodunit set in and around Oxford.
Book two of the Stormlight Archive — an epic-fantasy doorstopper where a storm-scoured world runs on oaths that literally reforge broken people.
A geopolitical tour of the Indian Ocean, arguing the waters from Africa to Indonesia are where this century's power struggles will play out.
Huckleberry Finn retold from Jim's point of view — sharp, subversive, and one of the most acclaimed novels of 2024.
A street-level history of one of D.C.'s grand avenues, from mansions to embassies to the politics that shaped it.
A con-artist heist fantasy: a crew of elite thieves run an elaborate grift in a Venice-like city until a deadlier player upends the game.
Sinclair's 1906 muckraker exposing Chicago's meatpacking horrors — aimed at labor reform, it ended up reshaping food safety law.
A short, tongue-in-cheek Twain essay mourning the lost craft of the well-told lie.
The cerebral sci-fi collection behind the film Arrival — ideas-first short stories about language, time, and free will.
Standalone fantasy where magic is powered by color and 'Breath,' two estranged princess sisters, and a god who isn't sure he's one.
Book one of the Stormlight Archive — the sprawling, storm-battered epic that launched the whole saga.
Hugo-winning Chinese sci-fi: a first-contact mystery that spirals from the Cultural Revolution to the fate of civilization.
How tiny Portugal seized the Indian Ocean spice trade and built the first global empire — narrative history at full sail.
A heist crew plots to topple an immortal tyrant in a world where swallowing metals grants powers. Sanderson's breakout.
A month-by-month case that the humble oak is the single most important tree for backyard ecosystems.
Wendell Berry's essays on farming, stewardship, and the moral weight of how we treat the land.
Berry's landmark critique of industrial agriculture and the cultural cost of losing the small family farm.
Bill Bryson's very funny, frequently underprepared attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail.
The astonishing story of how a single corporation — the East India Company — conquered India for profit.
A Pulitzer-winning novel told across nine lives and the trees that bind them; activism, loss, and forests.
A chilling history of U.S.-backed anticommunist mass killings during the Cold War, centered on 1960s Indonesia.
Harari's sequel to Sapiens, forecasting a future where data, biotech, and AI reshape what it means to be human.
Gripping investigative reporting from the lawless high seas — slavery, poaching, and crime beyond any nation's reach.
The argument that the airport, not the city, is becoming the organizing hub of the global economy.
Ezra Klein's systems-level explanation of how American politics became identity-driven and self-reinforcing.
Meacham revisits past national crises to argue America's better angels have beaten its demons before.
The wildly popular sweep through human history, from foraging bands to global capitalism.
Verne's classic race against the clock as a Victorian gentleman bets he can circle the globe.
Bryson's witty, fact-packed guided tour of the human body, head to toe.
Argues North America is really eleven rival regional cultures — and history makes more sense once you see them.
The searing as-told-to memoir tracing Malcolm X's path from the streets to the Nation of Islam to a global vision.
A tactical history of the Premier League — how formations and ideas evolved across its eras. Catnip for football nerds.
An insider's take on the U.S.–China AI race and what automation means for jobs and society.
How cyberweapons became states' tool of choice, told through real attacks and shadow conflicts.
Ten maps explaining how mountains, rivers, and coastlines quietly dictate global politics.
A history of Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, tracing how China's remote, restive far west became a fault line between empire and identity.
A biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the forgotten polymath explorer whose idea of nature as one interconnected web reshaped science.
A romp through the summer of 1927 — Lindbergh's flight, Babe Ruth's home runs, and the strange events that made America modern.
A former CIA technical chief's history of the agency's gadget shop — the real hardware behind five decades of spy tricks.
A former CIA operations chief's memoir of the Cold War's covert front lines, from Allende's Chile to arming the Afghan mujahideen.
