Books

Deep Work Cal Newport The ability to focus without distraction on demanding work is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable, which makes it a superpower. 1 recommender Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina’s $100 Billion Debt Restructuring Gregory Makoff Argentina defaulted, a hedge fund seized a warship, and the courts spent fifteen years sorting it out. 1 recommender Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman Charles Dunst Democracies are not doomed against strongmen, provided they fix what made people lose faith. 1 recommender Defiant Brandon Sanderson The finale of the Skyward series, where Spensa must decide what she is willing to become to end a war that has outlived its reasons. Democracy’s Double Helix: Participation, Equality and Revolution in Early Modern Europe Lars Behrisch Semi-democratic decision-making began, Behrisch argues, not from any ideal of representation but from the practical business of assembling armies and raising money. 1 recommender Democracy’s Resilience to Populism’s Threat Kurt Weyland Populists win elections far more often than they dismantle democracies, and the data says so. 1 recommender Democratic Drain: Global Migration and the Struggle for Political Freedom Justin Gest Emigration removes the people most likely to demand reform, so migration can weaken freedom in the countries people leave. An argument about exporting dissent. 1 recommender Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver Barbara Kingsolver reimagines David Copperfield in Appalachia, following a boy through foster care, poverty, and the opioid crisis. 1 recommender Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey A season as a ranger in the Utah desert, written by a man with no patience for anyone who arrives by car. 1 recommender Desperately Seeking Something Susan Seidelman From suburban Philadelphia to directing Madonna, one chapter per song title. 1 recommender Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age Frank Close A particle physicist on the decades before the Manhattan Project, including how dangerous the early radiation work was and how many of its practitioners it killed. 1 recommender Devotions Mary Oliver Fifty years of poems the poet chose herself, all arguing that noticing carefully is a moral act. 1 recommender Diary of a Philosophy Student Simone de Beauvoir Beauvoir kept this diary at nineteen, before Sartre, already circling the questions about freedom and the other that would occupy her for the following six decades. 1 recommender Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? Crystal Smith Paul A white Hollywood legend dies and leaves everything to three Black sisters, and the reason reaches back to the studio era. 1 recommender Die with Zero Bill Perkins Spend your wealth on rich experiences while you can still enjoy them, rather than dying with a large unspent balance. 1 recommender Difficult Women Roxane Gay Women the culture calls too much, written without any request for the reader's approval. Dignity in a Digital Age Ro Khanna A congressman's argument for spreading tech's gains beyond a few coastal cities. 1 recommender Direct from Dell Michael Dell Dell explains the inventory-light direct-sales model that made his company a phenomenon, founding it as a teenager and scaling it into a multibillion-dollar business. Dirty Wars Jeremy Scahill An investigation of America's covert wars and targeted killings. 1 recommender Discipline Equals Freedom Jocko Willink Not a book of theory. A blunt manual for the moment the alarm goes off and you would rather not. Discipline Is Destiny Ryan Holiday Self-control as what decides who a talent becomes, and the point at which it curdles into vice. Dispatches Michael Herr Vietnam as it sounded to the men in it, written by a reporter who stopped pretending to be objective. 1 recommender Dispatches from the Edge Anderson Cooper Cooper braids the disasters he covered, from Katrina to the tsunami to Rwanda, with his own private losses, and asks what draws him to the edge. Display of Power Daymond John The FUBU origin story from the inside: how a Queens hustle became a global brand and rewrote the rules of streetwear Disputed Questions Thomas Merton A Trappist monk sets out what choosing solitude actually costs, and why he insisted it was not the same thing as withdrawing from the world. 1 recommender Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War Perry Anderson Six major historians of the First World War, examined for how each explained the catastrophe and which national position each was quietly arguing from. 1 recommender Divine Speech Nouman Ali Khan, Sharif Randhawa The Qur'an approached through the lens of literature, examining its structure, imagery and rhetorical craft. Do the KIND Thing Daniel Lubetzky The KIND founder argues companies needn't choose between profit and purpose, using KIND's rise to teach the AND mindset: healthy and tasty, doing well and good. Do the Work Steven Pressfield Resistance named as the enemy, and treated as a compass pointing at whatever matters most. 1 recommender Doc Watson: A Life in Music Eddie Huffman Blind from infancy and on disability until forty, Doc Watson then became America's greatest flatpicker. 1 recommender Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann A composer buys twenty-four years of genius with syphilis, narrated by a friend writing while the Reich collapses. Mann hardest book and his most direct reckoning. 1 recommender Dominion Tom Holland Why even committed atheists in the West think in categories Christianity invented. 1 recommender Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes A man reads too many chivalric romances and sets out to live inside one. 1 recommender Done and Dusted Lyla Sage A woman comes home to a Wyoming ranch town and to her brother's best friend. 1 recommender Doom and Bloom Campbell Walker An illustrated case for choosing creativity over doom-scrolling in an anxious age, from the artist known online as Struthless. 1 recommender Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World Naomi Klein Naomi Klein kept being mistaken for Naomi Wolf, and followed the confusion somewhere much stranger. 1 recommender