Books
Browse the books our people wrote and recommend.
Istanbul
A childhood spent in a city that cannot stop mourning the empire it used to be.
1 recommender
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
The Basecamp founders make the case for the calm company, rejecting hustle and long hours as badges of honour.
1 recommender
It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong
Rights come before governments rather than from them, and a state that claims to grant your freedoms can take them back.
It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful
The artists of Gran Fury turned ACT UP's rage into posters a city could not ignore.
1 recommender
Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy
Between 1943 and 1958 a defeated fascist state with no democratic tradition built a working democracy. De Gasperi did much of it, and is barely remembered.
1 recommender
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
A playbook for social media that treats most posts as "jabs" of value and the occasional "right hook" as the ask, with platform-by-platform examples of what works.
Jack
Marilynne Robinson returns to Gilead to tell the love story of the prodigal Jack Boughton and a Black schoolteacher in segregated St. Louis.
1 recommender
James
Huckleberry Finn retold by Jim, who has been performing his own ignorance the entire time.
1 recommender
James Joyce: A Political Life
A historian of Parnell argues that Joyce was politically engaged all along, and that Parnellism structures the fiction rather than merely decorating its background.
1 recommender
Janis
A Texas outsider who heard the blues and became rock's most exposed voice.
1 recommender
Jannah
Reflections on Paradise as described in Islamic scripture.
Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Feverish, grotesque tales from the founding master of Japanese mystery and horror fiction.
1 recommender
Jerusalem
A man in a caravan versus the council on St George's Day, carrying an argument about England.
1 recommender
Jerusalem
Three thousand years of one city, told through the families, zealots and conquerors who fought over it.
1 recommender
Jerusalem in the Qur’an: An Islamic View of the Destiny of Jerusalem
An Islamic reading of Jerusalem's place in the Qur'an and in the end of history.
Jesse James
Not a Robin Hood but a Confederate insurgent who never accepted the war had ended.
1 recommender
Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church
From John XXIII to Francis: Vatican II, the long reaction against it, the abuse crisis, and the internal politics of an institution of a billion people.
1 recommender
Jewel
Bret Lott's novel follows a Mississippi mother whose life is remade by the birth of a daughter with Down syndrome.
1 recommender
John Lewis
From the Edmund Pettus Bridge to thirty years in Congress, without the sainthood.
1 recommender
John of John
A novel by Douglas Stuart, Booker-winning author of Shuggie Bain, and an Oprah's Book Club selection. A verified summary will follow.
1 recommender
Journals
Notebook pages reproduced as written: lyrics in progress, unsent letters, and long self-argument.
Judgement Day
Reflections on the deeds Islamic tradition says will matter most on the Day of Judgement.
Jump
Harvey's short motivational push to jump off the cliff of safety and build your wings on the way down, betting on faith over fear.
Jung on Alchemy
Selected writings on alchemy as a map of the psyche, edited with an introduction by Nathan Schwartz-Salant.
1 recommender
Jung on Death and Immortality
Jung treated death not as a medical event but as the task the second half of life is organised around, in writing gathered here across five decades.
1 recommender
Just Because
McConaughey's rhyming picture book teaches kids that opposites coexist, you can be brave and scared, strong and gentle, in warm read-aloud couplets.
Just Mercy
A young lawyer takes on a death-row case in Alabama that everyone else has already closed.
1 recommender
Justice Is Coming
The case that popular positions keep losing to organised money, from the founder of The Young Turks.
Kalam Cosmological Arguments
A defense of the kalam family of arguments for the existence of God.
Kant: A Revolution in Thinking
A short route into the philosopher everyone is told to read and almost nobody finishes.
1 recommender
Karl Popper: The Formative Years 1902-1945
The Viennese decades from the archives: the Jewish background he downplayed, the socialist youth politics, and the New Zealand exile where The Open Society was written.
1 recommender
Kathmandu
A city book about Kathmandu, written by someone who stayed long enough to stop being a visitor.
1 recommender
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
A struggling writer declares war on money and respectability, in Orwell's mordant comedy of ambition and compromise.
Kerala, 1956 to the Present: India’s Miracle State
Kerala has India's best social indicators on modest income, and this is the short explanation why.
1 recommender
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Osage grew rich on oil, then began dying, and almost nobody was supposed to notice.
1 recommender
Kin
A novel by Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage, and an Oprah's Book Club selection. A verified summary will follow.
1 recommender
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