Books

Five on a Treasure Island Enid Blyton The first Famous Five adventure: four children, a dog, and a mystery on a small island with a wrecked ship. 1 recommender Fixed John Y. Campbell & Tarun Ramadorai 1 recommender Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic Nabila Ramdani A French-Algerian journalist on the promises of liberty and equality, and the large part of the population to which they were never actually extended. 1 recommender Flamingo Boy Michael Morpurgo Set in the Camargue under occupation, a story of a boy who sees the world differently and the flamingos he protects. Flashlight Susan Choi A father vanishes on a night-time beach walk, and the silence he leaves behind stretches across continents and decades. 2 recommenders Flat Earth News Nick Davies A reporter turns the tools of investigation on his own trade, and finds falsehood and distortion running through the British press. 1 recommender Flesh David Szalay A life recorded as things that happen to a body, with the interior deliberately withheld. 2 recommenders Flight Plan Brian Tracy A pilot files a flight plan, takes off, and is off course most of the way, correcting constantly. Tracy's metaphor for how goals actually get reached. Flights Olga Tokarczuk Olga Tokarczuk's 2007 fragmentary novel on modern travel, translated by Jennifer Croft, winner of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Flux Peggy Orenstein How women juggle work, love and children in a world that has only half changed. Focal Point Brian Tracy Find the one thing in each area of your life where doing it well makes everything else easier, then do that thing first. Focus: The ASML Way, Inside the Power Struggle Over the Most Complex Machine on Earth Marc Hijink One Dutch company makes the machines that make advanced chips, and no one else can. 1 recommender Food in Chinese Culture K. C. Chang The 1977 essay collection that first brought serious academic scrutiny to Chinese food. 1 recommender Food of the Gods Terence McKenna An ethnobotanist’s exploration of humanity’s ancient relationship with psychoactive plants and how altered states shaped human evolution and culture. 1 recommender Food, Health, and Happiness Oprah Winfrey Oprah’s favorite recipes alongside the story of how she reshaped her relationship with food, health, and pleasure. Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan Scott Horton The case that the Afghanistan war was lost in its first year, and that everything after was denial. Football Chuck Klosterman Klosterman on why the violence is inseparable from the meaning, why the sport resists analytics, and how something this awkward became the American game. 1 recommender Footnotes in Gaza Joe Sacco Sacco's graphic reconstruction of two 1956 massacres in Gaza, and of how hard it is to establish what happened. 1 recommender For Those Left Behind Omar Suleiman Islamic guidance on coping with bereavement and loss. Forcing God’s Hand Grace Halsell Grace Halsell examines how end-times theology shaped strands of American political thinking and foreign policy. 1 recommender Forward Andrew Yang Drawing on his presidential and mayoral runs, Yang argues American politics is structurally broken and pitches reforms to loosen the two-party grip. Foundation Isaac Asimov Asimov's genre-defining saga: as a galactic empire decays, a scientist uses "psychohistory" to shorten the coming dark age, founding a colony to preserve knowledge for a better future. 2 recommenders Founding Brothers Joseph J. Ellis Six episodes from the 1790s, told as they were lived, by men with no idea whether the republic would hold. 1 recommender Four Hundred Souls Ibram X. Kendi, Keisha N. Blain A chorus of writers tells four hundred years of African American history, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Four Thousand Weeks Oliver Burkeman The average human life is about four thousand weeks. Not another system for doing more, but an argument for accepting that you never will. 1 recommender Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time Seth D. Kaplan Fix the street before you fix the country: social repair at the scale of a few blocks. 1 recommender Franco Paul Preston The full life of Francisco Franco, from colonial soldier to dictator, stripped of his regime's myths. Frankenstein Mary Shelley A student builds a living man from dead matter, then abandons him, in the novel that invented science fiction. 5 recommenders Franny and Zooey J.D. Salinger Two Glass siblings argue about faith and phoniness across a long afternoon in one apartment. 2 recommenders Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848-1861 Alan Walker The middle volume of what many people call the finest musical biography ever written about anyone. 1 recommender Free Lea Ypi A childhood in the last Stalinist state, and a philosopher's question about what replaced it. 1 recommender Free Agent Nation Daniel Pink Pink's first book, and an early map of the freelance economy: the shift from lifelong employer to a nation of people working for themselves. Free to Choose Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman The Friedmans' accessible case for free markets and personal liberty, written for the general reader. 1 recommender Freedom Jonathan Franzen Jonathan Franzen's portrait of a Midwestern family across decades, tracing marriage, ambition, and the compromises of American freedom. 1 recommender Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism Alan S. Kahan A history of liberalism organised around what it was afraid of rather than what it promised. 1 recommender Freedom Is a Constant Struggle Angela Davis Ferguson and Palestine treated as materially linked rather than as analogies for each other.