Books

Leonardo da Vinci Walter Isaacson From thousands of pages of Leonardo's notebooks, a case that his art and his science were the same relentless curiosity Less Than One Joseph Brodsky 1 recommender Less: A Novel Andrew Sean Greer A minor novelist accepts every literary invitation on earth to avoid attending his ex's wedding. 1 recommender Lessons from Surah al-Kahf Yasir Qadhi The chapter Muslims read every Friday, opened up through its four strange narratives and what each one asks of the reader. Lessons from Surah Yusuf Yasir Qadhi The one Qur'anic story told start to finish in a single chapter, read as a study of patience under sustained injustice. Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season Forough Farrokhzad Frank verse about desire scandalised Tehran, and a car crash ended it at thirty-three. Iran most important woman poet, gathered and translated into English. 1 recommender Let Us Descend Jesmyn Ward Jesmyn Ward's novel follows an enslaved girl sold south, guided by spirits, on a harrowing journey through the antebellum South. 1 recommender Letter from the Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King Jr. Written in the margins of a newspaper in a jail cell in 1963, and addressed to clergymen who had urged patience. 1 recommender Letters Oliver Sacks Thousands of letters across fifty years, showing the obscurity, the motorcycles and a warmth Sacks kept out of his published work. 1 recommender Letters of Note: Grief Shaun Usher Four centuries of letters written in the face of loss, resisting consolation-by-formula and gathering the strange, furious, tender things people actually write when someone dies. 1 recommender Letters on Ethics Seneca Seneca's collected letters to Lucilius on Stoic living, in a University of Chicago Press edition. 1 recommender Letters to a Young Contrarian Christopher Hitchens Hitchens on dissent as a habit of mind, written as letters of advice in the Art of Mentoring series. 1 recommender Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary Rainer Maria Rilke Ten letters to a nineteen-year-old officer cadet who asked whether his poems were any good, answered with advice about solitude, patience and living the questions. 1 recommender Letters to Olga Vaclav Havel Written from prison under rules forbidding humour, foreign words and corrections, and within those constraints Havel built a sustained philosophy of responsibility and being. 1 recommender Liar’s Poker Michael Lewis An insider's account of a 1980s bond desk, written as a warning and read by a generation as a career advertisement. Liberace Darden Asbury Pyron The sequinned showman taken seriously as an American original rather than a punchline. 1 recommender Liberalism’s Last Man: Hayek in the Age of Political Capitalism Vikash Yadav Hayek reread for an age in which states and capital have grown comfortable together. 1 recommender Liberty Defined Ron Paul Fifty short essays, from abortion to Zionism, applying Paul's libertarian principles to concrete issues, often against both parties' orthodoxy. Lies and Sorcery Elsa Morante Three generations of Sicilian women, narrated by a descendant who says at the outset that the family stories are lies. Published 1948, unabridged in English at last. 1 recommender Lies the Government Told You Andrew Napolitano Two centuries of official claims set against the record, in a judge's format. Life 3.0 Max Tegmark MIT physicist Max Tegmark's wide-angle look at how artificial intelligence could reshape work, war, justice, and what it means to be human, and how to steer it toward the best outcomes. 1 recommender Life After Death Alan F. Segal How Western religions came to believe in heaven, resurrection and the soul, traced from ancient roots. 1 recommender Life and Death of the Spanish Republic Henry Buckley A correspondent who knew Spain's leaders first hand tells the story of the Republic's rise and fall. 1 recommender Life and Fate Vasily Grossman Stalingrad seen whole, by a war correspondent who put Nazism and Stalinism in the same frame. 1 recommender Life and How to Survive It Robin Skynner, John Cleese Robin Skynner and John Cleese return to their question-and-answer format to talk about relationships and how people get through life. Life Before Man Margaret Atwood Three people circle each other after a suicide, in a museum that keeps reminding them how briefly any of it will register. Life Force Tony Robbins Robbins tours the frontier of regenerative medicine, from gene therapy to stem cells, for what is actually available now Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain Twain's memoir of piloting steamboats on the pre-war Mississippi, and returning to a river transformed, the source-world of his great novels. Light in August William Faulkner William Faulkner's novel weaves together a pregnant wanderer, a haunted drifter, and a disgraced minister in the Deep South. 1 recommender Like a Sky Inside Jakuta Alikavazovic A night locked inside the Louvre, and the father who once asked how she would steal the Mona Lisa. 1 recommender Like a Virgin Richard Branson Branson answers the real questions entrepreneurs ask, funding, hiring, marketing cheap, in short contrarian chapters that argue against the MBA playbook. Like Silicon from Clay: What Ancient Jewish Wisdom Can Teach Us About AI Michael M. Rosen What the rabbis said about golems, creation and moral agency, brought to bear on artificial intelligence. 1 recommender Lila Marilynne Robinson Marilynne Robinson tells the story of the drifter who becomes the young wife of Gilead's aging minister, and the hard life she left behind. 1 recommender Limitless Jim Kwik The brain coach's system for learning faster and remembering more, built on mindset, motivation, and method, and the belief that learning is trainable. Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis Jeanna Smialek The Federal Reserve went from lender of last resort to backstop for almost everything. 1 recommender Linchpin Seth Godin The people who matter at work are not the compliant ones: a case for becoming impossible to replace