Books

The Dark Talent Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz infiltrates the Highbrary itself, in the book where the series stops joking and the unreliable narrator finally costs him something. The Day of the Locust Nathanael West Hollywood's failures and hangers-on, circling a film industry that has no use for them. 1 recommender The Dearly Beloved Cara Wall Two ministers, two wives, one congregation, and faith treated as a real intellectual problem. 1 recommender The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories Horacio Quiroga Tales of horror and the Latin American jungle from the writer often called the Poe of South America. 1 recommender The Deep End of the Ocean Jacquelyn Mitchard A family is upended when a three-year-old vanishes from a hotel lobby, in the debut novel that became the first Oprah’s Book Club pick. 1 recommender The Deer Park Norman Mailer A war hero in a desert resort town, deciding what his own life story is worth on the open market. 1 recommender The Deficit Myth Stephanie Kelton An economist's case for rethinking government debt through modern monetary theory. 1 recommender The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Carl Sagan Sagan finished it while dying: alien abduction, faith healing, witch trials, and the Baloney Detection Kit that has outlived almost everything else on the subject. 1 recommender The Descent of Man Charles Darwin Darwin turns evolution on his own species, and is at his least guarded when the subject reaches imagination, music and beauty. 1 recommender The Devil Finds Work James Baldwin Baldwin on the movies he grew up on, and what they were quietly teaching him about himself. 1 recommender The Devils of Loudun Aldous Huxley Huxley's study of a 17th-century French possession scandal, and how hysteria and power destroy individual autonomy. 1 recommender The Devotion of Suspect X Keigo Higashino A murder, and a brilliant neighbour who helps cover it up. Less a whodunit than a duel of intellects. 1 recommender The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 4 Anaïs Nin The years Nin hand-printed her own books because publishers refused them, recorded in the diary she treated as her real work. 1 recommender The Dichotomy of Leadership Jocko Willink Every leadership virtue has an opposite that is also true. The skill is knowing which one today calls for. The Dictionary of Lost Words Pip Williams A girl raised beneath the making of the Oxford English Dictionary collects the words its editors threw away. 1 recommender The Dip Seth Godin Quitting the wrong things fast is a skill, not a failure: winners quit constantly, just not in the dip before the payoff The Discovery of Insulin Michael Bliss Diabetes was a death sentence until a Toronto laboratory changed that in the 1920s, and then everyone involved began fighting over the credit. 1 recommender The Divine Reality Hamza Andreas Tzortzis An Islamic case for God against atheist arguments. 2 recommenders The Double Standard Jody McIntyre, Mohammed Hijab McIntyre and Hijab argue that Western media applies unequal standards to coverage of Israel and Palestine. The Downstairs Girl Stacey Lee A Chinese American maid in 1890 Atlanta secretly writes the city's most talked-about advice column from a hidden basement. 1 recommender The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Detained for a crime an algorithm predicts from her dreams, in a system that keeps moving the release conditions. 1 recommender The Driver’s Seat Muriel Spark Lise flies south on holiday looking for a particular kind of man, and Spark tells you early how it ends. 1 recommender The Drowned World J. G. Ballard Solar radiation has melted the ice caps and drowned the cities, and the survivors find their minds regressing along with the landscape. 1 recommender The Dutch House Ann Patchett Two siblings put out of the family house, and fifty years of parking outside to look at it. 1 recommender The E-Myth Revisited Michael E. Gerber Most small businesses fail because they are started by technicians, people good at the craft who assume that is the same as running a business. 2 recommenders The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Peter Frankopan Climate as the driver of human history, across an enormous span and a great deal of evidence. 1 recommender The Economic Approach: Unpublished Writings of Gary S. Becker Gary S. Becker Unpublished writing from the economist who applied price theory to crime, marriage and discrimination. 1 recommender The Edible Woman Margaret Atwood A woman's body starts refusing food as her engagement closes around her, in the comic first novel Atwood wrote before the term existed. The Effective Executive Peter F. Drucker Drucker's timeless guide to the habits that make executives effective, starting with managing their own time and decisions. 2 recommenders The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Visionary of Weimar Berlin Daniel Brook Magnus Hirschfeld built the world's first institute for sexual science, and the Nazis burned it. 1 recommender The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth Nicolas Niarchos The cobalt in your phone comes out of Congolese mines, and the supply chain is worse than you think. 1 recommender The Elephant in the Brain Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson Much of human behaviour is driven by hidden, self-serving motives we would rather not admit, even to ourselves. 1 recommender The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Vuong Ocean Vuong's novel follows a lost young man in a Connecticut town who becomes caretaker to an elderly widow with dementia. 1 recommender The Emperor’s Soul Brandon Sanderson A condemned art forger has a hundred days to counterfeit a murdered emperor's soul, convincingly enough to fool the men who hired her. The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis Richard Whatmore It was supposed to end in progress and ended in pessimism, with its own best minds watching empire and war eat the liberty they had spent their lives theorising. 1 recommender The End of History and the Last Man Francis Fukuyama Fukuyama's landmark argument that liberal democracy may be the final form of human government. 1 recommender