Books

The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe Test pilots and the first astronauts, and the unnamed quality they were all measured against. 1 recommender The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt Why decent people disagree so bitterly about politics and religion. Intuition comes first, and reasoning mostly arrives to justify it. 3 recommenders The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline Yasheng Huang Exams and stability made China successful for a thousand years, and may now be the problem. 1 recommender The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought Wang Hui A landmark Chinese work of intellectual history, arguing modernity was not simply imported from the West. 1 recommender The Rithmatist Brandon Sanderson At a school where chalk drawings fight for their lives, a talentless student is the only one paying attention when Rithmatists start disappearing. The River Is Waiting Wally Lamb Wally Lamb's novel follows a young father whose life collapses after a terrible accident sends him to prison. 1 recommender The River of Consciousness Oliver Sacks The essays Sacks chose two weeks before he died: Darwin flowers, Freud as neurologist, memory and plagiarism, and the speed at which perception actually runs. 1 recommender The Road Cormac McCarthy A father and son walk through a burned, lifeless America, carrying the fire of their bond, in McCarthy's stark Pulitzer-winning novel. 1 recommender The Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell Orwell's documentary of poverty in England's industrial north, paired with a candid argument about socialism and class. The Rock Says… Dwayne Johnson, Joe Layden The wrestler's bestselling autobiography, tracing his path from a struggling third-generation grappler to WWE's most electrifying superstar. The Rules of Magic Alice Hoffman The Owens siblings come of age in 1960s New York under a family curse that makes loving anyone dangerous. 1 recommender The Sales Acceleration Formula Mark Roberge HubSpot's former sales chief on building a sales team as a repeatable, measurable system rather than an art. 1 recommender The Sanatorium Sarah Pearse A converted Alpine tuberculosis sanatorium, now a luxury hotel, cut off by a storm as guests begin disappearing. 1 recommender The Sari Shop Rupa Bajwa A shop assistant in Amritsar unfolds saris for women whose lives he will never enter. 1 recommender The Scent Keeper Erica Bauermeister A girl raised on a remote island among bottled scents must work out how much of her childhood her father invented. 1 recommender The Science Delusion Rupert Sheldrake A biologist challenges what he calls the dogmas of modern science. 1 recommender The Science of Free Will: How Determinism Affects Everything from the Future of AI to Traffic to God to Bees Samir Varma A physicist's case that determinism and free will are compatible, and that the difference shows up everywhere. 1 recommender The Scientific Deception of the New Atheists Mohammed Hijab An argument that New Atheist writers overstate what science can prove. The Score Takes Care of Itself Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh The legendary NFL coach's leadership philosophy: obsess over the standard of performance and the details, and the wins, the score, will follow on their own. 1 recommender The Scrivener’s Bones Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz heads into the Library of Alexandria to find his missing father, where the librarians will trade you anything for your soul. The Sealed Nectar Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri An award-winning English biography of the Prophet Muhammad. 1 recommender The Second Mountain David Brooks A fulfilling life has two mountains: the first about career and status, the second, often reached through a valley of suffering, about something larger. 1 recommender The Secret Julie Garwood A Scottish highlander marries an Englishwoman to settle a debt, which goes as expected. 1 recommender The Secret of the Old Clock Carolyn Keene The first Nancy Drew mystery, and the reason a generation of girls expected to solve things themselves. 1 recommender The Secrets We Kept Lara Prescott The true-ish story of the CIA operation that turned Doctor Zhivago into a weapon, told largely by the women who typed it. 1 recommender The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins reframes evolution from the gene's point of view, casting living things as vehicles built to carry genes forward. 1 recommender The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes A retired man receives a bequest that proves his version of his own youth was a convenient edit. 1 recommender The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Taylor Jenkins Reid A reclusive, ageing Hollywood icon finally tells the truth about her glamorous, ruthless rise, and about all seven husbands. 1 recommender The Shattered Lens Brandon Sanderson The librarians besiege Mokia with an army of living romance novels, and Alcatraz has only a talent for breaking things to stop them. The Shining Stephen King A failing writer takes his family to mind an empty hotel, which has been waiting for exactly him. 1 recommender The Shipping News Annie Proulx A failed newspaperman takes his daughters to Newfoundland and slowly stops apologising for existing. 1 recommender The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway The complete short fiction, where the method was worked out before the novels used it. 1 recommender The Shortest History of Ireland James Hawes Two millennia compressed into a short opinionated narrative, from the Normans through the plantations and the Famine to partition, with maps and actual judgements. 1 recommender The Simple Path to Wealth J L Collins Built from letters to his daughter, personal finance boiled down to a few durable principles: avoid debt, spend less than you earn, and invest simply. 1 recommender The Singularity Is Near Ray Kurzweil The prediction that machine intelligence will overtake ours, dated and argued rather than merely asserted. 1 recommender The Sirah of the Prophet Yasir Qadhi A single-volume life of the Prophet that shows its sources openly and marks plainly where the earliest accounts disagree with one another.