Books

The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, II James J. Walsh A 1907 argument that the thirteenth century, not the Renaissance, is where the modern West actually starts. 1 recommender The Three Lives of Cate Kay Kate Fagan A famous author nobody has ever seen finally tells the story of the identities she shed to become her. 1 recommender The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship David Whyte Whyte argues that the commitments to a person, to work and to your own interior life cannot be balanced against one another, only lived at the same time. 1 recommender The Three-Body Problem Liu Cixin A physicist's suicide, a mysterious game, and first contact with a dying alien civilization open this landmark of Chinese science fiction. 2 recommenders The Time Paradox Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd Everyone leans habitually toward past, present or future, and it shapes more than they notice. 1 recommender The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell Ideas spread the way viruses do. Gladwell asks what makes one catch and another die out. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics John Mearsheimer Great powers pursue dominance because nothing above them guarantees survival, whoever is governing. The Traveler: One Man’s Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris Andrea Wulf Georg Forster sailed with Cook at seventeen, changed European nature writing, and died in revolutionary Paris having lost everything he had to his own politics. 2 recommenders The Tree John Fowles Fowles sets his father tidy orchard against tangled woodland, and argues that classifying nature is how we avoid experiencing it. 1 recommender The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding Humberto R. Maturana The 1984 book that gave autopoiesis to a general readership, arguing that living and knowing are one activity. Quietly foundational for systems theory and cognitive science. 1 recommender The Tree Within: The Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz’s Years in India Indranil Chakravarty Octavio Paz spent six years as Mexico's ambassador to India, and it reshaped everything he wrote after. 1 recommender The Trees Percival Everett A Mississippi procedural in which a body will not stay in the morgue, and the joke stops being one. 1 recommender The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents are Hacking the Markets Nathaniel Popper The WallStreetBets crowd took on the hedge funds, and the joke turned into a market event. 1 recommender The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers Zeke Hernandez A business professor makes the economic case for immigration, and cites the numbers rather than the anecdotes. 1 recommender The Turnout Megan Abbott A family ballet school, an outsider inside the building, and the brutality underneath the discipline. 1 recommender The Twelve Tribes of Hattie Ayana Mathis Ayana Mathis follows Hattie and her many children through the Great Migration, in linked stories of a family scattered across the century. 1 recommender The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath Everything that survives from 1950 to 1962, unedited, including what Ted Hughes cut. Ambition, rage and craft at a length that makes the poems look like distillations. 1 recommender The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead Colson Whitehead reimagines the escape network as a literal railroad in a Pulitzer-winning novel of one woman’s flight from slavery. 1 recommender The Undertow Jeff Sharlet A reporter drives through the American right and finds grief where he expected rage. 1 recommender The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution Benjamin Schneider Why American cities have stopped being able to build, and what would have to change to reverse it. 1 recommender The Unforgivable Cristina Campo She published almost nothing and was revered by the handful who read her. Fairy tales, liturgy, attention, and the case for doing very few things exactly. 1 recommender The Untethered Soul Michael A. Singer The constant mental chatter and emotional reaction we mistake for ourselves, and what happens when you stop believing it is you. 3 recommenders The Unwinding of the Miracle Julie Yip-Williams Written for her daughters while dying, by someone whose life had already refused several endings. 1 recommender The Vagabond’s Way Rolf Potts A year of daily fragments on wanderlust and attention, built to be read one page at a time. 1 recommender The Vagina Monologues Eve Ensler The play built from interviews with hundreds of women that became a global movement against gender violence. 1 recommender The Varieties of Religious Experience William James James studies religion by setting doctrine aside and examining what conversion, mysticism and despair actually feel like. 2 recommenders The Vietnam War: A Military History Geoffrey Wawro A military historian takes the war as a campaign to analyse rather than a moral argument to settle: firepower, attrition, and why the operations could not deliver. 1 recommender The Virgin Way Richard Branson Branson's contrarian leadership creed: listen more than you command, put staff before customers, and treat fun and kindness as competitive advantages. The Virtues of Dhul Hijjah Omar Suleiman On the merits of the first ten days of the Islamic month of Dhul Hijjah. The Vision Kahlil Gibran The parables Gibran wrote before The Prophet, working out what he believed human beings had forgotten about their own nature. 1 recommender The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It Arindrajit Dube The economist whose work overturned the textbook view that minimum wages cost jobs sets out the case that employers hold real discretion over what they pay. 1 recommender The Wanting Monster Martine Murray A creature appears whenever wanting more takes hold. An Australian writer and illustrator make a counter-myth to acquisition, pitched at children and aimed at adults. 1 recommender The War of Art Steven Pressfield A field guide to beating “Resistance,” the internal force that stops creative work, and showing up to do the work like a professional. 4 recommenders The War on Normal People Andrew Yang Yang's alarm about automation gutting ordinary work, and his signature fix: a universal basic income to give people a floor to stand on. The Warren Buffett Portfolio Robert G. Hagstrom Robert Hagstrom lays out the focus-investing strategy behind Warren Buffett's success, making the case for concentrated, long-term portfolios. 2 recommenders The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay Christopher Clarey Three decades covering Nadal: what the topspin forehand cost his body, the Mallorcan family that produced him, and the rivalry that defined the best era tennis has had. 1 recommender