Books

Swords into Plowshares Ron Paul Paul's part-memoir, part-argument against America's permanent war economy, tracing how militarism, central banking, and lost liberties feed each other. Sympathy Tower Tokyo Rie Qudan Rie Qudan's Akutagawa Prize winning novel about an architect who designs a Tokyo tower to serve as a prison, translated by Jesse Kirkwood. Syntactic Structures Noam Chomsky The short 1957 monograph that made grammar a property of the mind rather than a habit learned. Table-Talk William Hazlitt 1 recommender Taking a Stand Rand Paul Paul's 2016 campaign manifesto and memoir, arguing for a more libertarian Republican Party on criminal justice, privacy, surveillance, and foreign restraint. Tales from the Perilous Realm J.R.R. Tolkien Tolkien's shorter fiction from outside Middle-earth, closing with the essay arguing that fairy tales were never meant for children alone. 1 recommender Talkativeness Michael Earl Craig Poems from a Montana farrier that treat the habits of daily life with humor. 1 recommender Talking to Strangers Malcolm Gladwell We are terrible at reading people we have never met, and the consequences reach from the courtroom to the traffic stop. Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu The ancient Chinese classic of Taoism: eighty-one short poems on humility, non-action, and living in harmony with the Tao, the force behind everything. 1 recommender Tara Road Maeve Binchy Maeve Binchy's novel follows two women, one in Dublin and one in New York, who swap houses and lives for a transforming summer. 1 recommender Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life Scott Hodge Tax incentives quietly decide what gets built, bought and borrowed, and almost nobody notices. 1 recommender Tchaikovsky’s Empire: A New Life of Russia’s Greatest Composer Simon Morrison Morrison puts Tchaikovsky inside the imperial court that paid for and constrained him, and gives the music as much attention as the life, including the death myths. 1 recommender Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom Bell Hooks hooks makes the case for the classroom as shared risk rather than transmission, drawing on segregated schooling and what it cost her to become a professor. 1 recommender Team of Rivals Doris Kearns Goodwin Lincoln appointed the men who had run against him and wanted his job, then got a cabinet of rivals to win a war. 1 recommender Tears for Water Alicia Keys Poems and lyrics from the notebooks Alicia Keys kept long before she was famous. Tears of the Desert Halima Bashir A Zaghawa doctor's account of her childhood in Darfur and of what she witnessed as the war reached it. 1 recommender Telephone Tales Gianni Rodari A travelling salesman phones his daughter each night with a story, kept short because calls cost money. Sixty absurd, political, quietly subversive tales. 1 recommender Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born Jamie Lee Curtis A girl asks to hear once more the family story of her birth and adoption, in Jamie Lee Curtis's picture book. Tell Me Everything Elizabeth Strout Elizabeth Strout gathers Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, and lawyer Bob Burgess in a small Maine town around a local mystery. 2 recommenders Telling Sexual Stories Ken Plummer Why people tell stories about their sexual lives, and how those stories change communities and politics. 1 recommender Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World Fareed Zakaria Written in the thick of COVID-19, Zakaria draws ten lessons about markets, government, inequality, and globalization, arguing the pandemic accelerated changes already underway. Tess of the d’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy Hardy called her a pure woman and Victorian England objected, which tells you what he was attacking. 1 recommender Thank You, Everything Icinori Icinori build a picture book from gratitude for rain, bread and worn-out tools, drawing on the Japanese belief that objects acquire a spirit after a century of service. 1 recommender That Bird Has My Wings Jarvis Jay Masters Jarvis Jay Masters's memoir recounts a brutal childhood, a wrongful path to San Quentin's death row, and his turn toward Buddhism. 1 recommender The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success Brian Tracy Tracy's claim that business runs on laws as reliable as gravity, and that most failure is someone violating one without knowing it. The 10X Rule Grant Cardone Cardone's signature argument: set targets ten times bigger than you think you need, and take ten times the action, because most people fail by aiming too low. The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires Brian Tracy Twenty-one wealth-building habits of the self-made, boiled to a read-in-one-sitting checklist of disciplines rather than any get-rich shortcut. The 3 Alarms Eric Partaker Peak performance framed around three daily alarms, one each for health, wealth and relationships, so the areas that matter don't get crowded out. 1 recommender The 33 Strategies of War Robert Greene Military strategy from Sun Tzu to Napoleon, repurposed for the everyday conflicts of ambition, work and rivalry The 4-Hour Body Tim Ferriss Ferriss's self-experimentation manual for hacking the body, fat loss, muscle, sleep, and performance, via minimum-effective-dose protocols he tested on himself. The 4-Hour Chef Tim Ferriss A cookbook that is really Ferriss's manifesto on accelerated learning, using kitchen skills to teach a method for acquiring any skill fast. The 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss The manifesto that popularised remote work, lifestyle design and mini-retirements long before any of it was mainstream. 2 recommenders The 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene Three thousand years of scheming, boiled down to 48 rules for gaining power and never being blindsided by it The 5 AM Club Robin Sharma The first hour of the day decides the rest of it. Sharma's case for rising at five, wrapped in a story The 50th Law Robert Greene Greene and the rapper 50 Cent on fearlessness, built from a hustler's rise off the streets of Queens The 6:41 to Paris Jean-Philippe Blondel Blondel's novel of two former lovers who meet by chance on a train to Paris, translated by Alison Anderson.