Books

The Art of the Start 2.0 Guy Kawasaki Kawasaki's comprehensive, updated startup manual, covering how to launch, pitch, build a team, and market anything, distilled from his years evangelizing and investing. The Art of War Sun Tzu Win before fighting, or do not fight. Twenty-five centuries on, still read for what it says about avoiding battle 1 recommender The Assassination of Federico García Lorca Ian Gibson Who killed Spain's greatest modern poet, and why? A detective story from the first weeks of the civil war. 1 recommender The Assassins’ Gate George Packer Packer's account of the Iraq war, from the arguments that produced it to what he found reporting on the ground. 1 recommender The Auschwitz Album The Auschwitz Album Peter Hellman The album of photographs taken by SS men on the Birkenau platform in 1944, found by a survivor who recognised her own family in it. 1 recommender The Autobiography of Charles Darwin Charles Darwin Darwin wrote it for his children, an hour each afternoon, and never meant it published. He is candid about losing his faith and his taste for poetry. 1 recommender The Autobiography of Malcolm X Malcolm X, Alex Haley The life story of the American civil-rights leader, told to Alex Haley. 3 recommenders The Autobiography of Mark Twain Mark Twain Dictated to be published only long after his death, Twain's unruly, candid memoir wanders through grief, humor, and score-settling, the man without a mask. The Awakened Woman Tererai Trent From an arranged marriage at eleven in rural Zimbabwe to a doctorate, written as a method rather than a miracle. 1 recommender The Bands of Mourning Brandon Sanderson A treasure hunt for the Lord Ruler's mythical metalminds turns into something much larger when evidence surfaces that the Bands are real. The Battle for Paradise Naomi Klein After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans and wealthy newcomers fight over how to rebuild the island, in Klein's short report on disaster capitalism. The Beast Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström's first novel together, in the Abacus paperback of Anna Paterson's English translation. The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf Wolf argues that beauty standards tightened precisely as women gained power, functioning as a political weapon. 1 recommender The Bee Sting Paul Murray One Irish family, four private catastrophes, and years of everyone misreading everyone else. 1 recommender The Beginning of Infinity David Deutsch Physicist David Deutsch argues that good explanations have unlimited reach and drive endless human progress. 1 recommender The Beginning of Spring Penelope Fitzgerald Moscow, 1913: a printer's English wife leaves him, and nobody quite explains anything. 1 recommender The Belly Art Project Sara Blakely Spanx founder Sara Blakely's photo collection turns pregnant bellies into painted canvases, celebrating motherhood with warmth, humor, and a movement-builder's eye. The Best of all Possible Worlds: A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days Michael Kempe Seven particular days, taking in binary arithmetic, the calculus dispute, epidemic-control proposals and mining engineering, instead of one continuous Leibniz life. 1 recommender The Better Angels of Our Nature Steven Pinker Pinker marshals sweeping data to argue that violence has fallen dramatically across human history. 4 recommenders The Big Change Frederick Lewis Allen How America transformed itself between 1900 and 1950, told by a historian who lived through it. 1 recommender The Big Short Michael Lewis The few investors who saw the mortgage collapse coming, and what it cost them to be right before anyone believed it. 2 recommenders The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract Bill James The book that made statistics readable: a century of baseball, decade by decade, ranked and endlessly argued over. 1 recommender The Birth of Plenty William J. Bernstein Why the world suddenly began to grow rich around 1820, and what it took. 1 recommender The Bitch Pilar Quintana Pilar Quintana's novel La perra, translated by Lisa Dillman and shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The Black Echo Michael Connelly Michael Connelly's debut introduces LAPD detective Harry Bosch, whose look into a fellow veteran's death uncovers a plan to rob a bank from below. 1 recommender The Black Stallion Walter Farley A shipwrecked boy and an untamed Arabian survive a desert island together, then have to survive coming home. 1 recommender The Black Swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb Taleb's influential examination of rare, high-impact events and our blindness to them. 2 recommenders The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England Jonathan Healey Seventeenth-century England executed its king, abolished the monarchy, and then quietly invited it all back. 1 recommender The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood A novel inside a novel inside a scandal: an old woman unspools her sister's death and the story they hid. Booker winner The Blind Owl Sadegh Hedayat Sadegh Hedayat's Persian novella of an isolated narrator's obsessive love and psychological collapse, in a Grove Press paperback of 2010. 1 recommender The Blood in Winter: England on the Brink of Civil War, 1642 Jonathan Healey The months in which England stopped arguing and started killing, reconstructed almost day by day. 1 recommender The Bloodless Revolution Tristram Stuart How Europeans discovered vegetarianism, and argued about meat, from the 1600s onward. The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison Toni Morrison's first novel follows a young Black girl in 1940s Ohio who longs for blue eyes, believing they would make her loved. 4 recommenders The Body Farm Patricia Cornwell The murder of a young girl in North Carolina points Kay Scarpetta back toward an old enemy, in the fifth Scarpetta novel. The Bomber Mafia Malcolm Gladwell A circle of airmen believed precision bombing could make war humane. Tokyo, March 1945, answered them. The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe Tom Wolfe's satire of ambition, race, class and greed in 1980s New York, seen through a bond trader, a prosecutor and a journalist. 1 recommender