Books

Bienville’s Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans Richard Campanella New Orleans is built somewhere no one should build a city, and this explains why they did. 1 recommender Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature Dan Sinykin American publishing was bought up by conglomerates, and it changed what novels got written. 1 recommender Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments Michael Batnick The worst trades of the greatest investors, and why losing is the fee rather than the verdict. Big Wolf & Little Wolf: The Little Leaf That Wouldn’t Fall Nadine Brun-Cosme A leaf refuses to fall, and two wolves wait. Brun-Cosme and Tallec say something patient and unsentimental about worry, and about the shape that care takes. 1 recommender Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas Bill Moyers Moyers sat down with Asimov, Chomsky, Achebe and Tuchman in 1988, at a length and seriousness American broadcast television has not attempted since. 1 recommender Birds and Poets John Burroughs The most widely read naturalist of his era moves between close observation of birds and essays on Whitman and Emerson, at an unhurried pace that still holds. 1 recommender Bittersweet Susan Cain Susan Cain's book makes the case that sorrow and longing, not just positivity, are a source of creativity and connection. 1 recommender Black and Blue Anna Quindlen Anna Quindlen's novel follows a battered wife who flees with her son and tries to build a hidden new life under a false name. 1 recommender Black Buck Mateo Askaripour A satire of startup salesmanship, delivered as a how-to manual that gets more savage as it goes. 1 recommender Black Candle Women Diane Marie Brown Four generations, one house, and a family curse that a teenage crush finally forces into the open. 1 recommender Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West Eleven hundred pages through the Balkans as fascism rose, part travelogue and part argument about why Europe was about to tear itself apart again. 1 recommender Blink Malcolm Gladwell Snap judgements are often better than considered ones, and sometimes catastrophically worse. What separates the two? Blitzscaling Reid Hoffman How a handful of companies grew from startup to giant at breakneck speed, and the counterintuitive rules that let them Blonde Joyce Carol Oates Norma Jeane Baker imagined from the inside, at length, as a novel rather than a life. 1 recommender Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story Barry Mazor Their close harmony shaped the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel, and their partnership collapsed into a decade of not speaking to each other. 1 recommender Bloomberg by Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg Fired from Salomon at 39, Bloomberg tells how he bet the payout on a single machine and built a media empire from it Blue Moon Alicia Keys Poems and reflections framed as the shared journal of Mama Mae and LeeLee, blending verse with illustration. Blue Sisters Coco Mellors Three sisters return to an empty New York apartment a year after the fourth one died. 1 recommender Blueprint Nicholas A. Christakis Christakis argues evolution wired us for cooperation and friendship, not just tribalism and conflict. 1 recommender Blues Legacies and Black Feminism Angela Davis Three blues singers read as social theorists who had the language decades before the movement did. Bodily Harm Margaret Atwood A journalist chasing a soft travel feature lands in a Caribbean election that turns violent, and cannot write her way out. Bone in the Throat Anthony Bourdain Bourdain's debut novel: a young chef in a mob-owned Little Italy restaurant gets caught between a killing he witnessed and the FBI who wants him to talk. Book of Birds Robert Macfarlane Spells and prose set against Jackie Morris watercolours, rigorous about ornithology and unembarrassed about wonder. The follow-up to The Lost Words, made for reading aloud. 1 recommender Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary Brian Doyle A hundred prayers for bad drivers, teenagers and cancer wards, written in sentences that keep going long after they might stop. 1 recommender Bootstrap Your Life Oliver Cookson Building Myprotein from a spare room into a business sold for hundreds of millions, without a penny of outside investment. 1 recommender Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City Bench Ansfield American cities burned through the 1970s, and a good deal of it was landlords collecting insurance. 1 recommender Brain Rules for Baby John Medina A molecular biologist separating what research supports about early childhood from what is merely sold to parents. 1 recommender Brandon Sanderson’s White Sand Volume 1 Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin A Cosmere graphic novel set on Taldain, where sand mastery is power and the weakest of the Sand Masters is suddenly the only one left. Brandon Sanderson’s White Sand Volume 2 Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin Kenton fights to hold the Sand Masters together against a Diem that wants him gone, while Khriss keeps her own reasons quiet. Brave Men Ernie Pyle The most-read correspondent of the war, writing about privates rather than generals. 1 recommender Brave New Words Salman Khan Khan Academy's founder argues AI tutoring can finally deliver one-to-one attention at a price schools can afford, and is candid about cheating, bias and teachers. 1 recommender Braving the Wilderness Brené Brown Belonging, Brown argues, never asks you to change who you are, but it does require the courage to stand alone. 1 recommender Bread of Angels Patti Smith Illness in childhood, Mapplethorpe lost to AIDS, a husband dead, a brother gone weeks later. Patti Smith sets it down in her plain devotional register. 1 recommender Breath, Eyes, Memory Edwidge Danticat Edwidge Danticat's debut follows a Haitian girl sent to join her mother in New York, and the inherited wounds she must confront. 1 recommender Bridge of Sighs Richard Russo Richard Russo's novel follows lifelong residents of a declining upstate New York mill town and the friend who got away. 1 recommender Bright Star John Keats The letters and poems behind Jane Campion's film, with her introduction. 1 recommender