Books

The Normans: Power, Conquest and Culture in 11th-Century Europe Judith A. Green The Normans conquered England, Sicily and more, and built something distinctive in each place. 1 recommender The North Water Ian McGuire A doomed Arctic whaler carrying an opium-addicted surgeon and a man who is simply evil. 1 recommender The North Will Rise Again: In Search of the Future in Northern Heartlands Alex Niven Niven argues the north of England holds a political and cultural inheritance that London-centred accounts keep missing, in part travelogue and part deindustrial polemic. 1 recommender The Number Sense Stanislas Dehaene Babies and animals can sense quantity. A neuroscientist traces how that instinct grows into mathematics. 1 recommender The Obstacle Is the Way Ryan Holiday What blocks the path becomes the path, turned into a practical method with historical examples. The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway Hemingway's spare, Pulitzer-winning novella: an old Cuban fisherman battles a giant marlin far out at sea, a study in endurance, dignity, and grace under pressure. 3 recommenders The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan Four meals, traced from farm to plate, reveal how Americans really eat and what it costs. 1 recommender The Op-Ed Novel: A Literary History of Post-Franco Spain Becquer Seguin Spanish novelists have long doubled as columnists, and Seguin argues the two forms together are how the country wrote its democracy into existence. 1 recommender The Origin of Wealth Eric D. Beinhocker What if the economy evolves like a living system? A case for complexity economics and a new account of where wealth comes from. 1 recommender The Original Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal Accused of murdering her husband, a woman is offered a grim bargain: hunt down her own Original to earn a pardon. 1 recommender The Original Whole Earth Catalog Stewart Brand The 1968 catalog of tools, books and methods that taught a generation it could equip itself without waiting for permission. 1 recommender The Origins of Poverty and Wealth Rainer Zitelmann A libertarian writer tours the world asking why some countries got rich and others did not. 1 recommender The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt Not tyranny at larger scale but something new, and its precondition was ordinary loneliness. 1 recommender The Osama bin Laden I Know Peter Bergen Peter Bergen's 2006 oral history of al Qaeda's leader, built on accounts from people who knew him, in the Free Press paperback. 1 recommender The Other America Michael Harrington The 1962 book that made American poverty visible and helped shape the War on Poverty. 1 recommender The Other Side of Change Maya Shankar Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar explores who we become when life doesn't go as planned, and how to find identity and meaning on the far side of upheaval. 1 recommender The Other Woman Sandie Jones A woman's perfect romance runs into his mother, in a domestic thriller that keeps you unsure whose version to believe. 1 recommender The Outsiders William N. Thorndike Jr. A study of eight unconventional CEOs who delivered extraordinary returns by mastering the quiet art of capital allocation. 1 recommender The Overspent American Juliet B. Schor Why middle-class Americans spend more than they can afford to keep up with the wrong people. The Overworked American Juliet B. Schor Why Americans ended up working longer hours despite growing richer. The Pain Chronicles Melanie Thernstrom A writer living with chronic pain braids her own story with the long, strange history of how people have tried to understand and treat pain. 1 recommender The Painter of Signs R.K. Narayan A sign painter in Malgudi falls for a woman touring the district promoting birth control. 1 recommender The Paper Palace Miranda Cowley Heller One day at a Cape Cod summer house, one impossible choice, and fifty years of what the family never said. 1 recommender The Parables of the Qur’an Yasir Qadhi The Qur'an argues in images as much as in instruction, and this gathers those comparisons and explains what each one is for. The Paradox of Choice Barry Schwartz Past a certain point, more options stop being freedom and start manufacturing regret. 1 recommender The Party Richard McGregor How the Chinese Communist Party actually governs — the red machines, the personnel files, the parallel state. 1 recommender The Passions and the Interests Albert Hirschman How the pursuit of gain was reclassified from vice to civilising force in the century before Adam Smith. 1 recommender The Path Made Clear Oprah Winfrey Oprah gathers guidance and stories to help readers find their direction and sense of purpose. The Pathless Path Paul Millerd Leaving an elite consulting career to build a life outside conventional definitions of success, part memoir and part manifesto. 1 recommender The Patriarch David Nasaw The father of a political dynasty, whose own life was as dramatic as any of his children's. 1 recommender The Penguin and the Leviathan Yochai Benkler The case that cooperation, not self-interest, explains much of how people actually behave — and what that means for how systems should be built. 2 recommenders The People in the Playground Iona Opie 1 recommender The People of Hemso August Strindberg A farmhand marries the widow who owns the farm and sets about remaking a small Stockholm island. Strindberg 1887 comedy of ambition, barely read outside Sweden. 1 recommender The Peregrine J. A. Baker Ten years of Essex field journals distilled into 120 pages, by a man following falcons so closely he tries to stop being human. 1 recommender The Perfect Medium Clément Chéroux Spirit photographs, ectoplasm and fairies: the long history of the camera as a device for seeing the invisible. 1 recommender The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It Neal Bascomb Three runners on three continents chased the four-minute mile in 1954, and the Australian broke the record within weeks of Bannister setting it. 1 recommender