Books

Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences Edward Tenner Collected essays from the writer who made unintended consequences his subject, with the airship as exhibit one. 1 recommender Why We Lie Dorothy Rowe Why we deceive ourselves and one another, and what those lies cost, from a psychologist who spent her career listening. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows Melanie Joy A social psychologist asks why we love some animals and eat others, and names the belief system behind the difference. 1 recommender Why We Sleep Matthew Walker A sleep scientist explains why sleep is the single most effective thing we can do for our health, and what happens without it. 1 recommender Why We’re Polarized Ezra Klein Ezra Klein argues that America's political system is not broken but working as designed, and that is exactly why it divides us. Widow Basquiat Jennifer Clement 1980s New York given to the woman rather than the painter, in fragments rather than chronology. 2 recommenders Wikinomics Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams Why a mining company gave away its secret geological data, and what happened when strangers found the gold. 1 recommender Wild Cheryl Strayed Cheryl Strayed’s account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail alone after loss, and what the walk gave back to her. 2 recommenders Wild Dark Shore Charlotte McConaghy The last family on a sinking island guarding a seed vault pull a stranger from the sea, and she will not say why she came. 1 recommender Wild Problems Russ Roberts The decisions no spreadsheet can settle, because living through them changes the person who chose. 1 recommender Wilderness and the American Mind Roderick Nash Wilderness meant wasteland before it meant sanctuary, and the switch happened once America had nearly run out. 1 recommender Wilful Disregard Lena Andersson Lena Andersson's novel about a woman who falls hopelessly in love, translated from Swedish by Sarah Death and published by Picador in 2015. 1 recommender Will Will Smith, Mark Manson Smith's strikingly candid memoir, written with Mark Manson, on the fear and relentless drive beneath the smile, from West Philadelphia to superstardom. Win Every Argument Mehdi Hasan A broadcaster's guide to winning arguments and speaking persuasively. Wind and Truth Brandon Sanderson Ten days remain before the contest of champions decides Roshar. The finale of the Stormlight Archive's first arc, where four books of threads converge. Wind in the Rock Ann Zwinger Zwinger walks Grand Gulch, Slickhorn and Fish Creek recording geology and Anasazi remains, and what that particular solitude does to the person walking through it. 1 recommender Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1 recommender Wings: A Story of a Band on the Run Paul McCartney Farm rehearsals, a university tour in a van, and Lagos, assembled from interviews with everyone involved in the band McCartney built after the Beatles ended. 1 recommender Winner-Take-All Politics Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson An argument that American inequality is a political achievement rather than a market outcome. 1 recommender Winners Take All Anand Giridharadas Giridharadas argues that elite philanthropy and "changing the world" often protect the systems that made them rich. 1 recommender Winter Is Coming Garry Kasparov Kasparov argues that the West misread the end of the Cold War as a victory, and spent the years since letting an autocrat rebuild. Winter Quarters Alfred Duggan 1 recommender Wireheads: An Unnatural History of Technology in the Brain Mike Jay Two centuries of trying to reach the brain directly, from electrodes to deep brain stimulation, alongside the science fiction that kept arriving there first. 1 recommender Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor A veteran founds the Church Without Christ and finds he cannot preach his way out of belief. 1 recommender Wise Guy Guy Kawasaki Part memoir, part life lessons, Kawasaki tells the stories behind his unlikely career, from Apple to venture capital, and the ideas about grace and growth he drew from each. With the Old Breed E.B. Sledge A mortarman at Peleliu and Okinawa, writing without a shred of the gloss usually applied to that war 1 recommender Within These Wicked Walls Lauren Blackwood A young exorcist takes the one job nobody else will, cleansing a haunted castle, in an Ethiopian-inspired Jane Eyre. 1 recommender Without Lying Down Cari Beauchamp The highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood was a woman, and the industry forgot on purpose. 1 recommender Wolf Solent John Cowper Powys A sensitive man returns to Dorset and his father's scandalous past, torn between two women. 1 recommender Women After All Melvin Konner An Emory anthropologist argues that evolution and biology point to the end of male dominance, in a Norton paperback. 1 recommender Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women Jane Hirshfield Forty-three centuries of sacred poetry by women, from Sumerian temple hymns through Mirabai and Rabia, in the anthology that made much of it visible in English. 1 recommender Women Who Run With the Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estes A Jungian analyst reads myths and folk tales to recover what she calls the Wild Woman archetype. 1 recommender Women, Race & Class Angela Davis Where the abolitionist and suffrage movements broke along race and class, and who paid for it. Wonderful Tonight Pattie Boyd The model and muse behind "Something" and "Layla" tells her own story of life at the center of rock and roll. 1 recommender Wooden on Leadership John Wooden, Steve Jamison The legendary UCLA coach lays out the Pyramid of Success and the daily habits behind ten championships. 1 recommender Words of Radiance Brandon Sanderson Shallan hunts a lost ancient city and Kaladin weighs what it costs to protect people he has every reason to hate.