Books

Creativity, Inc. Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace Pixar's co-founder on how to build and protect a creative culture, drawing on the studio's own near-failures to show how to keep fear and complacency from killing good ideas. 1 recommender Crossing the Chasm Geoffrey A. Moore The classic playbook for taking a high-tech product from early adopters across the gap to a mainstream market. 1 recommender Cruel Optimism Lauren Berlant Why people stay attached to the very things that are wearing them out. 1 recommender Crunch Point Brian Tracy What to do in the hour the crisis lands, written for the moment when the plan has already failed. Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuk Vaynerchuk's early call to turn your passion into a business by building a personal brand and telling your story directly to an audience online. Crushing It! Gary Vaynerchuk A follow-up to Crush It!, updating the personal-brand playbook for the age of Instagram and podcasts, with case studies of people who built businesses on their own influence. Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton Alan Paton's 1948 novel follows a Black minister searching for his son in Johannesburg, a lament for a South Africa breaking under racial injustice. 1 recommender Crying in H Mart Michelle Zauner Grief in a Korean grocery aisle, where food is the last language left between a daughter and her mother. 1 recommender Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV Emily Nussbaum Reality television did not begin with Survivor. It began with Candid Camera, and it was always a little cruel. 1 recommender Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation Hugh Warwick Saving one species usually means killing another, and conservation rarely admits how routine that is. 1 recommender Culpability Bruce Holsinger Bruce Holsinger's novel follows a family reckoning with guilt and artificial intelligence after a fatal accident involving their self-driving car. 1 recommender Culture and Imperialism Edward Said The empire sitting quietly in the background of novels about something else entirely. Cursed Daughters Oyinkan Braithwaite A child born the day a cousin is buried, and the family belief that decides who she must therefore be. 1 recommender Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean Alex Christofi Cyprus as its own place rather than a beach, a conflict, or somebody else's strategic asset. 1 recommender Cytonic Brandon Sanderson Lost in the nowhere between worlds, Spensa hunts the truth about her own powers among pirates and things that eat memory. Daisy Jones & The Six Taylor Jenkins Reid A 1970s rock band's rise and sudden breakup, told as an oral history where no two people remember it the same way. 1 recommender Dana Gioia: Poet & Critic John Zheng Essays in honour of a poet who spent his career arguing that poetry had lost its public. 1 recommender Daring: The Life and Art of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun Jordana Pomeroy Marie Antoinette painter fled the Revolution and spent twelve years working through Rome, Vienna, St Petersburg and London, painting her way across the exile. 1 recommender Dark One, Book 1 Brandon Sanderson, Jackson Lanzing A graphic novel about a troubled young man told he is prophesied to destroy another world, cast as its villain rather than its hero. Daughter of Fortune Isabel Allende Isabel Allende's novel follows a young Chilean woman who stows away to Gold Rush California in search of her lover. 1 recommender Daughters of the Dust Julie Dash The script, the sixteen-year struggle to make it, and a conversation with Bell Hooks. 1 recommender David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell The giant's advantages may be his weaknesses. A case for what disadvantage quietly builds. David Copperfield’s History of Magic David Copperfield, Richard Wiseman, David Britland A tour through magic's past drawn from Copperfield's own museum collection, profiling the conjurers whose inventions still shape the illusions we see today. Dawnshard Brandon Sanderson A Stormlight novella. Rysn, a merchant who cannot walk, sails to an island no expedition has ever returned from. Deacon King Kong James McBride James McBride's novel spins out from a drunken church deacon shooting a drug dealer in a 1969 Brooklyn housing project. 2 recommenders Dead and Alive Zadie Smith Smith's essays at their most characteristic: thinking against herself in public, and arriving somewhere unplanned. 1 recommender Dead Man Walking Helen Prejean A nun becomes spiritual adviser to a condemned man, and refuses to look away from either him or his victims. 1 recommender Dealing with China Henry M. Paulson Jr. The former Treasury Secretary draws on decades of dealings to explain how China's economy really works. 1 recommender Dealing with the Dead Alain Mabanckou A Congolese cemetery memoir, narrated from a vantage that makes the phrase less strange than it sounds. 1 recommender Dear Edward Ann Napolitano The only survivor of a crash that killed 183 others, handed a life he never asked to keep. 1 recommender Death by Black Hole Neil deGrasse Tyson Forty-two essays on the strangeness of the cosmos, including exactly what would happen to you falling into a black hole Death by Meeting Patrick Lencioni Bad meetings aren't too long, they're too boring, and a leadership fable shows what to do about it. 1 recommender Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, A Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need David Edmonds Singer published a drowning-child argument in 1972, and it grew into effective altruism. Edmonds takes the philosophy seriously and follows what money did to it. 1 recommender Decoded Jay-Z Jay-Z annotates three dozen of his own songs, unpacking the wordplay most listeners miss, and makes the case for hip-hop as serious poetry. Deep Simplicity John Gribbin John Gribbin explains chaos and complexity theory, showing how simple rules give rise to the intricate order seen across nature. 1 recommender Deep Thinking Garry Kasparov, Mig Greengard Kasparov's account of losing to IBM's Deep Blue and what two decades of man-versus-machine chess taught him about the real promise of artificial intelligence.