Book Reviews

By Author | By Title

A

• Acemoglu, Daron and Robinson, James A.: Why Nations Fail (2012)
• Albright, Madeleine: Fascism: A Warning (2018)
• Alexander, Amir: Infinitesimal (2014)
• Ambrose, Stephen E.: Undaunted Courage (1996)
• Appiah, Kwame Anthony: Cosmopolitanism (2006)
• Attenborough, David: A Life on Our Planet (2020)
• Aurelius, Marcus: Meditations (circa 170-179)

B

• Baab-Muguira, Catherine: Poe for Your Problems (2021)
• Bailey, Elisabeth Tova: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (2010)
• Bakke, Gretchen: The Grid  (2016)
• Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Duflo, Esther: Good Economics for Hard Times (2019)
• Bergstrom, Carl T. and West, Jevin D.: Calling Bullshit (2020)
• Bogard, Paul: The End of Night (2013)
• Botsman, Rachel:  Who Can You Trust? (2017)
• Breyer, Stephen: The Court and the World (2015)
• Brook, Daniel: A History of Future Cities (2013)
• Brown, Archie: The Myth of the Strong Leader (2014)
• Brown, Brené: Dare to Lead (2018)
• Brynjolfsson, Erik and McAfee, Andrew: The Second Machine Age (2014)
• Brynjolfsson, Erik and McAfee, Andrew: Machine, Platform, Crowd (2017}
• Bungay Stanier, Michael: The Advice Trap (2020)
• Burke Harris, Nadine: The Deepest Well (2018)
• Burkeman, Oliver: Four Thousand Weeks (2021)

C

• Christensen, Clayton M.: How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012)
• Christian, David: Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (2018)
• Christie, Michael: Greenwood (2019)
• Cleese, John: So, Anyway … (2014)
• Cohen, Adam: Supreme Inequality (2020)
• Courtney, Hugh: 20/20 Foresight (2001)
• Cramer, Katherine J.: The Politics of Resentment (2016)
• Crawford, Kate: Atlas of AI (2021)
• Crowley, Chris and Lodge, Henry S.: Younger Next Year (2019)
• Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaily: Flow (1990)

D

• Dalio, Ray: Principles (2017)
• de Botton, Alain: Religion for Atheists (2012)
• Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee:  The Palace of Illusions (2008)
• Doerr, Anthony: All the Light We Cannot See (2014)
• Doerr, John: Measure What Matters (2018)
• Drori, Jonathan: Around the World in 80 Trees (2018)
• Dubner, Stephen J. and Levitt, Steven D.: Freakonomics (2005)
• Duffy, Michael and Gibbs, Nancy: The Presidents Club (2012)
• Dunbar, Robin: Friends (2021)
• Dweck, Carol S.: Mindset (2006)

E

• Eagleman, David: Livewired (2020)
• Epstein, David: Range (2019)
• Essinger, James: Ada’s Algorithm (2014)

F

• Flanagan, Richard: The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2014)
• François, Bill: Eloquence of the Sardine (2021)
• Frenkel, Edward: Love and Math (2013)
• Frey, William H.: Diversity Explosion (2018)
• Friedman, George: The Storm Before the Calm (2020)
• Friedman, Thomas L.: Thank You for Being Late (2016)

G

• Galef, Julia: The Scout Mindset (2021)
• Gates, Bill: How To Avoid A Climate Disaster (02021)
• Gawande, Atul: The Checklist Manifesto (2009)
• Gessen, Masha: Surviving Autocracy (2020)
• Ginsburg, Ruth Bader: My Own Words (2016)
• Gladwell, Malcolm: Outliers (2008)
• Gladwell, Malcolm: David and Goliath (2013)
• Gladwell, Malcolm: Talking to Strangers (2019)
• Graeber, David and Wengrow, David: The Dawn of Everything (2021)
• Grant, Adam: Think Again (2021)
• Greenberg, Paul: The Climate Diet (2021)
• Greene, Jamal: How Rights Went Wrong (2021)
• Grove, Andrew S.: High Output Management (1983)

H

• Hamid, Mohsin: Exit West (2017)
• Hamid, Mohsin: The Last White Man (2022)
• Hannah-Jones, Nikole: The 1619 Project (2021)
• Hanson, Thor: Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid (2021)
• Harari, Yuval Noah: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
• Harari, Yuval Noah: Sapiens (2015)
• Hatfield, Chris: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (2013)
• Haupt, Lyanda Lynn: Mozart’s Starling (2017)
• Havel, Václav: To the Castle and Back (2007)
• Hazleton, Lesley: After the Prophet:  The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split (2009)
• Hazelton, Lesley: Agnostic:  A Spirited Manifesto (2016)

I

• Isaacson, Walter: Leonardo da Vinci (2017)
• Isaacson, Walter: The Code Breaker (2021)

J

• Jepson, Paul and Blythe, Cain: Rewilding (2020)
• Johnson, Steven: How We Got to Now (2014)

K

• Kantrowitz, Alex: Always Day One (2020)
• Kauffman, Stuart A.: Reinventing the Sacred (2008)
• Kendi, Ibram X.: How To Be An Antiracist (2019)
• Kidder, Tracy: Good Prose (2013)
• King, Stephen: On Writing (2000)
• Klare, Michael T.: All Hell Breaking Loose (2019)
• Klein, Ezra: Why We’re Polarized (2020)
• Krznaric, Roman: The Good Ancestor (02020)

L

• Labatut, Benjamin: When We Cease to Understand the World (2020)
• LeGuin, Ursula K.: The Left Hand of Darkness (1963)

M

• MacAskill, William: What We Owe The Future (2022)
• Majumdar, Megha: A Burning (2020)
• Mandelbaum, Michael: The Ideas that Conquered the World (2002)
• Manne, Kate: Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2018)
• Mask, Deirdre: The Address Book (2020)
• McAfee, Andrew: More From Less (2019)
• McFadden, Johnjoe: Life Is Simple (2021)
• McGhee, Heather: The Sum of Us (2021)
• Meacham, Jon: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (2013)
• Mele, Nicco: The End of Big (2013)
• Metzl, Jonathan: Dying of Whiteness (2019)
• Miller, Sam J.: Blackfish City (2018)
• Mitchell, David: The Bone Clocks (2014)
• Moyo, Dambisa: Winner Take All (2012)
• Munroe, Randall: What If (2014)
• Moore, Peter: Endeavour (2018)
• Mulder, Nicholas: The Economic Weapon (2022)
• Murthy, Vivek H.: Together (2020)

N

• Naim, Moisés: The End of Power (2013)
• Neuwirth, Robert: Stealth of Nations (2011)
• Nisbett, Richard E.: The Geography of Thought (2003)

O

• Obama, Barack: A Promised Land (2020)
• Oluo, Ijeoma: So you want to talk about race (2018)
• Owens, Delia: Where the Crawdads Sing (2018)

P

• Patterson, Kerry: Crucial Conversations (2012)
• Perez, Caroline Criado: Invisible Women (2019)
• Pinker, Steven: Enlightenment Now (2018)
• Pinker, Steven: Rationality (2021)
• Pomerantsev, Peter: Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (2014)
• Postrel, Virginia: The Fabric of Civilization (2020)
• Powers, Richard: Bewilderment (2021)
• Powers, Richard: The Overstory (2018)
• Prescod-Weinstein, Chanda: The Disordered Cosmos (2021)
• Prose, Francine: Reading Like a Writer (2006)

R

• Raworth, Kate: Doughnut Economics (2017)
• Reid, John W. and Lovejoy, Thomas E.: Ever Green (2022)
• Rich, Nathaniel: Losing Earth (2019)
• Rockström, Johan and Klum, Mattias: Big World Small Planet (2015)
• Robinson, Kim Stanley: The Ministry for the Future (2020)
• Rosling, Hans: Factfulness (2018)
• Roy, Sumana: How I Became a Tree (2017)
• Rutt, Stephen: Wintering: A Season With Geese (2019)

S

• Schneier, Bruce: Data and Goliath (2015)
• Scott, Kim: Radical Candor (2017)
• Seierstad, Ǻsne: The Bookseller of Kabul (2003)
• Setiya, Kieran: Life Is Hard (2022)
• Sheldrake, Merlin: Entangled Life (2021)
• Simard, Suzanne: Finding the Mother Tree (2021)
• Smil, Vaclav:  Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities  (2019)
• Smil, Vaclav:  How the World Really Works (2022)
• Snyder, Timothy: On Tyranny (2017)
• Snyder, Timothy: The Road to Unfreedom (2018)
• Stewart, Ian: In Pursuit of the Unknown:  17 Equations That Changed the World (2012)
• Strogatz, Steven:  Infinite Powers (2019)

T

• Taleb, Nassim Nicholas: The Black Swan (2007)
• ter Kuile, Casper: The Power of Ritual (2020)
• Tufekci, Zeynep: Twitter and Tear Gas (2017)

V

• Vance, J. D.: Hillbilly Elegy (2016)
• Venkataraman, Bina: The Optimist’s Telescope, (2019)

W

• Weidensaul, Scott: A World on the Wing (2021)
• Weiner, Eric: The Socrates Express (2020)
• Wilkerson, Isabel: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020)
• Wright, Craig: The Hidden Habits of Genius (2020)

Z

• Zakaria, Fareed: The Post-American World (2008)

---

By Title | By Author

#

• 20/20 Foresight, Hugh Courtney (2001)
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari (2018)

A

• A Burning, Megha Majumdar (2020)
• A History of Future Cities, Daniel Brook (2013)
• A Life on Our Planet, David Attenborough (2020)
• A Promised Land, Barack Obama (2020)
• A World on the Wing, Scott Weidensaul (2021)
• Ada’s Algorithm, James Essinger (2014)
• After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split, Lesley Hazleton (2009)
• Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto, Lesley Hazelton (2016)
• All Hell Breaking Loose, Michael T, Klare (2019)
• All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (2014)
• Always Day One, Alex Kantrowitz (2020)
• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Chris Hatfield (2013)
• Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori (2018)
• Atlas of AI, Kate Crawford (2021)

B

• Bewilderment, Richard Powers (2021)
• Big World Small Planet, Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum (2015)
• Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (2018)

C

• Calling Bullshit, Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West (2020)
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson (2020)
• Cosmopolitanism, Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006)
• Crucial Conversations, Kerry Patterson (2012)

D

• Dare to Lead, Brené Brown (2018)
• Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier (2015)
• David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell (2013)
• Diversity Explosion, William H. Frey (2018)
• Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne (2018)
• Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth (2017)
• Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan Metzl (2019)

E

• Eloquence of the Sardine, Bill François (2021)
• Endeavour, Peter Moore (2018)
• Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker (2018)
• Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake (2021)
• Ever Green, John W. Reid and Thomas E. Lovejoy (2022)
• Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (2017)

F

• Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright (2018)
• Factfulness, Hans Rosling (2018)
• Finding the Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard (2021)
• Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990)
• Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman (2021)
• Freakonomics, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt (2005)
• Friends, Robin Dunbar (2021)

G

• Good Economics for Hard Times, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (2019)
• Good Prose, Tracy Kidder (2013)
• Greenwood, Michael Christie (2019)
• Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities, Vaclav Smil (2019)

H

• High Output Management, Andrew S. Grove (1983)
• Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance (2016)
• How I Became a Tree, Sumana Roy (2017)
• How Rights Went Wrong, Jamal Greene (2021)
• How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil (2022)
• How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, Bill Gates (02021)
• How To Be An Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi (2019)
• How We Got to Now, Steven Johnson (2014)
• How Will You Measure Your Life?, Clayton M. Christensen (2012)
• Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid, Thor Hanson (2021)

I

• In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World, Ian Stewart (2012)
• Infinite Powers, Steven Strogatz (2019)
• Infinitesimal, Amir Alexander (2014)
• Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez (2019)

L

• Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson (2017)
• Life Is Hard, Kieran Setiya (2022)
• Life Is Simple, Johnjoe McFadden (2021)
• Livewired, David Eagleman (2020)
• Losing Earth, Nathaniel Rich (2019)
• Love and Math, Edward Frenkel (2013)

M

• Machine, Platform, Crowd, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2017}
• Measure What Matters, John Doerr (2018)
• Meditations, Marcus Aurelius (circa 170-179)
• Mindset, Carol S. Dweck (2006)
• More From Less, Andrew McAfee (2019)
• Mozart’s Starling, Lyanda Lynn Haupt (2017)
• My Own Words, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2016)

N

• Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, Peter Pomerantsev (2014)

O

• On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder (2017)
• On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
• Origin Story: A Big History of Everything, David Christian (2018)
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell (2008)

P

• Poe for Your Problems, Catherine Baab-Muguira (2021)
• Principles, Ray Dalio (2017)

R

• Radical Candor, Kim Scott (2017)
• Range, David Epstein (2019)
• Rationality, Steven Pinker (2021)
• Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose (2006)
• Reinventing the Sacred, Stuart A. Kauffman (2008)
• Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton (2012)
• Rewilding, Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe (2020)

S

• Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari (2015)
• So, Anyway …, John Cleese (2014)
• So you want to talk about race, Ijeoma Oluo (2018)
• Stealth of Nations, Robert Neuwirth (2011)
• Supreme Inequality, Adam Cohen (2020)
• Surviving Autocracy, Masha Gessen (2020)

T

• Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell (2019)
• Thank You for Being Late, Thomas L. Friedman (2016)
• The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021)
• The Address Book, Deirdre Mask (2020)
• The Advice Trap, Micheal Bungay Stanier (2020)
• The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007)
• The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell (2014)
• The Bookseller of Kabul, Ǻsne Seierstad (2003)
• The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande (2009)
• The Climate Diet, Paul Greenberg (2021)
• The Code Breaker, Walter Isaacson (2021)
• The Court and the World, Stephen Breyer (2015)
• The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)
• The Deepest Well, Nadine Burke Harris (2018)
• The Disordered Cosmos, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (2021)
• The Economic Weapon, Nicholas Mulder (2022)
• The End of Big, Nicco Mele (2013)
• The End of Night, Paul Bogard (2013)
• The End of Power, Moisés Naim (2013)
• The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel (2020)
• The Geography of Thought, Richard E. Nisbett (2003)
• The Good Ancestor. Roman Krznaric (02020)
• The Grid, Gretchen Bakke (2016)
• The Hidden Habits of Genius, Craig Wright (2020)
• The Ideas that Conquered the World, Michael Mandelbaum (2002)
• The Last White Man, Mohsin Hamid (2022)
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin (1963)
• The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)
• The Myth of the Strong Leader, Archie Brown (2014)
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan (2014)
• The Optimist’s Telescope, Bina Venkataraman (2019)
• The Overstory, Richard Powers (2018)
• The Palace of Illusions, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (2008)
• The Politics of Resentment, Katherine J. Cramer (2016)
• The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria (2008)
• The Power of Ritual, Casper ter Kuile (2020)
• The Presidents Club, Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs (2012)
• The Road to Unfreedom. Timothy Snyder (2018)
• The Scout Mindset, Julia Galef (2021)
• The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (2014)
• The Socrates Express, Eric Weiner (2020)
• The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey (2010)
• The Storm Before the Calm, George Friedman (2020)
• The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee (2021)
• Think Again, Adam Grant (2021)
• Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Jon Meacham (2013)
• To the Castle and Back, Václav Havel (2007)
• Together, Vivek H. Murthy (2020)
• Twitter and Tear Gas, Zeynep Tufekci, (2017)

U

• Undaunted Courage, Stephen E. Ambrose (1996)

W

• What If, Randall Munroe (2014)
• What We Owe The Future, William MacAskill (2022)
• When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labatut (2020)
• Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens (2018)
• Who Can You Trust? Rachel Botsman (2017)
• Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2012)
• Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein (2020)
• Winner Take All, Dambisa Moyo (2012)
• Wintering: A Season With Geese, Stephen Rutt (2019)

Y

• Younger Next Year, Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge (2019)