Category Archives: Books

Blueprint for Revolution

Posted on October 19, 2025 by Harry Katz

Are you feeling overwhelmed by rising oppression and autocracy around the world? Whether you’re fighting a dictator or just trying to improve your neighborhood, Blueprint for Revolution is a worthwhile, helpful, even inspiring book. It teaches you how to organize and carry out nonviolent action to achieve political change. Continue reading →

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The Fifth Season

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Harry Katz

The Fifth Season takes place on a geologically unstable world where there’s a catastrophic “fifth season” of eruptions and earthquakes every few hundred years. It tells the story of one woman’s quest to find her abducted daughter during an especially destructive season. Rich, vivid and highly inventive. Continue reading →

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Is a River Alive?

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Harry Katz

In this fabulously written book, Robert Macfarlane journeys to rivers in three very different landscapes — the cloud-forests of Ecuador, the city of Chennai, India, and the wilderness of northern Quebec — seeking answers to the question are rivers alive and what would it mean if they were? Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Environment, Law and justice | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Simple Path to Wealth

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Harry Katz

Many people aspire to financial freedom. Few actually achieve it. In The Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins lays out a roadmap to financial independence. Whether you want to retire comfortably or just build up some “F-You Money,” The Simple Path to Wealth can show you how. Continue reading →

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The Coming Wave

Posted on August 3, 2025 by Harry Katz

AI and biotechnology could solve humanity’s toughest problems — or trigger chaos, collapse, and dystopia. Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave warns we’re not ready. Can we contain what we’ve unleashed? This thoughtful book explores the risks, contradictions, and urgent questions posed by tomorrow’s most powerful technologies. Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Computers and Internet, Science and technology | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Nexus

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Harry Katz

Why are humans so good at acquiring information and power but not wisdom? In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari explores how human information networks enable large numbers of people to cooperate over great distances and how those networks often prioritize order over truth and wisdom. AI could make matters even worse. Continue reading →

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The Trees Are Speaking

Posted on June 14, 2025 by Harry Katz

The Trees Are Speaking is a wonderful book about the old-growth salmon forests of Oregon, Washington, Vancouver Island and Maine and about the people trying save them. It explores the beautiful yet surprising connection between trees and salmon that sustains these forests and may very well help sustain us too. Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Environment | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

How the World Made the West

Posted on June 3, 2025 by Harry Katz

How the World Made the West tells the story of surprisingly complex relationships of contact, trade and competition among small city states around the Mediterranean and Middle East starting around 4,000 years ago. In doing so, Josephine Quinn challenges conventional ideas about how civilizations develop. Continue reading →

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Abundance

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Harry Katz

Ever since the November 2024 election, Democrats, liberals, progressives – whatever you want to call them – have been doing some deep soul searching, asking themselves, “How on Earth could we have lost to Donald Trump, again?” Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, offers an inspiring framework for finding the answers. Continue reading →

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The Year Without Summer

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Harry Katz

The eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815 is the largest known eruption of the last 2,000 years. It knocked weather patterns across Europe and the eastern US out of kilter. Crops failed. Unrest followed. The Year Without Summer details Tambora’s impact on people, economics, politics and climate. Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Environment, History | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments