Cubed

Nikil Saval

An insightful history of professional work, Nikil Saval’s Cubed interrogates how we work by digging into where we work, and the way those workplaces have changed and evolved.

Uncanny Valley

Anna Wiener

I avoided this book when it first came out because I feared it would hit too close to home. I wasn’t wrong.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Andreas Malm

This is a clear-eyed call for the climate movement to go beyond peaceful protest in order to avert ecological collapse.

Under a White Sky

Elizabeth Kolbert

“We live in a world where deliberately dimming the fucking sun might be less risky than not doing it.”

A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide

Cyd Harrell

This concise and cogent book offers clear and accessible guidance on what it means to do tech work in the public sector.

The Ministry for the Future

Kim Stanley Robinson

Robinson writes science fiction that aspires to be a New Yorker essay. This is not entirely bad.

Several Short Sentences About Writing

Verlyn Klinkenborg

I am rather enamored with this book from Verlyn Klinkenborg, which presumes that most writing instruction is bullshit.

The Unreal and the Real

Ursula K. Le Guin

The titles of the two parts of this selected edition of Le Guin’s stories are Where on Earth and Outer Space, Inner Lands—Le Guin leaves it to the reader to decide which of these is real and which unreal.

Witches, Midwives & Nurses

Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English

First published in 1973, this pamphlet outlines the ways in which the medical establishment created generations of women ignorant of the workings of their bodies and disempowered from their own care.

Beowulf

Maria Dahvana Headley

“Bro!” begins Headley’s delightful new translation of Beowulf, and from there unravels a tale of heroism and machismo and masculinity that honors the origins of the epic poem while also carrying it forward.

A Stranger in Olondria

Sofia Samatar

As he travels to Olondria to sell the family harvest, Jevick meets a young woman on the verge of death.

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine

Mahit Dzmare is abruptly ordered to report for duty as the new ambassador to the Teixcalaan empire—with no word as to what might have happened to her predecessor.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clarke

When young Jonathan Strange sets it upon himself to become a magician, he ends up as Mr. Norrell’s only pupil—but it’s a dry sort of magic Norrell preaches, absent any of the mystery or terror of the old days.