THE QUIET BEFORE | Gal Beckerman
While the brazen and riotous actions that hallmark revolutionary change seem to get the most attention from the voice of history, their more subtle and pensive precursors are largely neglected. Gal Beckerman’s The Quiet Before documents the seemingly less significant environments and conditions that incubate the ideas underpinning revolutionary movements while arguing that these important spaces may be starting to atrophy.
AUTHORITY & FREEDOM | Jed Perl
Although primarily focused on art and politics, Jed Perl’s Authority and Freedom reveals something fundamental about the human project. Perl’s book demonstrates how the tension between opposites—the understood and the unrecognized, the stable and the evolving, the simple and the complex—is the beating heart behind artistic expression and civilization itself.
THE IDEA OF THE BRAIN | Matthew Cobb
It’s easy to underestimate how much metaphors shape the way we think. A good metaphor can help push our understanding forward by bridging the known and unknown, but might also restrict our perspective if the analogy is limited. In The Idea of the Brain, Matthew Cobb walks us through the history of Neuroscience through the shifting analogies we’ve used to conceptualize the organ in our heads. It’s both an enjoyable disciplinary history and a creative meditation on a usually unremarked aspect of our cognition.
THE ALIGNMENT PROBLEM | Brian Christian
Brian Christian draws our attention to a growing incongruence between the behavior of AI systems and the outcomes we value as human beings, what he terms the Alignment Problem. In true journalistic fashion, Christian hunts down the stories and key players involved in both creating the technology and discovering the potential problems they pose. 
THE CREATIVITY CODE | Marcus Du Sautoy
AI has made incredible feats in the past few decades. From Watson to DeepBlue and AlphaGo, the accomplishments of machine learning have caused us to question just how far its abilities can reach. For many, creativity is believed to be the border that AI isn’t able to cross. Mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy takes examples from AIs operating in creative fields such as art and music to help us challenge this belief. 
SEA MONSTERS | Joseph Nigg
In Sea Monsters, Joseph Nigg takes a look at the mythical beasts that are sprinkled over Olaus Magnus’s 1539 map of Scandinavia: the famous Carta Marina. For modern viewers, the array of sea beasts appear to be nothing more than decoration. But for Olaus’s contemporaries, the illustrations represented very real threats sailors could encounter during their voyages. This book explores how cartography can be a glimpse into more than just the geographical borders of a time and place, but also the mind and philosophy of a people. 
ADDICTION BY DESIGN | Natasha Dow Schull
Natasha Dow Schull unpacks the phenomenon of addiction through her study of casino design in Las Vegas. With an eye for detail, Schull illuminates all of the subconscious components that feed into creating a serial gambler. From the lighting in the room to the patterns on the carpet, to the curvature of the streets leading to the casino building; the things we tend not to notice prove to be the things that influence us the most.
A THEORY OF THE APHORISM | Andrew Hui
The aphorism has the ability to contain and convey deep meaning while remaining deceptively simple and accessible. Throughout history, it has been used to summarize whole philosophies, start political revolutions, and represent the spirit of a given people. Andrew Hui utilizes philosophical and philological tools to take a closer look at the proverb makers of humanity in both ancient and modern times and their lasting effect on our intellectual traditions.