WIRED

WIRED

Where tomorrow is realized || Sign up for our newsletters: https://t.co/xljcWJbKVa

'

20+ Book Recommendations by WIRED

  • A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life.

    Using psychoanalysis, a new book argues that consciousness is more than just a matter of anatomy and electrochemistry. https://t.co/ZPby2lXg1I

  • Neuromancer

    William Gibson

    Case, a burned out computer whiz, is asked to steal a security code that is locked in the most heavily guarded databank in the solar system

    “More than any other science fiction book that I can think of, Neuromancer conveys what the future is going to feel like.” https://t.co/ruq2eQAJ8Y

  • The Code Breaker

    Walter Isaacson

    "A gripping account of how the pioneering scientist Jennifer Doudna, along with her colleagues and rivals, launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and enhance our children"--

    Even if you think you know the story of Crispr, you don’t know it the way Walter Isaacson does. But you’ll know a little more after reading our interview with him about his new book, 'The Code Breaker.' https://t.co/AhsSgkcCwr

  • After Us the Deluge

    Kadir van Lohuizen

    - The disastrous consequences of rising sea levels in six regions around the world are captured in photographs that are both beautiful and disturbing - With contributions from experts such as Marjan Minnesma (Netherlands), Jeff Goodell (USA), Dorthe Dahl-Jenssen (Greenland, Arctic), Henk Ovink and others In After Us The Deluge, Dutch photographer Kadir van Lohuizen, co-founder of the photo agency NOOR Images, shows the consequences of rising sea levels for mankind. He traveled to six different regions in the world (Greenland, US, Bangladesh, the Netherlands, UK, and the Pacific) and captured the effects of global warming. The resulting photo essay is thought-provoking, illuminating, and aesthetically impactful. Each chapter includes a contribution from a local expert that addresses the specific problems in their region.

    This photo book is filled with images that show the frightening consequences of human decisions and the power of nature’s response. https://t.co/I5iSq2V9V9

  • A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life.

    Using psychoanalysis, a new book argues that consciousness is more than just a matter of anatomy and electrochemistry. https://t.co/kAKE6dpOm4

  • Animal Farm

    George Orwell

    Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon. According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"), and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".

    Animal Farm' the book is powerful enough that it doesn’t need to be employed as a cudgel, doesn’t need to be hewn from unchanging stone. In adhering so strictly to it, 'Orwell’s Animal Farm' prevents players from imagining a new future https://t.co/sdnJz5G1mk

  • 2034

    Elliot Ackerman

    From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic, geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034--and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. Iran and China have clearly coordinated their moves, which involve the use of powerful new forms of cyber weaponry that render US ships and planes defenseless. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand. So begins a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically out maneuvering America's most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophistication and literary, human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters--Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians--as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power. Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors' years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.

    For the past six weeks, we’ve been releasing excerpts from ‘2034,’ a novel by @stavridisj and @elliotackerman. The book is a supremely well-informed look at a potential war between the US and China. Let’s hope things never come to that 1/ https://t.co/CdoZAfVFWA

  • Overview Timelapse

    Benjamin Grant

    250 stunning, all-new images documenting our impact on the planet--and how the planet reacts--from the creators of Overview and the Instagram sensation Daily Overview. Change is Earth's most important and influential constant. From the regular shifting of the seasons to the increasingly dramatic (and increasingly common) weather events sparked by the warming climate, life on our planet is constantly impacted by change. When viewed over various periods of time--days, months, and years--these changes become especially apparent, as does the scale and scope of our impact on Earth. Overview Timelapse is a compelling photographic survey--consisting of satellite and aerial images--of the state of change on Earth today. Paired sets of before-and-after images as well as larger groups of time lapse photos offer a fresh perspective of how these changes look from a larger-than-life scale. From devastating human-created change such as the shrinking polar ice caps, to fascinating change like two islands becoming one after a volcanic eruption, Overview Timelapse showcases more than 250 dazzling images.

    The new photo book 'Overview Timelapse' shows the startling ways humanity is changing the planet, from lithium mines to the ravages of climate change. https://t.co/WUXE2voI4B

  • From one of the most dynamic rising stars in astrophysics, an accessible and eye-opening look at five ways the universe could end, and the mind-blowing lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology. We know the universe had a beginning. With the Big Bang, it expanded from a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy, laying down the seeds for everything from black holes to one rocky planet orbiting a star near the edge of a spiral galaxy that happened to develop life as we know it. But what happens to the universe at the end of the story? And what does it mean for us now? Dr. Katie Mack has been contemplating these questions since she was a young student, when her astronomy professor informed her the universe could end at any moment, in an instant. This revelation set her on the path toward theoretical astrophysics. Now, with lively wit and humor, she takes us on a mind-bending tour through five of the cosmos’s possible finales: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, Vacuum Decay (the one that could happen at any moment!), and the Bounce. Guiding us through cutting-edge science and major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and much more, The End of Everything is a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of all that we know.

    Katie Mack, an assistant professor of physics at North Carolina State University, is quickly becoming one of the internet’s most popular science communicators. And in her first book she explores various scenarios for the end of the universe. https://t.co/WkvjyUSApT

  • Calling Bullshit

    Carl T. Bergstrom

    Bullshit isn't what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data. "A modern classic . . . a straight-talking survival guide to the mean streets of a dying democracy and a global pandemic."--Wired Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it's increasingly difficult to know what's true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based in fancy rhetoric and weasel words, but most of us don't feel qualified to challenge the avalanche of new-school bullshit presented in the language of math, science, or statistics. In Calling Bullshit, Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West give us a set of powerful tools to cut through the most intimidating data. You don't need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like? Is it confirming your personal bias? Drawing on a deep well of expertise in statistics and computational biology, Bergstrom and West exuberantly unpack examples of selection bias and muddled data visualization, distinguish between correlation and causation, and examine the susceptibility of science to modern bullshit. We have always needed people who call bullshit when necessary, whether within a circle of friends, a community of scholars, or the citizenry of a nation. Now that bullshit has evolved, we need to relearn the art of skepticism.

    "'Calling Bullshit' achieves what most ominous science books rarely even attempt: It leaves the reader with practical tools." https://t.co/CqcRZVIRKh

  • By the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine, a deeply felt book about our anxious present tense--and coming to grips with the future We're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny. Our old postwar alliances are crumbling. Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How do we live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does the world hold for our children? What might it be like to live through the worst? And what is anybody doing about it? Dublin-based writer Mark O'Connell ("wryly humorous, cogently insightful" --NPR) is possessed by these questions. In Notes from an Apocalypse, he crosses the globe in pursuit of answers. He tours survival bunkers in South Dakota. He ventures to New Zealand, a favored retreat of billionaires banking on civilization's collapse. And he bears witness to those places the future has already visited--real-life portraits of the end of the world as we know it. In doing so, he offers a unique window into our apocalyptic imagination. Part tour, part pilgrimage, Notes from an Apocalypse is an affecting and hopeful meditation on our alarming present moment. With insight, humanity, and wit, O'Connell leaves you to wonder: What if the end of the world isn't the end of the world?

    Mark O’Connell never imagined his book, 'Notes From an Apocalypse,' would come out amid global pandemic. But if anything, the timing of its debut makes the book more relevant, not less. https://t.co/3oJ5NPtLwE

  • The Cuckoo's Egg

    Cliff Stoll

    The first true account of computer espionage tells of a year-long single-handed hunt for a computer thief who sold information from American computer files to Soviet intelligence agents

    Thirty years ago, Cliff Stoll published The Cuckoo's Egg, a book about his cat-and-mouse game with a KGB-sponsored hacker. Today, the internet is a far darker place—and Stoll has become a cybersecurity icon. https://t.co/ORHYOFZXdR

  • The Cuckoo's Egg

    Cliff Stoll

    The first true account of computer espionage tells of a year-long single-handed hunt for a computer thief who sold information from American computer files to Soviet intelligence agents

    30 years ago, Cliff Stoll published The Cuckoo's Egg, a seminal book on how to hunt hackers. We caught up with him at his workshop, where he demoed a homemade forklift robot that helps him manage a warehouse of Klein bottles he sells online. https://t.co/7ZdzEnWXMN https://t.co/tGT2BAUMeQ

  • Buddha's Office

    Dan Zigmond

    Can enlightenment be found at the office? From the co-author of Buddha's Diet comes another book that shows how the wisdom of Buddha can apply to our modern lives -- this time exploring how Buddha's guidance can help us navigate the perils of work life. There's not enough of us who are truly enjoying our work. Too many are working long hours at jobs they can't stand. Many are suffering from non-stop stress or lack of resources or miserable behavior from colleagues or clients. Or maybe work is just fine for you, but you just wish there was a little less of it. Does anyone really enjoy answering emails and texts at all hours? It doesn't have to be this way. Buddha knew this, without ever setting foot in an office. Though he never held a job -- Buddha knew that helping ordinary people work right was essential to helping them find their own path to awakening. Buddha's Office will help you do just that -- find a way of working that is "right" in every sense of the word: right for you, right for your health, right for your sanity, and right for the world. You don't have to become Buddhist either. Buddha never used that word, and might not be thrilled with the way people use it today. He believed in paying attention, taking care of ourselves, and waking up. Like anything worth doing, there are no shortcuts, but this book will show you how Buddha's simple instructions apply to our everyday lives in the office or on the job. Before long, you'll find yourself waking up while working well.

    'Buddha’s Office' is a book on Buddhism disguised as a self-help text aimed at office workers. If that makes you want to keep scrolling, don’t. Trust us. https://t.co/N0ADGcTxEA

  • Buddha's Office

    Dan Zigmond

    Can enlightenment be found at the office? From the co-author of Buddha's Diet comes another book that shows how the wisdom of Buddha can apply to our modern lives -- this time exploring how Buddha's guidance can help us navigate the perils of work life. Without setting foot in an office, Buddha knew that helping people work right was essential to helping them find their path to awakening. Now more than ever, we need Buddha's guidance. Too many of us are working long hours, dealing with difficult bosses, high-maintenance coworkers, and non-stop stress. We need someone to help remind us that there is a better way. With Buddha's wisdom at the core of every chapter, Buddha's Office will help you learn how to stop taking shortcuts and pay more attention, care for yourself and others, deal with distractions, and incorporate Buddha's ageless instructions into our modern working life. It's time to wake up and start working in a more enlightened way. One that is right for you, right for our health, right for your sanity, and right for the world.

    'Buddha’s Office' is a book on Buddhism disguised as a self-help text aimed at office workers. If that makes you want to keep scrolling, don’t. Trust us. https://t.co/yDmjamsWyr

  • Tropic of Kansas

    Christopher Brown

    “Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer batshit genius . . . a truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment.”—William Gibson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author “Timely, dark, and ultimately hopeful: it might not ‘make America great again,’ but then again, it just might.”—Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling and award winning author of Homeland Acclaimed short story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award-nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off—from the other side—in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry’s Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick’s classic Man in the High Castle, and China Mieville’s The City & the City The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as “the Tropic of Kansas.” Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there—that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past—and towards an unexpected future. Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change—if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect. As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.

    Christopher Brown’s first novel, 'Tropic of Kansas', is about a charismatic CEO who becomes president and moves the country toward autocracy. Ironically, he initially set the book aside because he thought the premise was too far-fetched. https://t.co/0srYk41MXB

  • Tropic of Kansas

    Christopher Brown

    “Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer batshit genius . . . a truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment.”—William Gibson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author “Timely, dark, and ultimately hopeful: it might not ‘make America great again,’ but then again, it just might.”—Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling and award winning author of Homeland Acclaimed short story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award-nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off—from the other side—in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry’s Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick’s classic Man in the High Castle, and China Mieville’s The City & the City The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as “the Tropic of Kansas.” Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there—that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past—and towards an unexpected future. Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change—if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect. As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.

    Christopher Brown’s first novel, 'Tropic of Kansas', is about a charismatic CEO who becomes president and moves the country toward autocracy. Ironically, he initially set the book aside because he thought the premise was too far-fetched. https://t.co/CpQUSw9sIq

  • Super Pumped

    Mike Isaac

    Isaac delivers a gripping account of Uber's rapid rise, its pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company's toxic internal culture, and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance.

    'Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber' traces Travis Kalanick’s trajectory from floundering startup founder to the envy of Silicon Valley to the epitome of tech evil. And despite his much-publicized fall from grace, the book reveals jaw-dropping new lows. https://t.co/wlXvxrhZX9

  • Mob Girl

    Teresa Carpenter

    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Missing Beauty comes a fascinating inside look at the mafia. Growing up among racketeers on the Lower East Side of New York City, Arlyne Brickman associated with mobsters. Drawn to the glamorous and flashy lifestyle, she was soon dating "wiseguys" and running errands for them; but after years as a mob girlfriend, Arlyne began to get in on the action herself—eventually becoming a police informant and major witness in the government's case against the Colombo crime family.

    Jennifer Lawrence is set to produce and star in an adaptation of Teresa Carpenter's book 'Mob Girl', the true-life story of Arlyne Brickman, who grew up dating mobsters in New York City—and then eventually became one. https://t.co/vXE88pnju7

  • Good Omens

    Neil Gaiman

    ____________________ COMING TO AMAZON PRIME ON 31ST MAY - STARRING DAVID TENNANT, MICHAEL SHEEN AND BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH 'Marvellously benign, ridiculously inventive and gloriously funny' Guardian ____________________ 'Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don't let you go around again until you get it right' According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Judgement Day is almost upon us and the world's going to end in a week . . . Now people have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it's only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. But what if, for once, the predictions are right, and the apocalypse really is due to arrive next Saturday, just after tea? You could spend the time left drowning your sorrows, giving away all your possessions in preparation for the rapture, or laughing it off as (hopefully) just another hoax. Or you could just try to do something about it. It's a predicament that Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon now finds themselves in. They've been living amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and, truth be told, have grown rather fond of the lifestyle and, in all honesty, are not actually looking forward to the coming Apocalypse. And then there's the small matter that someone appears to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

    'Good Omens' the show does 'Good Omens' the book justice https://t.co/HfJ30PTsp6

  • Fans of 'The Walking Dead,' ready your tissues: The comic book series, which serves as the basis for the AMC show, has come to a close. https://t.co/NLtLyNHtHZ

  • Peter Parker's off to Europe with his classmates from school! How does Spider-Man stay one step ahead of the bad guys while on the road, while keeping his identity a secret? You can find that out-and a whole lot more-in this book filled with epic writings from Peter and his best friend Ned. With the help of MJ, Peter and Ned have jotted down all the exciting things they saw while traveling through Europe: favorite foods, photo ops, Spidey-secrets, and more. This ultimate travel journal has it all!

    Shook by that ending in 'Spider-Man: Far From Home'? These comic books can help make sense of what's coming https://t.co/Ek9PovO7mu