Superbloom by Nicholas Carr is the latest book from the author of The Shallows and The Glass Cage. It’s about how technologies of connection tear us apart—or more precisely, how they scale up both the best and worst of human nature to unprecedented heights.
A Study in Scarlet is really two completely separate stories. One takes place in Victorian London with Holmes and Watson investigating a murder. The other takes place in the American West—Utah, specifically—decades earlier.
The Ultimate Hiker’s Guide by Andrew Skurka is the best backpacking book I’ve ever purchased. Not the most inspiring. Not the most beautiful. The best.
How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay is a book I picked…
I picked up American Philosophy, A Love Story after reading Kaag’s earlier book Hiking with Nietzsche and coming across several of his essays in The Atlantic. John Kaag is, in my opinion, one of the most talented working writers who also happens to be an actual practicing professor of philosophy. That combination — the rigor of the academic and the accessibility of a great essayist — makes him worth following closely.
I picked up Hiking with Nietzsche after reading John Kaag’s book on American philosophy. He’s a fabulous writer who uses personal anecdotes to weave deeper, more modern, and more personal connections to big philosophical ideas.
Tobacco Road follows the desperate lives of the Lester family, poor white sharecroppers struggling to survive in Depression-era Georgia. The novel’s unflinching portrayal of poverty and moral degradation shocked readers when it was published in 1932, sparking controversy while highlighting the harsh realities of rural Southern life.
The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill is a Modern Library compendium of Mill’s most famous works—On Liberty, The Subjugation of Women, Utilitarianism, and more. I bought it years ago for a college philosophy class and ended up keeping it, not because I reference it constantly, but because rereading essays like On Liberty reminded me of something important.
A Field Guide to the Cohutta Wilderness by Javier Velazquez is a book I have wanted to exist in the world for so long that a couple years ago, I started sketching out whether I could write it myself. I am deeply grateful to the author for putting in the time and effort to create a proper field guide to the natural and environmental history of the Cohutta Mountains.
The book argues that our brains weren’t designed for the modern world. We evolved in an environment of scarcity, where pleasure was rare and hard to come by. Now we live in what Lembke calls a “dopamine tsunami” – unlimited access to anything that feels good, all the time, right at our fingertips.
I picked up this massive meat cookbook as part of a work project for a cooking website. I had no idea that the world of meat and meat cooking would be this in-depth and thorough. It was like going down a rabbit hole about a very specific culinary segment.
A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz is a history travelogue that focuses on the nearly 300 years between Columbus’s discovery of America and the Declaration of Independence.
Practical Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill is a 1914 book on Christian mystical practice. It’s available for free on Standard Ebooks, which is one of my favorite resources on the internet for beautifully formatted public domain books.
I’ve been a Murakami fan for years. I’ve read most of his major works and loved the surreal, dreamlike quality…
I picked up Atlanta Then and Now expecting to feel nostalgic about demolished buildings and lost architecture around Atlanta. Instead,…
I read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich in the mid-2000s, a few years out of college. It’s one of…
I re-read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon every few years. It’s my favorite mystery genre, and I never get tired…
Main Street Millionaire by Cody Sanchez is one of the better business books I’ve read in the past few years….
The Soccer Book provides a comprehensive breakdown of the world’s most popular sport, combining technical analysis with historical context and modern gameplay evolution.
The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained goes chronologically through 2,500 years of philosophical ideas & concepts, breaking down complex concepts into digestible pieces.
