2020

  • The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
  • Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
  • Replay by Ken Grimwood
  • Hundred-Year Marathon
  • The Roman Republic: A Very Short Introduction
  • The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life
  • The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World

2019

  • Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies
  • How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
  • Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
  • Cræft
  • Growing a Revolution
  • Scale

2018

  • Life After Google
  • How to Change Your Mind
  • Freedom
  • Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
  • Why We Sleep
  • Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
  • Walkaway: A Novel by Cory Doctorow

2017

  • Daemon
  • A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
  • How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
  • Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson
  • The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance by Nessa Carey
  • Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik
  • Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
  • The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane
  • Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market by Janine R. Wedel

2016

  • Hillbilly Eligy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
  • Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
  • American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard
  • The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon
  • Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

2015

  • Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock
  • Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gwande
  • The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
  • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
  • Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
  • The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
  • Complexity: A Very Short Introduction by John H. Holland
  • No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glen Greenwald
  • The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey
  • The Structure and Dynamics of Networks by Mark Newman, Duncan J. Watts

2014

  • Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships by Sue Johnson
  • Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon
  • Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
  • The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
  • Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir
  • A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  • Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Caln

2013

  • Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madriga
  • The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
  • This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information by Andy Greenberg
  • The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov
  • The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity by Steven Strogatz
  • The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal
  • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t by Nate Silver
  • To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

2012

  • Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive by Bruce Schneier
  • Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World by Tina Rosenberg
  • Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas by Dale Carpenter
  • A Canticle for Leibowitz || The Devil in the White City by Walter M. Miller |I, Erik Larson
  • The Mystery of Banking by Murray N. Rothbard
  • Count Zero by William Gibson
  • Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kanhneman
  • The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive by Brian Christian
  • Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig

2011

  • Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear
  • The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
  • The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gwande
  • Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior by Deborah Gordon
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazu Ishiguro
  • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward Glaeser
  • The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu

2010

  • In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
  • Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky
  • A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman
  • Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell by Dennis Bray
  • Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
  • The Golden Age by John C. Wright
  • Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
  • Creating a World without Poverty: How Social Business Can Transform Our Lives by Muhammad Yunus
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

2009

  • Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Rown and Vaughn
  • Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Csikszentmihalyi
  • Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by David MacKay
  • The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health by Thomas Campbell, T. Colin Campbell
  • Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World by Alexander (Sandy) Pentland
  • Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
  • Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much by Maggie Mahar
  • The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin

2008

  • The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9-11 by Lawrence Wright
  • Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
  • Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling
  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames by Mia Consalvo
  • How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
  • The World Without Us by Alan Weisman