Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath by Ted Koppel
Award-winning journalist and longtime Nightline anchor Koppel (Off Camera: Private Thoughts Made Public, 2000, etc.) sounds the alarm over the likelihood of a devastating cyberattack on the infrastructure of the United States. … Koppel’s case for the cyberthreat is strong; government officials seem (perhaps justifiably) preoccupied by other matters, or clueless, or both.
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
"Sumptuous.... [This] sweeping history of the Salem witch trials resonates with its exploration of religion and paranoia.... Schiff nimbly connects Salem's fatal mania to subsequent witch-hunts, such as McCarthyism and the rise of Movement conservatism, revealing how close we remain to the specters and demons that stalked the Bay Colony more than three centuries ago."
Notorious RBG may be a playful project, but it asks to be read seriously. It's an artisanal hagiography, a frank and admiring piece of fan nonfiction…Early on, we learn that Justice Ginsburg was a fan of Nancy Drew as a child, and Notorious RBG, with its earnest superhero framing, reads like a Nancy Drew novel itself…It's an Honest Abe tale for the 20-something set…There is much about Justice Ginsburg that remains enigmatic. The achievement of Notorious RBG is that the authors make this unassuming, most studious woman come pulsing to life.
The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji López-Alt
“The ultimate book for science nerds who cook…. The Food Lab nicely marries the hard-science, full-on geekery of McGee with the just-tell-me-how-to-boil-an-egg utilitarianism of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.”
- Wired
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall Munroe
"Whimsical...Munroe’s masterpiece is the antidote to scientific jargon, ably demonstrating that not knowing the exact name for something doesn’t mean you can’t grasp how it works. The same holds for those doing the explaining: you don’t need to use big words to convey meaning. If anything, it just gets in the way."
…a sprawling but humane volume that examines nearly 1,000 years in the early history of that teeming city and empire…[Beard] is a debunker and a complicator…and charming company. In SPQR she pulls off the difficult feat of deliberating at length on the largest intellectual and moral issues her subject presents (liberty, beauty, citizenship, power) while maintaining an intimate tone…Ms. Beard's prose is never mandarin, yet she treats her readers like peers. She pulls us into the faculty lounge and remarks about debates that can make or end academic careers…You come to Ms. Beard's books to meet her as much as her subjects. They are idiosyncratic and offbeat, which is to say, pleasingly hers.
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