21 Books To Help You Learn Something New

In the first edition of the mind-bending, “gorgeous” (Margaret Atwood), ”brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) Entangled Life, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This new edition, abridged from the original, features over 100 full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness and beauty of fungi to life as never before.

Including fascinating studies and examples from pop culture, and drawing on Ranganath’s life as a scientist, father, and child of immigrants, Why We Remember is a captivating read that unveils the hidden role memory plays throughout our lives. When we understand its power– and its quirks–we can cut through the clutter and remember the things we want to remember. We can make freer choices and plan a happier future.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.

Never Pay the First Bill is a primer for anyone who wants to fight the predatory health care system — and win. Drawing on 15 years of investigating the healthcare industry, reporter Marshall Allen shows how companies and individuals have managed to force medical providers to play fair and shows how you can, too.

Half American is American history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black heroes such as Thurgood Marshall, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Ella Baker, James Thompson, and Langston Hughes. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism are both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.

A myth-busting, eye-opening landmark account of how humans evolved, offering a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is, how it came to be, and how this evolution still shapes all our lives today.

Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao’s phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today.

The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan’s war on drugs, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey’s exacting analysis traces the path from the last triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastating realities we live with today: a racist criminal justice system, continued mass incarceration and gentrification, and increased police brutality.

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter — a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies, and betrayals. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink — a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.

A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present and to imagine and plan for the future.

A riveting blend of science writing and true-crime narrative, The Nature of Life and Death details Wiltshire’s unique journey from college professor to crime fighter: solving murders, locating corpses, and exonerating the falsely accused.

Why do we think, feel, and act the way we do? A professor and expert consultant on psychological health ponders these questions and more in this thought-provoking, illustrated guide.

In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, David Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir to create a sweeping history — and counter-narrative — of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present. It is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

From bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants — and the equally powerful taboos. This book holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural world.

Getting ahead doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it. No matter what challenges or obstacles we face, there is a better way: instead of pushing ourselves harder, we can find an easier path. Effortless offers actionable advice for making the most essential activities the easiest ones, so you can achieve the results you want, without burning out.

Steven Rinella (The MeatEater Podcast) and Clay Newcomb (MeatEater’s Bear Grease podcast) gather listeners for a new round of stories, this time drawing from the lives of the rugged Long Hunters, who include such figures as Daniel Boone, Henry Skaggs, and Kasper Mansker. These were the commercial hunters and trappers who explored and exploited the First Far West, the land across the Appalachian Mountains, in the era between the Seven Years War and the American Revolution — one of the most fabled periods of American history.

From Suzanne Simard, the world’s leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest, writes an inspiring, illuminating, and deeply personal journey of discovery.

A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft an extraordinary testament to people who are left out of the archives.

In Run for Your Life, Dr. Mark Cucuzzella gives us a straightforward, easy-to-follow look at the anatomy, biomechanics, and nutrition of running. His proven, practical techniques will help you to avoid injury and reach the goal of personal fitness and overall health.

In 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia — including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove — was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, revolutionaries in Ukraine raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry.