The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,187 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Time's Echo

Joshua L. Rosenbloom ❤️ loved this book because...

This is a remarkable study of the relationships between music, culture, history and memory. It reshaped the way I think about these topics, and put the events of the 20th century in a different perspective than I had considered. It is beautifully written and deeply researched.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Outlook 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Jeremy Eichler,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Time's Echo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES, NPR • WINNER OF THREE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS • Finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction • A stirring account of how music bears witness to history and carries forward the memory of the wartime past • SUNDAY TIMES OF LONDON HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Joshua L. Rosenbloom ❤️ loved this book because...

Sapolsky advances a very controversial argument about the lack of truly free will drawing on a wide range of science, observation, and his own research. I found myself constantly arguing with him in my head, and I'm still not entirely sure I am persuaded. But the argument is definitely worth grappling with.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Originality 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Robert M. Sapolsky,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Determined as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences

Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age in Five Extraordinary Hacks

Joshua L. Rosenbloom ❤️ loved this book because...

Shapiro focuses on a five key episodes in the evolution of hacking, from the time during the early days of the internet when a graduate student at Cornell unleashed a worm that crashed the entire internet, to the sophisticated spear phishing of Russian operatives who gained access to Clinton campaign emails. The focus is as much or more on the human and organizational weaknesses that have made these hacks possible as on the technical details. Each story is told in an accessible and interesting way.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Story/Plot 🥈 Originality
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Scott J. Shapiro,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fancy Bear Goes Phishing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Unsettling, absolutely riveting, and―for better or worse―necessary reading.” ―Brian Christian, author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem

An entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking―and why we all need to understand it.

It’s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited. In Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, Scott J. Shapiro draws on his popular Yale University class about hacking to expose the secrets of the digital…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Quantitative Economic History: The Good of Counting

By Joshua L. Rosenbloom,

Book cover of Quantitative Economic History: The Good of Counting

What is my book about?

The essays in this book use the analytical tools and theoretical framework of economics to interpret quantitative historical evidence, offering new ways to approach historical issues and suggesting entirely new types of evidence outside conventional archives. Rosenbloom has gathered together seven essays from leading quantitative economic historians, illustrating the breadth of scope and continued importance of quantitative economic history.

All of the chapters explore in one way or another the economic and social transformations associated with the emergence of an industrial and post-industrial economy, with most focusing on the transformations of the US economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the technological innovations that factored into this transformation and the relationship between industrialization and rising wealth inequality.

Book cover of Time's Echo
Book cover of Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will
Book cover of Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age in Five Extraordinary Hacks

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