Here are 93 books that Papyrus fans have personally recommended if you like
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It was while on the job as an investment banker that I first heard about this new thing called Bitcoin, before the word "web3" entered the vernacular. Initially I was skeptical but curious. But I became convinced the underlying technology of blockchains was ushering in nothing short of a new internet. My father Don Tapscott and I agreed to collaborate on a major research initiative that became the international best-seller, Blockchain Revolution. Since then, I have traveled to 40 countries and seen first-hand how blockchain and now Web3 is changing the world, setting the stage for a new digital age. My new book charts a course for this coming transformation.
Kidder’s book follows the lives of a group of brilliant, funny, and maniacally driven entrepreneurs as they race to get their new minicomputer, the “Data General Eclipse MV/8000,” to market.
The technology is totally obsolete – who under the age of 40 has heard of a minicomputer? – but the story is somehow timeless. The book won the Pulitzer and is still a fun and riveting tale of what it takes to get a product to market on an ever-changing technological frontier.
Tracy Kidder's "riveting" story of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech industry.
Computers have changed since 1981 when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.
It was while on the job as an investment banker that I first heard about this new thing called Bitcoin, before the word "web3" entered the vernacular. Initially I was skeptical but curious. But I became convinced the underlying technology of blockchains was ushering in nothing short of a new internet. My father Don Tapscott and I agreed to collaborate on a major research initiative that became the international best-seller, Blockchain Revolution. Since then, I have traveled to 40 countries and seen first-hand how blockchain and now Web3 is changing the world, setting the stage for a new digital age. My new book charts a course for this coming transformation.
Savvy entrepreneurs and executives have always been able to spot what’s just over the horizon. T.J. Stiles’ book charts the epic and sometimes unimaginable life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who helped to shape our modern world through a combination of sheer will and vision.
He built his fortune on steamships but divested of those assets when he saw that the railways he had built were opening up America’s bountiful frontier. He traded legacy technology for something better. In business, as in politics and life, history does not repeat, but it often rhymes.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
In this groundbreaking biography, T.J. Stiles tells the dramatic story of Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt, the combative man and American icon who, through his genius and force of will, did more than perhaps any other individual to create modern capitalism. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, The First Tycoon describes an improbable life, from Vanderbilt’s humble birth during the presidency of George Washington to his death as one of the richest men in American history. In between we see how the Commodore helped to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan,…
It was while on the job as an investment banker that I first heard about this new thing called Bitcoin, before the word "web3" entered the vernacular. Initially I was skeptical but curious. But I became convinced the underlying technology of blockchains was ushering in nothing short of a new internet. My father Don Tapscott and I agreed to collaborate on a major research initiative that became the international best-seller, Blockchain Revolution. Since then, I have traveled to 40 countries and seen first-hand how blockchain and now Web3 is changing the world, setting the stage for a new digital age. My new book charts a course for this coming transformation.
In The Innovators, Walter Isaacson reminds us that “innovation occurs when ripe seeds fall on fertile ground.” Like the earth beneath our feet, we stand on stratum upon stratum of technological innovation, each with unique markers of its age.
Sometimes, the right idea, person, or group of people arrives at the right time to sow the seeds of something new. Isaacson explores how this phenomenon, teaching us how the collaboration of many individuals working across time and space helped usher in the first digital age in a highly readable survey of the main players and events.
As we stand on the brink of a second digital age, we would do well to search our history for lessons before stepping into the future.
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovatorsis Walter Isaacson's story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and a guide to how innovation really works.
What talents allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their disruptive ideas into realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?
In his exciting saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He then explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution,…
I’ve spent my entire professional life dealing with how technology impacts business. I started out writing code to improve the operations of retail stores and factories. I managed teams developing products from videophones to cellphones. I’ve had a front-row seat to the evolution of the music business, from selling CDs to streaming files to billions of fans. These experiences provided the background for writing a book about tech disruption in the music business, starting with the phonograph and leading to Generative AI. The books on this list gave me the broader historical perspective I needed and the context to understand how other industries dealt with their own seismic changes.
A few weeks after completing my PhD at Cornell University, I walked into my first real job as a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories. I stayed there for 20 years. Gertner’s book describes that storied institution and how it provided the fertile ground for so many innovators to thrive, from the creators of the transistor to the discoverers of the Big Bang.
My favorite chapter covered the development of mobile telephone networks. Yes, it is an interesting tale, but for me, the best part was that I knew and worked with several of the key players in that story during my career there.
From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs.
In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the…
The only thing I love reading more than books about myth and legend are books you’re not supposed to read. George Bataille once wrote that if you ever caught him producing a book that he risked nothing to write, you should throw it away, and I take that to heart. Every book should be dangerous, because only danger makes you think. I hope every book I’ve written is, in some sense, dangerous, although of course I also hope my readers do not get ripped to pieces by the devil. That’s a little too dangerous.
Seven hundred years ago, someone (no one knows who) wrote a book full of mysterious letters and even more mysterious drawings of unknown plants described in unreadable paragraphs.
For centuries, people have struggled to eke some meaning from the book’s pages. Cryptologist William F. Friedman (the man who broke the Japanese code in WWII) spent his life trying to decipher the book. And all in vain.
No one knows what information the book contains. It could be anything! Simple steps for building a hydrogen bomb? Your parents’ deepest, darkest bathroom secrets? Maps of Atlantis? Maybe! This is the most dangerous book in the world!
The first authorized copy of this mysterious, much-speculated-upon, one-of-a-kind, centuries-old puzzle
"For the first time, a complete reproduction [of] The Voynich Manuscript, has been published, featuring essays exploring what is known about the book and extra-wide margins so readers can record their responses to its beguiling, beautiful strangeness."-Nina Maclaughlin, Boston Globe
"For people who like a good historical mystery, this . . . fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Voynich Manuscript will fascinate."-Rebecca Onion, Slate
Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the "Voynich Manuscript," the world's most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has…
The books I recommend have stayed with me years after I read them. I’ve always been fascinated by my Jewish heritage and the rich traditions of my forebearers. I’ve incorporated some of that heritage in my own work as an author. Most recently, I published a historical novel about the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, which took me down a rabbit hole of research into Jewish literature. I revisited books I’d loved for decades and discovered new books I loved.
Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks spins a tale spanning continents and centuries as she fictionalizes the real history of the ancient Sarajevo Haggadah.
I found her writing gripping, and the story of rare book experts, intrigue, and treachery was fascinating. I loved seeing it through the eyes of her young protagonist, master art restorer Hanna Heath.
The bestselling novel that follows a rare manuscript through centuries of exile and war, from the author of The Secret Chord and of March, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called “a tour de force” by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this…
As an avid reader, I'm curious about where books come from and what they do. How does a story get to be a book? How does someone become an author? What is happening to us as we read? I worked in publishing, and eventually, I started teaching other people how to become editors and publishers. As a faculty member, I had time to study and write about book history. I joined the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing when it was formed and became its president. The conferences helped me to learn about the history of books throughout the world and from pre-print times to the present.
As a voracious reader, I’ve often wondered about why exactly reading is so pleasurable—so essential—and whether others feel the same way about books as I do. Leah Price writes about books and reading clearly and entertainingly, busting myths about a “golden age” of books as well as the much-feared “death of the book.” I learned a lot from this book and enjoyed every minute.
Around 2000, people began to believe that books were on verge of extinction. Their obsolescence, in turn, was expected to doom the habits of mind that longform print had once prompted: the capacity to follow a demanding idea from start to finish, to look beyond the day's news, or even just to be alone. The "death of the book" is an anxiety that has spawned a thousand jeremiads about the dumbing down of American culture, the ever-shorter attention spans of our children, the collapse of civilized discourse.
All of these anxieties rely on the idea of a golden age, when…
I teach historical martial arts for a living. 25 years ago, one of my students asked me to write a training manual about medieval Italian longswords, so I did… it took me four years and changed everything. Teaching in person is my favourite thing, but writing books about my art is a close second. I’m always on the lookout for ways to write better and faster and sell more books. Being an effective writer means I make enough money from my books that I can spend my time researching, writing, training, and teaching historical martial arts and have plenty of time to spend with my wife and kids.
Like most authors I am resistant to marketing, and especially to writing newsletters. But this book showed me how to create a real relationship with my readers, based on mutual respect and appreciation, and to treat writing newsletter and marketing emails the same way I treat writing books. A healthy mailing list is the single most important asset a writer can have: it’s a community of people who like your work.
Thanks to this book, I get great open rates and great retention on my list, and yes, when I write a book, a lot of folks on my list go and buy it, which pays for the time to write more books!
Are you struggling with email? Newsletter numbers getting you down? Fewer people opening your messages? No real reaction when you launch a book?
There's another way—a better way.
Imagine having a large list of happy readers who devoured every email you sent. Or launching a book and activating an army of fans who did the selling for you. You could be that person, with the help of Newsletter Ninja.
Newsletter Ninja is a comprehensive resource designed to teach you how to build and maintain a strongly engaged email list—one full of actual fans willing to pay for the books you…
In 2008, as an author who had a message that I was desperate to get out into the world, I had a decision to make… to continue to pitch my non-fiction book for new moms to traditional publishers or to create a publishing company and publish it myself. I chose to create a publishing company and publish it myself. I loved the publishing and book marketing process so much that I started to help other authors to market their books.
Once you decide how you are going to publish your book, you will have to promote it, whether self-publishing or traditional publishing, in order to sell it. Dr. Jan Yager’s book is your next step to learn book promotion and offers the details behind the next steps on your book marketing journey.
Yager has written over 50 books, both traditionally published and self-published. She has pretty much seen it all and recognized that authors needed a detailed guide for how and where to market their books. She decided to write a book dedicated to book promotion by presenting material in a logical fashion, in the order of any book launch promotion timeline.
The sections of her book make sense and are easy to follow for authors: The first section is about what to do before your book is published. The second section is about what to do after your book…
"Writing a great book is the easy part. Getting people to buy the book is wicked hard. Jan’s book shows you what promotion to do so you increase the possibility that your book becomes a bestseller.”
―Jeffrey Fox,bestselling author,How to Become a Rainmaker
"Being an author is 50% creative and 50% promotion. Jan Yager's comprehensive and practical book, How to Promote Your Book, tells authors exactly what they need to know and do to promote their book. I'm recommending it to all the authors I know including those whose books I share through my Bedside Reading program."
I am a historian at the University of St Andrews, and an expert in the history of books, media, and communication. My working life has revolved around libraries: I stacked shelves at my local university library while I was an undergraduate, and have since worked as a researcher in some hundred reading rooms in twenty countries (and I am therefore the proud owner of many library cards, expired and current). I am also an avid book collector, and have a growing collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century books, mostly printed in my native Netherlands. Writing a history of libraries was an enjoyable tribute to those fine institutions, historic and present.
Why do our libraries, those at home, at university, or in the public library network, look the way they do? Many people would agree that books are best stored upright on shelves, spine out, but how did we come to that conclusion? This delightful book offers all the answers, and incidentally reveals more than you could ever think of to ask about the manner in which we take care of, store, and display books. It might even give you some inspiration on how to arrange your own collection.
He has been called "the poet laureate of technology" and a writer who is "erudite, witty, thoughtful, and accessible." Now Henry Petroski turns to the subject of books and bookshelves, and wonders whether it was inevitable that books would come to be arranged vertically as they are today on horizontal shelves. As we learn how the ancient scroll became the codex became the volume we are used to, we explore the ways in which the housing of books evolved. Petroski takes us into the pre-Gutenberg world, where books were so scarce they were chained to lecterns for security. He explains…
