Here are 100 books that The Peace War fans have personally recommended if you like
The Peace War.
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In my day job, I’m immersed either with technical equipment or managing people and I enjoy the duality of both challenges. It’s difficult to say which I like best, but because part of my job is people focused, I’ve enjoyed learning to understand the social and interpersonal dynamics between coworkers and clients alike. So books with strong character relationships and stories that are driven by their wants and desires, however right or wrong they may be, are a favorite of mine. The science fiction aspect comes with my love for technology, mainly in music and film and I find many parallels between those arts and writing books.
My sister and I were only close because we’re only two years apart. But recently we’ve had some tragedy in our family, and that brought us closer.
While I was making this list of books, I was reminded of this story and how much I enjoyed it, not just for the prose, which I take notice of and will drop a book if it’s bad, but for that reminder of the brother and sister story here. Not to mention the rescue crew of odd characters which reflects a belief of mine: truth is universal.
Any human or alien can understand compassion and suffering and choose the better of the two.
Fleeing a menace of galactic proportions, a spaceship crashes on an unfamiliar world, leaving the survivors - a pair of children - to the not-so-tender mercies of a medieval, lupine race. Responding to the ship's distress signal, a rescue mission races against time to retrieve the children.
I can’t help but smile when I read stories about the underdog and the weak rising in strength. The small things that are overlooked are often what is most important, and something in me just itches to watch that tiny mustard seed grow into a powerful entity in its own right. When I started writing in earnest, I didn’t intentionally set my feet along the same paths. Nevertheless, the stories I write have my DNA within them. Though these books vary in genre, I’m excited to recommend them, and I expect that you’ll enjoy them as much as I did.
I love how this book takes the man of the hour through the wringer and reveals the diamond inside. John Matherson is presented with a choice that causes him to voluntarily give up a lifelong career to handle a difficult family illness. I can’t help but think that the selflessness involved in a choice like that is uncommon and makes for a great hero.
There is suffering, and then the world practically ends. That double-whammy punch and the way John contends with the world around him is what makes this story so riveting. This story is really about one man who stands alone against every nightmare the world has to offer. His endurance against these odds is quite beautiful.
A post-apocalyptic thriller of the after effects in the United States after a terrifying terrorist attack using electromagnetic pulse weapons.
New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real...a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages...A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.
As a surgeon and scientist who has had a lifelong interest in science and science fiction, I can’t help being fascinated by “what if” questions, especially as regards the impact of inventions on human society and the world. As an optimist, I tend to enjoy exploring inventions that benefit mankind much more than those that bring on an apocalypse.
This book asks “what if,” on another world dinosaurs evolved intelligence. What if they were discovering the same things about the universe that humans such as Galileo and Copernicus discovered here on Earth? How would their path of discovery be influenced by their biological differences and the fact that their world orbits a gas giant?
Sixty-five million years ago, aliens transplanted Earth's dinosaurs to another world. Now, intelligent saurians -- the Quintaglios -- have emerged. Afsan, the Quintaglio counterpart of Galileo, must convince his people of the truth about their place in the universe before astronomical forces rip the dinosaurs' new home apart.
ROBERT J. SAWYER has won the Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial, Seiun, and Aurora Awards, all for best science fiction novel of the year. His novels include Hominids, Rollback, Wake, and FlashForward (basis for the TV series).
I worked for many years in business consultancy (writing many books like the bestselling “Successful Time Management [Kogan Page]) before branching into other genres, including fiction and light-hearted travel writing (e.g., Beguiling Burma [Rethink Press]). My five novels all involve ordinary people caught up in situations that involve mystery or crime (or both). Like most fiction writers, I find it difficult to recognize where ideas come from, though I do draw on various aspects of my own life; for example, Long Overdue [Stanhope Books] involves sailing and a missing person. Certainly, I relate to sailing and, for many years, owned a boat.
Another unusual premise. An asteroid has been spotted on a collision course with Earth, and civilization appears doomed, yet our hero remains set on solving his current case, a death originally dismissed as suicide, which is, in fact, a murder.
Surprisingly, the two themes are made to sit well together, and the intent to solve the crime never seems inappropriate in dire circumstances. This is a real page-turner, which I loved.
In THE LAST POLICEMAN, Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Ben H. Winters, offers readers something they've never seen before: A police procedural set on the brink of an apocalypse. What's the point in solving murders when we're going to die soon, anyway? Hank Palace, a homicide detective in Concord, New Hampshire, asks this question every day. Most people have stopped doing whatever it is they did before the asteroid 2011L47J hovered into view. Stopped selling real estate; stopped working at hospitals; stopped slinging hash or driving cabs or trading high-yield securities. A lot of folks spend…
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.
It is impossible to overestimate the breadth and importance of Edison’s contributions to our lives. But Stross gave me a much better picture of Edison as a relentless competitor who often struggled to develop the business practices and processes to achieve commercial success with his numerous inventions.
The fact that I could visit the Menlo Park historical site in NJ to see things for myself made the book come alive.
At the height of his fame Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as “the Napoleon of invention” and blazed in the public imagination as a virtual demigod. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and extending through the development of incandescent light and the first motion picture cameras, Edison’s name became emblematic of all the wonder and promise of the emerging age of technological marvels.
But as Randall Stross makes clear in this critical biography of the man who is arguably the most globally famous of all Americans, Thomas Edison’s…
I’ve always been fascinated by advertising—its creativity, its persuasive force, its sometimes relentless nature. I’m a law professor and I’ve written numerous articles on the relationship between law, technology, and advertising. A lot of what I’m interested in is psychology. Only by understanding the capabilities of audiences for advertising can judges and legislatures determine what legal limits need to be placed on advertisers.
This fascinating book combines in-depth present-day interviews with historical accounts to illuminate the similarities and differences in how current and previous generations view technology. The juxtaposition generates significant insights. The meaning of vanity, boredom, loneliness, and anger have all changed under the influence of smartphones and social media. Fernandez and Matt reveal how these innovations are not just changing our habits, but the very content of our emotional lives.
Facebook makes us lonely. Selfies breed narcissism. On Twitter, hostility reigns. Pundits and psychologists warn that digital technologies substantially alter our emotional states, but in this lively investigation of changing feelings about technology, we learn that the gadgets we use don't just affect how we feel-they can profoundly change our sense of self. When we say we're bored, we don't mean the same thing as a Victorian dandy. Could it be that political punditry has helped shape a new kind of anger? Luke Fernandez and Susan Matt take us back in time to…
I grew up in a family that was focused on people, poetry, and politics. My parents both worked with children with disabilities in Massachusetts and my mother ran a daycare center in our house. As a reader, student, poet, and then editor, I’ve drawn on those experiences and expectations, and have searched through books looking for their echoes. Since 2007, I've edited books at Yale University Press where I'm currently Senior Executive Editor. I have a BA from Cornell University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I've also worked in various publishing roles at ICM, Continuum, and Harvard University Press.
First published in 1958, this is one of Hannah Arendt’s most influential books and in it she attempts to define the human condition in the aftermath of World War II, developing her concept “natality.”
It’s a challenging book that I’ve wrestled with and argued with and never forgotten. It includes some of her most powerful and frequently cited passages about birth. Lately, I’ve been returning to its opening pages, in which she discusses the launch of Sputnik into space.
She saw this launch not as an exciting technological breakthrough, but as a fateful repudiation of our earthly existence, an existence that was defined by birth with possibilities and limitations.
The past year has seen a resurgence of interest in the political thinker Hannah Arendt, "the theorist of beginnings," whose work probes the logics underlying unexpected transformations-from totalitarianism to revolution.
A work of striking originality, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then-diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are…
A Seattle-based author, I have written eight books, including When the Red Gates Opened: A Memoir of China’s Reawakening, about the eight years I spent as Business Week’s reporter covering China, 1982-1990. In it, I give readers an inside look at China’s transformation from Maoism to modernity. A fluent speaker of Mandarin, I have traveled widely in China for over forty years and befriended Chinese people at many levels of society, leading me to a strong belief in the importance of direct cross-cultural communication and deepened mutual understanding.
Frankly, it makes me squirm to recommend this book, but it’s a topic we Americans need to understand better. Under Xi Jinping, China has expanded its use of surveillance cameras and begun a “social credit” system to track people who are—and aren’t—following the rules. Kai Strittmatter, who reported from China for a leading German newspaper for more than a decade, relies on strong research and concludes that China is Orwellian. And yet, most Chinese citizens I know do not feel watched and oppressed. I’m eager to get back to China to judge for myself.
Named a Notable Work of Nonfiction of 2020 by the Washington Post
As heard on NPR's Fresh Air, We Have Been Harmonized, by award-winning correspondent Kai Strittmatter, offers a groundbreaking look, based on decades of research, at how China created the most terrifying surveillance state in history.
China’s new drive for repression is being underpinned by unprecedented advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone conversations, the monitoring of app use, and millions of high-resolution security cameras make it nearly impossible for a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Commercial transactions, including food…
I’m a systems thinker (Senior Fellow at an environmental think tank, author of 14 books and hundreds of essays) who’s addicted to trying to understand the world. After a few decades, the following is my state of understanding. Power is everywhere and determines everything in our lives. Whether due to the physical power of energy channeled through technology, or the social power of organizations and money, we’re enabled or disabled daily. During the last century, fossil-fueled humanity has overpowered planetary systems, as evidenced by climate change, species extinctions, and resource depletion. Few think critically about power. Unless we start doing so, we may be inviting the ultimate disempowerment—extinction.
Over the last two centuries, human per capita energy usage has grown 800 percent, while the population has also grown to the same degree. Life has changed profoundly due to our adoption of fossil fuels—but puzzlingly few people are curious to understand energy’s role in society and history. Smil fills the void to overflowing with this detailed account of how people have harvested energy from their environments, and how doing so has changed the ways they live.
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization.
"I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year
Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary…
In sixth grade, I got into an argument with my neighbor, Billy. We were in his backyard, looking at the stars through his new telescope. “I see Orion,” said Billy. “What do you see?” “A bunch of stars.” “I aimed it at Orion. See him?” ”I see a bunch of stars.” “Don’t you see his belt? His sword?” Billy got more agitated. “Everybody knows that’s Orion. I can’t believe you can’t see him.” “It’s not actually Orion – it was just a bunch of stars until someone told a story about it and gave it meaning.” That compelled me to write, to construct a meaning for what I experienced, and try to make sense of it.
I loved this book because it opened my mind to new ways of thinking about thinking and how we make decisions. We are not the rational beings we think we are. Michael Lewis has the gift of being able to take complex ideas and make them understandable, informative, and very entertaining.
The book is about psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Khaneman and their research into how people make decisions. Their story is riveting, and I couldn’t help but think about how I make decisions and how to frame questions to gain greater insight into that process.
'Michael Lewis could spin gold out of any topic he chose ... his best work ... vivid, original and hard to forget' Tim Harford, Financial Times
'Gripping ... There is war, heroism, genius, love, loss, discovery, enduring loyalty and friendship. It is epic stuff ... Michael Lewis is one of the best non-fiction writers of our time' Irish Times
From Michael Lewis, No.1 bestselling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, this is the extraordinary story of the two men whose ideas changed the world.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky met in war-torn 1960s Israel. Both were gifted young…
