The Economist: The Best Books of the Year So Far

Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

A Nobel-prizewinning biologist explores strategies to arrest the decay of body and mind.

Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts

The author’s experience of a double mastectomy and reconstruction set off a four-year quest to seek “the multifarious meanings and uses of breasts”.

Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever

The tale of the largest law-enforcement sting operation in history.

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

Generative ai will dramatically change white-collar jobs. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School explains how—and provides useful tips on how to harness it.

The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health

An enlightening round-up of what scientists know about the workings of the brain, and how they know it.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

At once compassionate in tone and data-rich in approach, this makes for a gripping read for parents of adolescents.

World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century

This book is both a useful layman’s introduction to the world’s most pressing geopolitical issue and a collection of sensible recommendations.

How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive

Between 1946 and 2010 69% of autocrats were jailed, killed or forced into exile when they lost power. A political scientist considers how other dictators seek to avoid such a fate.

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

Today’s strongmen typically crave little besides power itself and the loot it brings. They have spun a network of mutual support.

The Road to the Country

This novel sheds light on a dark period in Nigeria’s history: the civil war of 1967-70.