The books that everyone was talking about this year
For some, the biggest end-of-year traditions might be holidays and hot chocolate, family and festivities, or the first snowfall and all the merriment that comes with it. Our favorite end-of-year tradition is gathering ‘round… to pore over the latest best-of book lists. It’s an opportunity to reflect on a year in publishing and, more importantly, to count just how many of the top picks made their way onto our bedside tables.
This year, we are honored to count many of our own books among the “best of the year.” Read on below, and sign up for our newsletter to be the first to hear about our next “best” books.
Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us by Gary F. Marcus
Included in The New Yorker’s best books of 2024
“This polemic, by a cognitive scientist and startup founder, calls for stricter regulation of A.I. His warnings are framed by critiques of A.I.’s development’s current direction, which has privileged deep learning over potentially more fruitful methods, and of what he argues is the tech industry’s moral decline.”
Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next by Todd Stern
Included in Financial Times’ best books of 2024 in environment, science, and technology
“Barack Obama’s chief climate negotiator has written a highly readable guide to the byzantine UN negotiations that produced the 2015 Paris Agreement, and where they’re headed next. You’ll never need to ask what COP stands for after reading this book, although you may not ever want to see one up close either.”
Attention is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt by Anna Von Mertens
Included in Scientific American’s recommended books of 2024
“Blending complex science with human-interest stories, Von Mertens celebrates the constellation of women scientists who discovered how to calculate galactic distances and classify stars by chemical composition…. This deeply researched book is ultimately an homage to the process of observation and meaning making in science.”
A Book about Ray by Ellen Levy
Included in the New York Times’ best art books of 2024
“An extra-special artist deserves an extra-special book, and that’s what Ray Johnson gets in Ellen Levy’s A Book about Ray. Like the life it records, the book is a brilliant turn in—highest compliment—a very Ray way.”
Melancholy Wedgwood by Iris Moon
Included in The New Yorker’s best books of 2024
“In this unorthodox history, Moon, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, casts aside the traditional, heroic portrait of the English ceramicist and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and envisions the potter as a symbol of Britain’s post-colonial melancholia. Moon’s… mode of attack, at once bold and surreptitious, succeeds in challenging the established, too-cozy narrative about her subject.”
Wolkenbügel: El Lissitzky as Architect by Richard Anderson
Included in The Wall Street Journal’s holiday gift books on architecture
“Wolkenbügel, which takes its title from Lissitzky’s unrealized project for a ‘horizontal skyscraper,’ is a gorgeously produced, highly readable account of a fascinating and wily figure, full of double-page color illustrations of his beautiful and provocative works.”
Vox ex Machina: A Cultural History of Talking Machines by Sarah A. Bell
Included in The New Yorker’s best books of 2024
“Bell’s début is a terrific account of how researchers gave machines voices, from signal compression through linear predictive coding and natural-language processing.”
Emergency Money: Notgeld in the Image Economy of the German Inflation, 1914–1923 by Tom Wilkinson
Included in the New York Times’ best art books of 2024
“During and after World War I, Germany underwent enormous levels of inflation, which led the government to issue promissory notes well into the trillions of German marks. Depression and fascism were up ahead, but a less-known byproduct is explored in Tom Wilkinson’s unmissable monograph. Faithless in government money, provinces and private interests took it upon themselves to issue functional currency emblazoned with truly bizarre or eye-catching graphics. Many are reprinted here in vibrant color.”
Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing by Elizabeth L. Block
Included in BBC’s best culture to look forward to this autumn
From the award-winning author of Dressing Up, a riveting and diverse history of women’s hair that reestablishes the cultural power of hairdressing in nineteenth-century America.
Smart Management: How Simple Heuristics Help Leaders Make Good Decisions in an Uncertain World by Jochen Reb, Shenghua Luan and Gerd Gigerenzer
Included in Behavioral Scientist’s notable books of 2024
Why successful leaders must embrace simple strategies in an increasingly uncertain and complex world.
Antiracist by Design: Reimagining Applied Behavioral Science by Crystal C. Hall and Mindy Hernandez
Included in Behavioral Scientist’s notable books of 2024
How to confront the challenge of creating antiracist behavioral design—and how to successfully implement the solutions.
Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie® by Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman
Included in Polygon’s best video game books of 2024
“[Boellstorff and Soderman] conducted a whopping 150 interviews with people involved in every aspect of Intellivision’s creation, life, and death. Plus, they dug through private and academic archives to unearth history and data that’s been forgotten for nearly 40 years. The authors wisely spend much of the book exploring this overlap between games and children’s disposable novelties—and how decisions made at this moment would harden the foundation for the gaming industry to come.”
Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer by Jesper Juul
Included in Polygon’s best video game books of 2024
“Consider [Too Much Fun] your chance to fill in a glaring gap in the hearts and minds of video game enthusiasts young and old—without actually having to play Commodore 64 games, a test of endurance and skill that would terrify those of us accustomed to the creature comforts of today…. Author Jesper Juul is one of the great gaming thinkers and historians.”