It’s a new year and whether you’re keen to embrace the ‘new you’, or quite happy to stick with the old one, we have a book recommendation to help you get 2019 off to the best possible start. Begin as you mean to go on by using our handy guide to help you pick which MITP book (or books) you should read next!
Question One: What was on your mind in 2018?
A) CYBER ATTACKS
We recommend You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late
You might be right to have spent 2018 worrying about this one. Wolff exposes significant cybersecurity incidents of the last decade and the motives behind each breach: from financial gain and espionage to public humiliation of the victims.
Need some reassurance?
We recommend Twitterbots
It’s not all doom and gloom. A celebration of cyber creativity, this book showcases the curious world of Twitterbots: autonomous software systems engineered to craft witty, provocative, and concise outputs of their own.
B) GLOBAL HEALTH
We recommend Plagues and the Paradox of Progress
You might be worrying about the wrong thing. Bollyky explains that the world is getting healthier but reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, or governance.
Need some reassurance?
We recommend Left to Our Own Devices
Technology doesn’t have to equal psychological peril. This book offers unexpected ways that individuals have adapted technology to reclaim what matters, from a couple who used smart lights to work through conflict to a trans woman who celebrated her transition through selfies.
C) HUMAN RIGHTS
We recommend Butch Heroes
Throughout history, individuals who haven’t conformed to gender norms have faced dire punishment for being themselves. This book recovers lost queer history through a series of witty paintings, reclaiming the lives of forgotten but heroic figures.
Question Two: Which new hobby are you hoping to embrace this year?
A) TAKING PHOTOS
We recommend Picturing Science and Engineering
Stand up if you’re a scientist; stay standing if you’re also a photographer. Photos are a powerful way to present research but not everyone has the skills. This guide from an award-winning science photographer shows how to create science images that are both accurate and stunning.
B) LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE
We recommend Dictionary of Gestures
Did you know that what Americans understand as the “A-OK gesture” is an obscene insult in the Arab world? This illustrated guide teaches you more than 850 gestures and their meanings around the world.
C) INVESTING IN CRYPTOCURRENCY
We recommend Bits to Bitcoin
You own a smartphone, feel at home in front of a computer, and have bought some cryptocurrency, but do you have any idea how any of this really works? This accessible guide talks you through our digital infrastructure – so you can start investing yourself or at least sound extra clever at your next dinner party.
Question Three: Are you still looking for a New Year’s Resolution?
A) BECOME SCIENCE LITERATE
We recommend The Dialogues
Physicist Clifford Johnson thinks that we should have more conversations about science. In The Dialogues, he invites us to eavesdrop on a series of nine conversations, in graphic-novel form—written and drawn by Johnson—about “the nature of the universe.”
B) BECOME ‘MODERN’
We recommend Designed for Hi-Fi Living
Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder explore how record albums and their covers delivered mood music, lifestyle advice, global sounds, and travel tips to midcentury Americans who longed to be modern.
However you start your reading in 2019 we thank you for your support and look forward to exploring and learning with you this next year!