It’s been months since I’ve done an audiobook recommendation post. That doesn’t mean I haven’t enjoyed some great listens; it just means I’ve fallen way behind in posting. So this is a round-up post, listing some favorites since last fall.

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore — Audible often has two-for-one sales featuring a limited selection of titles. I take advantage of these, and often find terrific books that I wouldn’t otherwise have known to look for. I think that’s how I discovered this one. It’s an excellent fictionalized story of science, invention, and patents. Edison vs Westinghouse, through the eyes of attorney Paul Cravath.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond — (nonfiction) This one was an eye-opener. The author follows the lives of several individuals over a period of months — both tenants and landlords — using their experiences to examine the forces shaping the structure of home-rental markets in impoverished neighborhoods. It’s an amazing glimpse into the precarious lives of the very poor. This is another title I would not have considered but for the Audible promotion.

A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg — A history of the gene-editing method known as CRISPR, from those who invented it.

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson — Another brilliant look into the future by the incomparable KSR. Red Moon assumes the ascendance of the Chinese in lunar colonization, and explores potential near-future existences on both the Earth and the Moon.

The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen — I loved this book. I majored in biology in college, with a particular interest in evolution, so this book hit home for me. It looks into evolutionary theory, tracing the development of a new theory on the mechanism of evolution, called horizontal gene transfer, in which the movement of genes occurs across species lines. This one partners nicely with Ed Yong’s “I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life” , reviewed last summer. I wish I could find the time to listen to both of them again.

LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking — War has taken new forms and America is not winning. This is a fascinating and eye-opening look at the skilled use of social media as propaganda. If you write near-future #sci-fi or present-day thrillers, read this book.

Posted on: Sunday, May 5th, 2019 at 12:39 pm
Categories: Audio Books, Recommended Reading.