2015 · Adrian Tchaikovsky · 600 pages · Science Fiction
Adrian Tchaikovsky's Arthur C. Clarke Award winner achieves something remarkable: it makes readers root passionately for a civilization of intelligent spiders while questioning what it means to be the dominant species.
1968 · Arthur C. Clarke · 297 pages · Science Fiction
Arthur C. Clarke's novelization of his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick is one of the most awe-inspiring works of hard science fiction ever written, trading the film's visual mystery for crystalline prose and explicit answers about humanity's place in the cosmos.
1953 · Arthur C. Clarke · 224 pages · Science Fiction
Clarke's masterpiece of alien contact fiction imagines a species that brings peace and prosperity to Earth at the cost of humanity's freedom, building toward a transcendent and deeply unsettling conclusion about what evolution really demands.
2011 · Yuval Noah Harari · 464 pages · Non-Fiction
Yuval Noah Harari's sweeping history of humanity is the kind of book that makes you feel smarter while you're reading it and leaves you with plenty to argue about afterward. The first half, covering the Cognitive Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution, is brilliant popular science writing that actually changes how you think about human history. The second half, where Harari shifts from historian to philosopher, is more uneven, relying on bold claims that sometimes outpace their evidence. Specialists in various fields have raised legitimate concerns about oversimplification. But as a book that makes you reconsider assumptions you didn't know you had, it remains one of the most stimulating non-fiction reads of the past decade.