Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

How simplicity trumps complexity in nature, business, and life.

We struggle to manage complexity every day. We follow intricate diets to lose weight, juggle multiple remotes to operate our home entertainment systems, face proliferating data at the office, and hack through thickets of regulation at tax time. But complexity isn't destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there's a better way: By developing a few simple yet effective rules, you can tackle even the most complex problems.

Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People - Elizabeth A. Fenn

 “Historians thought this book could not be written—a history of a world far from document producing Europeans. Elizabeth A. Fenn has done it, and she has made it a page-turner. Her breathtaking accomplishment will make us see American history in an entirely new way.” —Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina; author of The Native Ground

Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen by Philip Ball

 "As a harvest of fascinating facts delivered with sharp wit and insight, it is hard to fault" (Robert Douglas-Fairhurst Daily Telegraph)

"A fascinating compendium… Another author might struggle to manage such an esoteric collection [of stories of invisibility] but Mr Ball’s writing is incisive enough to keep the different elements hanging and working together" (The Economist)

If you could be invisible, what would you do? The chances are that it would have something to do with power, wealth or sex. Perhaps all three.

But there's no need to feel guilty. Impulses like these have always been at the heart of our fascination with invisibility: it points to realms beyond our senses, serves as a receptacle for fears and dreams, and hints at worlds where other rules apply. Invisibility is a mighty power and a terrible curse, a sexual promise, a spiritual condition.

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town - Jon Krakauer

“Jon Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer.” —American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature citation

Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, with a highly regarded state university, bucolic surroundings, a lively social scene, and an excellent football team — the Grizzlies — with a rabid fan base.

Life Unfolding: How the Human Body Creates Itself - Jamie A. Davies

  "From egg to adult body, Life Unfolding by Jamie Davies is a demanding but wonder-filled account of the simple interactions that create complex structures." -- Claire Ainsworth,New Scientest

"Davies offers a detailed ride through the mind-boggling number of simultaneous self-organizing activities of growth." - Publishers Weekly

Climbing Mount Improbable - Richard Dawkins

A brilliant book celebrating improbability as the engine that drives life, by the acclaimed author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker.

The human eye is so complex and works so precisely that surely, one might believe, its current shape and function must be the product of design. How could such an intricate object have come about by chance? Tackling this subject—in writing that the New York Times called "a masterpiece"—Richard Dawkins builds a carefully reasoned and lovingly illustrated argument for evolutionary adaptation as the mechanism for life on earth.

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann

 Deeply researched, groundbreaking history. (Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker)

The first comprehensive history of the Nazi concentration camps

Natural Born Heroes - Christopher Mcdougall

The best-selling author of Born to Run now travels to the Mediterranean, where he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well on the island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere.

After running an ultramarathon through the Copper Canyons of Mexico, Christopher McDougall finds his next great adventure on the razor-sharp mountains of Crete, where a band of Resistance fighters in World War II plotted the daring abduction of a German general from the heart of the Nazi occupation. How did a penniless artist, a young shepherd, and a playboy poet believe they could carry out such a remarkable feat of strength and endurance, smuggling the general past thousands of Nazi pursuers, with little more than their own wits and courage to guide them?

Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire by Caroline Finkel

 

The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most influential empires in world history. Its reach extended to three continents and it survived for more than six centuries, but its history is too often colored by the memory of its bloody final throes on the battlefields of World War I. In this magisterial work-the first definitive account written for the general reader-renowned scholar and journalist Caroline Finkel lucidly recounts the epic story of the Ottoman Empire from its origins in the thirteenth century through its destruction in the twentieth.

Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos - Peter M. Hoffmann

The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells—assemblies of otherwise “dead” molecules—come to life, and together constitute a living being?