Book List

I started tracking these books in 2021, inspired by Paul Dourish's book list.

Reading Now:

The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays by Martin Heidegger
Empire of AI by Karen Hao

Finished in 2025:

The Will to Change by bell hooks
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
- 24 hour audiobook, took me a few months
- loved the first ~20% and the last ~20%, trudged through the middle ~60%
AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor (audiobook)
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
- Very interested in the theory, unfortunately I did not retain much
Romancing the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital, Authentic Life by Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf
Science as Social Knowledge by Helen E. Longino
Montessori: A Modern Approach by Paula Polk Lillard
The YouTube Apparatus by Kevin Munger

Finished in 2024:

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (the more I read the less I agree with the arguments)
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
Data versus Democracy by Kris Shaffer
The AI Mirror by Shannon Valor
Social Media and Democracy, edited volume by Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker
Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
Geeky Pedagogy by Jessamyn Neuhaus
Neuromancer by William Gibson (I'll be honest I didn't fully get the hype but I'm excited for the Apple TV adaptation)
The Evolved Nest by Darcia Narvaez and G. A. Bradshaw
Democracy Matters by Cornel West
What Kind of Creatures Are We? by Noam Chomsky
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz
Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks
How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching by Joshua R. Eyler

Finished in 2023:

The Empathy Diaries by Sherry Turkle
No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz
Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (source material for the film)
The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
Contact by Carl Sagan
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
Designing your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
The World-Ending Fire by Wendell Berry (hoopla audiobook read by Nick Offerman 🙂)
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene by Donna J. Haraway
Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest by Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks
Information Ecologies: Using Technology With Heart by Bonnie A. Nardi and Vicki O'Day

Finished in 2022:

The Master Switch by Tim Wu
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Privacy is Power by Carissa Véliz
Digital Disconnect by Robert W. McChesney
The New Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian
The Upswing by Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
Chasing Innovation by Lilly Irani
The Undercommons by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks
Misogynoir Transformed by Moya Bailey
All the News That’s Fit to Click by Caitlin Petre
Technopoly by Neil Postman
The Engaged Scholar by Andrew Hoffman

Finished in 2021:

Designs for the Pluriverse by Arturo Escobar
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
The Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford
If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore
Thinking in Systems: a Primer by Donella Meadows
We Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
Your Computer is on Fire (Essay Collection)
Black Software by Charlton McIlwain
Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Subprime Attention Crisis by Tim Hwang
Wintering by Katherine May
Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
Pasteur's Quadrant by Donald E. Stokes
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

"Mentor Books" and Other Favorites:

This is not an endorsement of all the authors' opinions or ideas, just an acknowledgment that they have stuck with me:

Thinking in Systems: a Primer by Donella Meadows
Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan
Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein
Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin
Technology and the Virtues by Shannon Vallor
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Books On My List to Read (No Particular Order):

Weather by Jenny Offill
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Intelligence and Spirit by Reza Negarestani
The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence by Matteo Pasquinelli
Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World by Guru Madhavan
The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America by Leo Marx
Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life by Jonathan Silvertown
The Infinite Playground: A Player's Guide to Imagination by Bernard De Koven with Holly Gramazio
Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America by Michael B. Katz
The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now by Hilke Schellmann
Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being by Neil Theise
The Optimist's Telescope by Bina Venkataraman
The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Failure to Disrupt by Justin Reich
What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub
Truth Decay by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich
Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time by Linda Nilson
How Institutions Think by Mary Douglas
Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy by Sarrah Kassem
Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures by Christina Dunbar-Hester
Why Privacy Matters by Neil Richards
The World for Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy
Dying for an iPhone by Jenny Chan
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
When You Wonder, You're Learning by Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski
Destination Dissertation by Sonja K. Foss
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Breaking the Social Media Prism by Chris Bail
Machine Habitus by Massimo Airoldi
Everyday Information Architecture by Lisa maria Martin
The Damned Don't Cry by Frank Chapman
No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane F. McAlevey
The Rise of Big Data Policing by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
After Democracy: Imagining Our Political Future by Zizi Papacharissi
Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott
The Art of Not Being Governed by James C. Scott
Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology by Tara Dawson McGuinness
The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business by Duff McDonald
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City by Jane Jacobs
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
Predict and Surveil by Sarah Brayne
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy Wilson
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant