18 2025 December
The Non-Obvious Book Awards Winners Announced!
Another year of picks and a recap of our favorite 15 books of the year, all the books on the Longlist, our selections for the...
Read Now16 2025 December
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz
The rise and fall of cities is a fascinating thing, when you can look back at them with a historical view. That’s the idea at...
Read Now09 2025 December
The Non-Obvious Book Awards Longlist Announcement …
After months of deliberation, entries and reading – our team has selected the Top 100 Non-Fiction books of 2025. You can see the full list...
Read Now25 2025 November
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook by Martin Raymond
As the end of the year nears, I’m thinking about trends and big picture ideas from the year. Though I no longer produce my annual...
Read Now18 2025 November
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Age of Extraction by Tim Wu
Tim Wu is exactly the voice that we need right now to help imagine what the positive version of our technological future could be. Known...
Read Now04 2025 November
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
In a world where multiverses are real, there’s just one catch … no one can visit a world where they already have a living counterpart....
Read Now28 2025 October
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Toxic Positivity by Whitney Goodman
If you’re an optimistic person, it’s possible that you’re part of the problem. We often feel like being positive and having the right mindset is...
Read Now21 2025 October
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: CAPS LOCK by Ruben Pater
This isn’t like any other book on your bookshelf. That’s perhaps the greatest compliment I can offer this stealthy 552-page paperback exploration of the intersection...
Read Now14 2025 October
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: A Kids Book About Diwali by Chhavi Arya Bhargava
It’s Diwali season and the holiday is getting continued attention from many groups outside the South Asian community, so I wanted to come back and...
Read Now07 2025 October
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Soundbite by Sara Harberson
As you might expect, when I started digging into what makes a great college application essay, I started by skimming or reading dozens of books....
Read Now06 2025 October
The Cormackian Challenge and What AI Could Really Do
There were two major stories this week that seem on the surface to have little to do with one another. The first is one you...
Read Now30 2025 September
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
Some of the stories in this book are hard to read. And you’ll probably be glad that you’re not facing any of the situations that...
Read Now23 2025 September
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Design for a Radically Changing World by Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen
The offices (or coffee shops) we work in, bridges we drive across, and temples we pray in were all imagined, designed, and built by architects....
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