Here are 100 books that Off-Earth fans have personally recommended if you like
Off-Earth.
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I’ve been an astronomer since I was young and lucky enough to make a living at it. I ventured into space mining when I found Mining the Sky. I started doing some calculations using the newest research. What I found was surprising and ignited a new passion in me that has led me from asteroids to the Moon to the ends of the Solar System and from pure astrophysics into questions of law, government, and ethics. Now, I write almost entirely about our future in space.
From the first sentence–“The Universe is trying to kill you”–this book grabbed my attention.
I thought astronomy was a peaceful, detached pursuit. Awe-inspiring but remote from my everyday life. Umm, no. Phil Plait amazed me with all the ways the universe is hostile to life (that is, to me).
With wit, humor, and an infectious love of astronomy that could win over even the science-phobic, this fun and fascinating book reminds us that outer space is anything but remote. The scientist behind the popular website badastronomy.com, Philip Plait presents some of the most fearsome end-of-the-world calamities (for instance, incoming asteroids and planet-swallowing black holes), demystifies the scientific principles at work behind them, and gives us the odds that any of them will step out of the realm of sci-fi to disrupt our quiet corner of the cosmos. The result is a book that is both terrifying and entertaining?a tour…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve been an astronomer since I was young and lucky enough to make a living at it. I ventured into space mining when I found Mining the Sky. I started doing some calculations using the newest research. What I found was surprising and ignited a new passion in me that has led me from asteroids to the Moon to the ends of the Solar System and from pure astrophysics into questions of law, government, and ethics. Now, I write almost entirely about our future in space.
Nothing was more counter-intuitive to me than mining the sky. Surely, space is a void, I thought. John Lewis put me right. He convinced me–that there are huge resources out in the void that dwarf Earth’s supplies. Our future could well lie among them.
But will it be soon or centuries from now? I reckon soon.
While we worry over the depletion of the earth's natural resources, the pollution of our planet, and the challenges presented by the earth's growing population, billions of dollars worth of metals, fuels, and life-sustaining substances await us in nearby space. In this visionary book, noted planetary scientist John S. Lewis explains how we can mine these precious metals from the asteroids, comets, and planets in our own solar system for use in space construction projects. And this is just one of the possibilities. Join John S. Lewis as he contemplates milking the moons of Mars for water and hollowing out…
I’ve been an astronomer since I was young and lucky enough to make a living at it. I ventured into space mining when I found Mining the Sky. I started doing some calculations using the newest research. What I found was surprising and ignited a new passion in me that has led me from asteroids to the Moon to the ends of the Solar System and from pure astrophysics into questions of law, government, and ethics. Now, I write almost entirely about our future in space.
This book is a hoot! It’s about as far from an earnest lecture on future tech–including asteroid mining–as can be, yet it still taught me a ton while I laughed out loud. (I may be biased as there’s a nearly full-page cartoon of me on page 66.)
Beware: you may emerge from reading it with new views.
What will the world of tomorrow be like? How does progress happen? And why don't we have a lunar colony already? In this witty and entertaining book, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith give us a snapshot of the transformative technologies that are coming next - from robot swarms to nuclear fusion powered-toasters - and explain how they will change our world in astonishing ways. By weaving together their own research, interviews with pioneering scientists and Zach's trademark comics, the Weinersmiths investigate why these innovations are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I’ve been an astronomer since I was young and lucky enough to make a living at it. I ventured into space mining when I found Mining the Sky. I started doing some calculations using the newest research. What I found was surprising and ignited a new passion in me that has led me from asteroids to the Moon to the ends of the Solar System and from pure astrophysics into questions of law, government, and ethics. Now, I write almost entirely about our future in space.
It’s an oldie (originally published in 1976!) but still in print. O’Neill offers us an optimistic vision of the giant “space cities” we may be able to build when we master space mining based on solid numbers.
I have my reservations, and Nesvold’s cautions still apply, but just maybe we can do better this time around.
In 1969 America had proved its leadership in human spaceflight but among the nation’s youth an anti-technology mindset was growing. Princeton Physicist and Professor Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill, inventor of the revolutionary Colliding-Beam Storage Ring technology that is now the basis of all high energy particle accelerators, asked his students if they could come up with a working Space Colony system to permanently and happily house tens of thousands of regular people. They dug into the challenge. Soon his small band of students grew to scores of researchers both young and old, all united in the Big Dream of letting…
My name is Carl Rhodes, and I am a Professor of Management and Organization at the University of Technology Sydney. Like many others, in recent years I have become increasingly concerned, sometimes angry even, about how the organization of business and the economy is creating massive economic injustice. I am convinced that the economic system that has billionaires at its apex is deeply unfair, creating hardship, pain, and even death for too many people around the world. I am also convinced that we do not have to accept this gross injustice as being inevitable.
How do billionaires become so rich? One story is that it is all about hard work, initiative, and special talents. If you believe that story, then you might conclude that billionaires deserve their extreme wealth. What I found especially insightful about Chuck Collins book is that he painstakingly shows that this story is bogus.
Collins delves into the realities of what he calls the ‘agents of inequality’–the accountants and lawyers who ensure that the world’s richest people maintain and extend their wealth over generations. This fascinating book lifts the veil on how the rich use everything from cash hoarding to tax evasion to trust funds to ensure that the world’s economic system remains unequal.
For decades, a secret army of tax attorneys, accountants and wealth managers has been developing into the shadowy Wealth Defence Industry. These 'agents of inequality' are paid millions to hide trillions for the richest 0.01%.
In this book, inequality expert Chuck Collins, who himself inherited a fortune, interviews the leading players and gives a unique insider account of how this industry is doing everything it can to create and entrench hereditary dynasties of wealth and power. He exposes the inner workings of these "agents of inequality", showing how they deploy anonymous shell companies, family offices, offshore accounts, opaque trusts, and…
I would like to consider myself an experienced and successful designer, researcher, and educator. I'm an Associate Professor in Communication Design and the Head of Education for the School of Design at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, where I've taught and researched for the last twenty years so I'm super passionate about this subject and love explaining how design works. Before joining academia, I worked internationally as a designer and creative director for numerous prestigious design and media organizations, including Philips, Time-Warner, Windmill Lane Pictures, and WPP in the UK, Ireland, USA, and Southeast Asia. Working in these different businesses and locations gave me a broad perspective on the role and importance of design.
There is so much understandable suspicion about how organisations use or misuse your personal data that it's hard to see the many potential benefits of data sharing. This book restores a little faith in technology and those who develop it for public benefit.
It is a compelling read, learning how data can be used for good and bad, with many references to the author’s personal journey, from working in customer services to being an internet entrepreneur before becoming a researcher.
'An essential read' Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge
'We are currently living in a moment of extreme pessimism about data. This book will change your mind.'
It's impossible to escape digital technology. And with that comes fear. But whatever the news has told you about data and technology, think again. Data expert and tech insider turned Cambridge researcher Sam Gilbert shows that, actually, this data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us.
Good Data examines the incredible new ways this information explosion is already helping us - whether that's…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
Based on events that have happened over the past decade, I am deeply concerned about large swaths of people in society being strongly influenced by cults and/or disinformation. They can ruin lives, destroy relationships, and even destabilize entire societies. This inspired me to look for and discover the five books on this list, which also shaped the writing of my medical thriller centering on a fictional cult spreading medical disinformation.
Disinformation is a major issue today, so any nonfiction book that explores it in depth is one that I will surely dive into. I liked how, like any nonfiction book, it covers various aspects of it, such as social media and cognitive biases. There’s plenty of content to appreciate here.
Does the idea of a world in which facts mean nothing cause anxiety? Fear? Maybe even paranoia? Disinformation:The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era cannot cure all the ills of a post-truth world, but by demonstrating how the emergence of digital technology into everyday life has knitted together a number of seemingly loosely related forces-historical, psychological, economic, and culture-to create the post-truth culture, Disinformation will help you better understand how we got to where we now are, see how we can move beyond a culture in which facts are too easily dismissed, and develop a few highly…
I’ve worked in technology for more than a decade, living and working in Silicon Valley, where ideas that sound futuristic can feel inevitable and only a heartbeat away. It can sometimes feel strange, being surrounded by people building the next big thing while still wondering what any of it will actually mean for people, relationships, and society.
That tension is why I write near-future fiction. I love books with big ideas, but I also want heat, romance, ambition, and messy human choices. I’m drawn to stories that bring those worlds together—and ask what happens when the future arrives before we’ve figured out what it means for us.
Yes, it’s nonfiction, but it has everything I love about great Silicon Valley fiction: big tech insider energy, corporate absurdity, bizarre culture, powerful people behaving badly, and the feeling that the decisions being made inside an office might eventually affect everyone outside it.
It’s sharp, wildly entertaining, and exactly the kind of tech-industry drama I’d happily take to the beach.
A 2025 best book of the year so far by The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, and more
“Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“When one of the world's most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book ― amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this ― it's time to pull out all the stops.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post
I’m a communication professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, a social media user, and a mom. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an op-ed for CNN arguing that he’d won the election on social media, and I just never stopped writing. A few hundred op-eds and a book later, I’m still interested in what social media is doing to us all and the issues women are up against in our society. My book allowed me to explore how social media is impacting every single aspect of the lives of women and girls and exactly what we can do about it. I wrote it as a call to arms.
Quinn’s description of their abuse by online trolls is one of the most harrowing I’ve ever heard. I think it’s an incredibly important account of how dangerous it can be to be a woman on the internet (Quinn is now nonbinary).
One thing that really stood out to me is that, despite everything, Quinn still thinks the internet is an amazing place. This had a big influence on my view that women shouldn’t stop using social networks even though they’re so toxic. Social networks are also places where women can empower ourselves (Quinn developed their career and overcame the challenges of dating as a queer teen online), and we need to be able to wield this power.
You've heard the stories about the dark side of the internet--hackers, #gamergate, anonymous mobs attacking an unlucky victim, and revenge porn--but they remain just that: stories. Surely these things would never happen to you.
Zoe Quinn used to feel the same way. She is a video game developer whose ex-boyfriend published a crazed blog post cobbled together from private information, half-truths, and outright fictions, along with a rallying cry to the online hordes to go after her. They answered in the form of a so-called movement known as #gamergate--they hacked her accounts; stole nude photos of her; harassed her family,…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I never wanted to have anything to do with money. I wanted to live a life of meaning in nature, of poetry, of spirit, and of relationship. The problem was that I couldn’t get anyone to pay me for it. My relationship with money from the very beginning was how can I accumulate it and manage it so I could deliver this life of freedom to myself in the shortest amount of time possible. In short, how could I “life plan” myself. I am the founder and thought leader of the life planning movement in financial advice now active in 30 cultures around the world with thousands of life planning practitioners.
Jacob Needleman’s Money and the Meaning of Life is the most influential and inspiring book by far for the development of life planning movement in financial advice.
A masterful storyteller with his own set of characters, Needleman guides us into the mystery of how money works and what money is really about. Going back and forth between money’s practicalities and the deeper longings we all have for freedom, he challenges us to explore what freedom really means in relation to money.
A page-turner of speculative philosophy, I can still remember how gripping the final 20 pages were. In his exploration of money and meaning, Needleman tells the story of life planning, which is the story of each of our aspirations for freedom, and then the path to accomplish them.
If we understood the true role of money in our lives, writes philosopher Jacob Needleman, we would not think simply in terms of spending it or saving it. Money exerts a deep emotional influence on who we are and what we tell ourselves we can never have. Our long unwillingness to understand the emotional and spiritual effects of money on us is at the heart of why we have come to know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Money has everything to do with the pursuit of an idealistic life, while at the same time, it is…
