Here are 100 books that Wrong Way fans have personally recommended if you like
Wrong Way.
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Leadership is the key ingredient that moves the needle. Each of us has the right—and duty—to be a leader of our life and family, organization and society, and to inspire others for something bigger than ourselves, something that has not been done before. But why am I so passionate about leadership? Why is it the focus of my books, my teaching, my company? It all started in my youth: The defining moment came after my sister’s death to a heroin overdose. I stood at my sister’s grave and decided I would never be a victim of circumstances—I would pursue self-determination. Leadership is the exact opposite of victimhood.
It has become fashionable to bash Elon Musk as an inhuman, dictatorial control freak. But what is at the source of who the co-founder of PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla, and currently the world’s richest man, is? Why does (almost) anything he touches turn to gold?
It all became clear to me when I read the shocking revelations of how he grew up under a dictatorial father, a suspected con-man who created an alternate reality for Elon and his siblings; how he had to spend summers in the South African Veld and beat up other kids so they wouldn’t beat him up and send him to the hospital to stitch his face back together; how he treated his collaborators and competitors, his wives and ex-wives. What is Musk’s secret sauce? Read this book and find out.
From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.
When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’m passionate about decision intelligence because our world is more complex than ever, and democracy depends on people understanding that complexity. Direct cause-and-effect thinking—adequate for our ancestors—falls short today. That’s why I invented decision intelligence: to help people navigate multi-step consequences in a way that’s clear and actionable. It’s like systems thinking but distilled into what matters for a specific decision—what I call “compact world models.” There’s nothing more thrilling than creating a new discipline with the potential to change how humanity thinks and acts in positive ways. I believe DI is key to a better future, and I’m excited to share it with the world.
Michael Lewis is a master at exposing the mechanisms behind financial and technological disasters, and this book is no exception. His deep access to Sam Bankman-Fried makes this a rare inside look at how Silicon Valley hubris can spiral into catastrophe. If we want to build a better future, we have to understand how influential failures happen—and how movements with promise can go off the rails.
I was especially interested in this story because of SBF’s ties to Effective Altruism, a movement with real potential that will now always carry his shadow. As I build my own initiatives—like OpenDI in decision intelligence—this book reinforced the importance of staying vigilant against the forces that can derail even the most well-intentioned ideas.
When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world's youngest billionaire and crypto's Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?
In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system.…
I fell in love with technology from a young age. I taught myself how to code by making websites, then blazed through an undergraduate degree in computer science, then co-founded a tech startup. For years, I was in thrall to the idea of the Silicon Valley dream and could not accept any critiques of the tech industry. It was only when my startup failed that I became open to alternative worldviews. I wanted to understand why the dream had felt so hollow. I have a master’s degree in sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science and have written for The Guardian, The Atlantic, andthe Boston Review.
Malcolm Harris is a brilliant thinker in the tradition of the radical writer, whose books are always deeply researched, fearlessly polemical, and highly relevant. His previous books talked about millennials, Occupy Wall Street, and growing inequality.
This new book is a magisterial and incredibly ambitious work of nonfiction that focuses on Palo Alto and then zooms out from there to explain the formation of the contemporary economy, including but not limited to the modern-day tech industry. Full of fascinating stories and shocking insights.
The true, unvarnished history of the town at the heart of Silicon Valley.
Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with high technology and big finance to produce the spiritually and materially ambitious heart of Silicon Valley, whose products are changing how we do everything from driving around to eating food. It is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system.
In Palo Alto, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley,…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
I believed the Internet would be as colorful a cultural phenomenon as LSD. But before I was even able to convince people that something wonderful was on the horizon, big business swooped in and recontextualized the digital renaissance as a business revolution and the Silicon Valley mindset was born: Companies should grow exponentially forever! Any tech problem can be solved with more tech! Humans on Earth are just larvae–maggots–while wealthy tech bros will get to Mars or upload their minds to the cloud. This list of books is meant to show how these guys think and why they’re taking us in the wrong direction.
This book reveals that the whole electric vehicle industry is pretty much a scam.
I love it when someone hits me with counterintuitive logic. And I love it even more when they back this up with real reporting. For example, I was shocked to learn that Musk’s famous hyperloop tunnels were really just a way to stall light rail in California so that people would have to buy electric cars instead.
This book reveals how the Silicon Valley mindset doesn’t actually foster innovation. If they wanted to innovate, they wouldn’t just find new ways of propelling automobiles. I love that this book gives me strong, factual arguments for how crazy these guys are.
Silicon Valley wants us to believe that technology will revolutionize our cities and the ways we move around. Autonomous vehicles will make us safer, greener, and more efficient. On-demand services like Uber and Lyft will eliminate car ownership. Micromobility devices like electric scooters will be at every corner, and drones will deliver goods and services. Meanwhile visionaries like Elon Musk promise to eliminate congestion with tunnels, and Uber help with flying cars. The future of transport is frictionless, sustainable, and according to Paris Marx, a threat to our ideas of what a society should be.
In the hands of a skilled horror author, there is something powerful about a slow-burn romance. When two characters are drawn to each other against the backdrop of dread and danger, the stakes are raised. Every moment the two have together is hard-won, special. The romance doesn’t soften the horror; it sharpens it. It gives readers something to invest in and hope for. That intense emotional investment creates tension. Survival isn’t just about escaping the supernatural threat or a human monster; it’s about what might be lost if they don’t. In horror, love is a luxury because it’s risky and a vulnerability. It's a favorite element of good horror.
This book weaves a slow-burning romance between two rough-around-the-edges characters drawn together by their investment in a crumbling, haunted mansion and the weight of all its secrets. The tension between them simmers beneath every interaction, and I found it undeniably magnetic.
Harrow balances a ghost story, survival in the face of financial insecurity, and unchecked capitalism in a small Kentucky town. I enjoyed the blending of gothic atmosphere in a modern setting and crafting a love story that grows slowly over time instead of an insta-romance.
'Alix E. Harrow is an exceptional, undeniable talent' - Olivie Blake, author of The Atlas Six
Step into Starling House - if you dare . . . Alix E. Harrow reimagines Beauty and the Beast in this gorgeously modern Gothic fantasy, perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab and Naomi Novik.
Nobody in Eden remembers when Starling House was built. But the town agrees it's best to let this ill-omened mansion - and its last lonely heir - go to hell. Stories of the house's bad luck, like good china, have been passed down the…
I moved to New York when I was 15 and fell in love with the city. I was starting high school then, and arriving in Manhattan felt like the world opened up to me. Suddenly, I could ride the subway anywhere I wanted, see the best theater in the world, and feel as if anything was possible. The female journey has also been a topic I have long been fascinated by, and when I began my journalism career and became a wife and mother, the need to explore those dynamics grew ever more pressing. I recommend these books because they combine my two favorite topics—New York and women’s history.
I can’t get enough of this novel about a group of young women making their way into the world of publishing in New York City. A window into what it was like to find a career, fall in love, and negotiate life as a single woman in the big city in the 1950s, Rona Jaffe’s book was a watershed when it was published in 1958. I think it should be required reading for all women, regardless of whether they work in publishing, or have ever lived in New York.
Who are you, and why do you have expertise or a passion for the topic/theme/mood of the book list you created?
Rona Jaffe's beloved novel about 1950s NYC women in the workplace that paved the way for the #MeToo movement and iconic cultural touchstones like Sex and the City and Mad Men, now for the first time in Penguin Classics, in a 65th anniversary edition with an introduction by New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme
A Penguin Classic
When Rona Jaffe’s superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. Sixty-five…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
Ever since I read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child, the concept of magical, sentient animals and their relationship with humans fascinated me, so it was no surprise that when I started to write the Blood of the Fae series, a massive, mysterious feline sauntered onto the pages and carved out a significant role in the story. Over the years, I’ve found many new favorite animal companions in the pages of books, and I’m working on building up a real-life collection of animal companions including ducks, chickens, a sweet kitty, and many more lovable critters to come (alas, none of them show signs of developing magical abilities)!
I found so much to love in this story of found family and hidden magic—an enchanted isle, a guardian wizard and his rabbit familiar, and a young woman with a concealed past, all devoted to one another.
The bonds between the wizard, his adopted daughter, and their rabbit familiar were simply lovely, and the sacrifices they made in their quest to save what magic remains in their world were compelling. Despite trials the characters endure, the story still captured a cozy feel which would make it a fantastic winter read.
Though The Magician’s Daughter stands alone, I’d love a sequel—I didn’t want to leave these enchanting characters behind!
"That most rare and precious thing: a brand-new classic, both wholly original and wonderfully nostalgic." —Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author
In the early 1900s, a young woman is caught between two worlds in H. G. Parry’s cozy tale of magic, miracles, and an adventure of a lifetime.
Off the coast of Ireland sits a legendary island hidden by magic. A place of ruins and ancient trees, sea salt air, and fairy lore, Hy-Brasil is the only home Biddy has ever known. Washed up on its shore as a baby, Biddy lives a quiet life with her guardian,…
During Covid, I gave myself the Story-a-Month Challenge. I started a story on the first day of each month and stopped on the last day. A subconscious theme emerged: the struggles of grown people and their parents, done fantastically. By year’s end, I had twelve stories, placed in magazines somewhere. I collected them, adding earlier stories, longer and with younger protagonists, but with the same theme of arrested development. I called the book “Adult Children,” a wry reference to offspring of alcoholics (I am one). Also subconscious: my inspiration from other authors of fantastical collections, some of whom I’ve included here.
A French import published in the US in 2024, Plasmas is an intriguingly spare, linked collection of short futuristic scenes.
Acrobats whose routines are programmed by biotechnology…tomorrow’s La Brea Tar Pits, where artifacts of both the distant past—and future—are unearthed…a female scientist bonds idealistically and tragically with great apes…these compelling stories revolve around a post-human world, written in an icy style that often feels post-human, as well.
Prodigiously translated by Annabel Kim, it’s a subdued, sort-of successor to Cosmicomics and won the French Prix de L’imaginaire, that country’s top prize for speculative fiction.
A speculative masterpiece of technology and mythmaking that contemplates humanity.
The stories in Plasmas dive into a post-human, more-than-human world where life as we know it has been replaced by life as it goes on. Acrobats glide through the air attached to biotech devices, an archivist presents scenes from Earth after interstellar colonization to her students, and scientists in Siberia play god with a manmade beast.
Written as a series of vignettes into futures near and far, Plasmas dives into questions of legacy, memory, the body, and technology through striking prose from one of France's leading sci-fi writers. Equally comfortable…
For years, I suffered from extremely painful periods and terrible mood swings before my period. I chalked this up to being a bad person. When I was in my thirties, I found out I had PMDD: premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Researchers have known about PMDD for years, yet it still takes over a decade to get a diagnosis. I got mad, and I got curious. What was going on? I went hunting for books to explain what we know about periods and why we don’t talk about them. The books on this list answered many of my questions—I hope they answer yours.
Period books can be fun, and this one is the definition of fun while also pounding in the message that it’s okay to have a period, and we really shouldn’t be ashamed of having them. Sassy and smart, with a quirky cast of characters, it goes down as easy as a beach read.
I found myself cheering for all of the characters and utterly riveted by the plot. Roper leaves you thinking about shame, stigma, and the power of social media without even realizing what you’re thinking.
“If you liked Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, read The Society of Shame by Jane Roper.” —The Washington Post
In this timely and witty combination of So You've Been Publicly Shamed and Where'd You Go, Bernadette? a viral photo of a politician's wife's “feminine hygiene malfunction” catapults her to unwanted fame in a story that's both a satire of social media stardom and internet activism, and a tender mother-daughter tale.
Kathleen Held’s life is turned upside down when she arrives home to find her house on fire and her husband on the front lawn in his underwear. But the…
I have long been fascinated by how personal and singular the experience of grief is. There is something soothing and relatable about reading others’ experiences—the more strange, nonsensical, or even supernatural the better. My own novel, The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn, is a retelling of The Secret Garden, but with an adult protagonist moving through grief over the death of her complicated mother, striving to see a bright ray of hope on the other side. Each of the books on my list about unusual manifestations of grief tackles this same concept in new and surprising ways, and I hope they touch you as they have touched me.
Rouge is at its heart an exploration of a daughter’s grief for her troubled mother and the bizarre turns that grief can take.
Rouge tells the story of a young woman obsessed with cult-like beauty culture. When her mother mysteriously dies, she is forced to return home and confront the complicated relationship she had with her also beauty-obsessed mother. Fairy tale surreal and viscerally disturbing, Rouge delves into obsession, grief, and the dangers of beauty culture taken to the extreme.
Like all of Awad’s books, this is a story that will stick with me a very long time.
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty.
Can she escape her mother's fate and find a connection that is more than skin deep?
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 in The Guardian, i newspaper, The New York Times, Time, Globe and Mail, Bustle, The Millions, LitHub, TOR, Good Housekeeping, Our Culture Mag, and more!
'You think, "She's not going to go there...yes, she is.' Margaret Atwood
'The trancelike, rhapsodic language and deepening…
