General Reading List

While our recommended reading lists for grades 9-12 are based on more classical literature, we also encourage students to seek knowledge anywhere it exists and therefore recommend the following general reading list as well. This reading list will expand frequently, so check back often for our reading recommendations.

Educated by Tara Westover

Tara and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in hospitals. As she grew older, her father became more radical and her brother more violent. At sixteen, Tara knew she had to leave home. In doing so she discovered both the transformative power of education & the price she had to pay for it.

Breaking Through: My Life in Science by Katalin Karikó

A powerful memoir from Katalin Karikó, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines.

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos — one of the biggest corporate frauds in history — a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist.

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

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.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

The Worlds I See Fei-Fei Li

The moving memoir of a scientist coming of age as an immigrant in America who finds her calling at the forefront of the AI revolution.
Wired called Dr. Fei-Fei Li “one of a tiny group of scientists—a group perhaps small enough to fit around a kitchen table—who are responsible for AI’s recent remarkable advances.”
Known to the world as the creator of ImageNet, a key catalyst of modern artificial intelligence, Dr. Li has spent more than two decades at the forefront of the field. But her career in science was improbable from the start. As immigrants, her family faced a difficult transition from China’s middle class to American poverty. And their lives were made all the harder as they struggled to care for her ailing mother, who was working tirelessly to help them all gain a foothold in their new land.

Imagining AI: How the World Sees Intelligent Machines by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal

Imagining AI draws attention to the range and variety of visions of a future with intelligent machines and their potential significance for the research, regulation, and implementation of AI. The book is structured geographically, with each chapter presenting insights into how a specific region or culture imagines intelligent machines. The contributors, leading experts from academia and the arts, explore how the encounters between local narratives, digital technologies, and mainstream Western narratives create new imaginaries and insights in different contexts across the globe. The narratives they analyze range from ancient philosophy to contemporary science fiction, and visual art to policy discourse.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond Jared

Lays a foundation for understanding human history.”―Bill Gates Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide. The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren’t native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences. He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers.

The World as I See It by Albert Einstein

The most advanced and celebrated mind of the 20th Century, without a doubt, is attributed to Albert Einstein. This interesting book allows us to explore his beliefs, philosophical ideas, and opinions on many subjects. Subjects include politics, religion, education, the meaning of life, Jewish issues, the world economy, peace and pacifism.
Einstein believed in the possibility of a peaceful world and in the high mission of science to serve human well-being. As we near the end of a century in which science has come to seem more and more remote from human values, Einstein’s perspective is indispensable.

My Brief History by Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking has dazzled readers worldwide with a string of bestsellers exploring the mysteries of the universe. Now, for the first time, perhaps the most brilliant cosmologist of our age turns his gaze inward for a revealing look at his own life and intellectual evolution.

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World by Edward W. Said

In Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, Edward W. Said explores how Western media and experts have shaped public perceptions of Islam, often portraying it through a lens of prejudice, fear, and misunderstanding. Said critiques the biased narratives that have emerged in political and journalistic discourse, particularly in the context of Western imperialism and geopolitical interests. He argues that these distortions of Islam serve to reinforce stereotypes, misinform the public, and justify foreign policies, calling for more balanced and accurate portrayals of Islamic cultures and societies.