Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World, by Michael Pollan (author, narrator)

Audible Original, January 2020

Caffeine is the most widely used drug in the world, and the only one we routinely give to children recreationally, in soft drinks.

But why? And what effects does it really have on us?

Michael Pollan decided to find out.

In this short book, he looks at the history of caffeine, both the coffee plant and the tea plant, and I'm going to say right here that you don't have to rely on Pollan's own statements to know that he's a coffee drinker rather than a tea drinker. It's clear in how much time he devotes to our two favorite sources of caffeine. He also looks closely at how caffeine affects our lives, work, and how we organize our economic lives.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, by Ursula K. Le Guin & David Naimon

Tin House Books, ISBN 9781941040997, April 2018

In the last months of her life, Ursula K. Le Guin did a series of interview with David Naimon for Oregon radio station KBOO, and they decided to turn those interviews into a book. This is that book, which Le Guin did not live quite long enough to see in print. It's now a finalist for the Hugo Awards in the Best Related Work category.

There are three sections--a conversation about fiction, a conversation about poetry, and a conversation about non-fiction. Le Guin, of course, wrote all three, and did all three well.

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy With Autism, by Naoki Higashida (author), KA Yoshida (translator), David Mitchell (translator)

Random House, August 2013

Naoki Higashida is a Japanese boy with autism, a boy who has real problems with spoken language, and therefore seemed completely shut in and non-communicative.

But due to his own determination and his parents', he learned to communicate using an alphabet grid and a computer. With tools he can use, he is anything but "non-communicative."

This book, written when he was thirteen, is one of the longer-term results. He talks about what autism is like from the inside, and what millions of parents would like to know: what things really help him master his own behavior, understand the rest of us, and what helps him communicate.

Inside that silent, often seemingly unresponsive exterior, is a smart, capable, well-spoken young man.

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, by Christopher L. Hayes (author, narrator)

Random House Audio, June 2012

America from our beginnings as a nation has always inclined toward what we now call meritocracy--the idea that talent rather than birth should be the major determinant of gets the jobs and positions that make society, business, and government run. It's an inarguable idea; no one wants their surgeon to be selected on the basis wealth and connections, or by the superficial "fairness" of a lottery. That would be foolish. And since the word was invented, and the formal tools started to develop, in the early part of the last century, the USA, more than any other major country, has fully committed to an utterly uncompromising version of meritocracy.