The TD Book Board Official Recommendation List for people who read good

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Science/History/Natural History

1491 & 1493 by Charles Mann.

Takes a deep look at the latest thinking about what America was like before Columbus and the impacts of European settlement. Also the impact of American crops on the rest of the world.

Imagine an Italy without tomatoes, Ireland without potatoes, peppers in Asia, etc.

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Fantasy

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The books/series in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere.

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Science & Natural History

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You could put many of Jared Diamond's books here, but specifically "The Third Chimpanzee" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel."

"The Selfish Gene" - Richard Dawson - look at "how" genes behave, a gene-centric view of evolution. Also where the word "meme" was coined back in 1976.

"The Red Queen" - Matt Ridley - sex, human genetics, and sexual selection type things.

"Where the Wild Things Were" - William Stolzenbug - a look at how top predators affect ecosystems and why they are important.

The border trilogy.

It feels like you are trying to condense this whole board into one thread.

No, it's a quick reference to see people's favorite books instead of wading through multiple threads.

Law & Economics Category:

Public Choice III
Dennis C Mueller, Author.

Mueller is Prof of Economics at Univ of Vienna.

Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan praised the work.

Valuable desk reference for Attorneys, Professors, Policy Analysts and any devotee of Austrian Econ.

Fantasy-

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman - a look into an alternate London, where fantastical characters who have "slipped through the cracks" in life live unbeknownst to regular folks in "London Above". The story focuses on Richard Mayhew, who accidentally falls into this world and his struggle to rejoin the normal world.

Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss

Journey with Kvothe as he learns the art of Magic along with forming relationships that are applicable to anyone who is reading the stories. (Sidenote: About 20% of book 2 can be skipped entirely as the story devolved into, as one poster so eloquently put it, Faerie frick Fest. That and Rothfuss is taking his sweet arse time writing the 3rd installment.)

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie (The First Law Trilogy)

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught up in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian, leaving nothing behind but some bad songs, a few dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies.

Nobleman, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a jar. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendships. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government… if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood. Unpredictable, compelling, wickedly funny, and packed with unforgettable characters, The Blade Itself is fantasy with a real cutting edge.

Technothriller -

Reamde - Neal Stephenson

The story, set in the present day, centers on the plight of a hostage and the ensuing efforts of family and new acquaintances, many of them associated with a fictional MMORPG, to rescue her as her various captors drag her about the globe.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash established Stephenson as a major science fiction writer of the 1990s. The book appeared on Time magazine's list of 100 all-time best English-language novels written since 1923.

Some critics have considered it a parody of cyberpunk and mentioned its satiric or absurdist humor.

Sci-fi/horror/dystopian

The Passage by Justin Cronin (just the first book - the second book of the trilogy is meh. I didn't even finish the third one)

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.

With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.' to '“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”