Archives de catégorie : Nonfiction

CODIFIED d’Andrew Smith

From award-winning journalist Andrew Smith, contributing writer for the Sunday Times and the Guardian, CODIFIED is an immersive, sharp-eyed tour of the world of computer programming, told through Smith’s own journey to learn how to code.

CODIFIED
by Andrew Smith
‎ Atlantic Monthly Press/Grove Atlantic, Winter 2024

Andrew Smith’s first book, Moondust, was a #1 UK and international bestseller, nominated for two British Book Awards (including Read of the Year), and cited by the Times as one of its “100 Best Books of the Decade.” His follow-up Totally Wired—centered on the late 1990s dot-com bubble and its tumultuous crash—was published to rave reviews, hailed as “effervescent and vivid . . . a book whose time has come” (Sunday Times). Smith’s latest, CODIFIED, is a mesmerizing, up-to-the-minute account of the world of coders, as experienced through his own endeavor to become one.
Throughout history, technological revolutions have been driven by the invention of machines. But today, the power of the tech transforming our world lies in an intangible and impenetrable cosmos of software: algorithmic code. So symbiotic has our relationship with this code become that we barely notice it anymore. We can’t see it, are not even sure how to think about it, and yet we do almost nothing that doesn’t depend on it. In a world increasingly governed by technologies that so few can comprehend, who controls the future?
CODIFIED follows Andrew Smith on his immersive trip into the world of coding, taking us behind the scenes into the lives—and minds—of the new gatekeepers of the 21st century: those who write code. Smith embarks on a quest to understand this sect in what he believes to be the only way possible: by learning to code himself. Along the way, he becomes involved with a wild array of characters and takes part in several lively rituals of initiation into the coding world: he visits a global coding conference in Ohio, where he meets the creator of the Python programming language; and he takes part in a 24-hour “hackathon” in Silicon Valley, a Darwinian race to see who can build the best app overnight. At the start of his odyssey he travels to Magdeburg, Germany to have his brain scanned by a team of scientists studying the effects of coding on the human brain and will share the results of the final comparison scan. Smith delivers a vivid, effervescent portrait of a culture working in an office or coworking space near you—all while wrestling with everything that’s at stake in this stage of technological evolution. How do we control a technology that most people can’t understand? And are we programming ourselves out of existence? By-turns illuminating, alarming, and amusing, CODIFIED is an essential book for our times.

“Smith is an ideal narrator: sharp-eyed yet increasingly affectionate about his subjects; expert enough to dissect Apollo minutiae clearly but not so obsessed as to leave a general reader trailing in the jetwash.”
—Financial Times on Moondust

“A brilliant exploration of madness and genius in the early days of the web. Fascinatingly weird . . . terrific.”
—Guardian on Totally Wired

“A rich mix of cultural history, reportage and personal reflection.” —Evening Standard on Moondust

“Highly entertaining . . . [Smith’s] superb book is a fitting tribute to a unique band of 20th-century heroes.”
—GQ on Moondust

Andrew Smith has worked as a critic and feature writer for the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Observer, and The Face, and has penned documentaries for the BBC. He is the author of the internationally bestselling book Moondust, about the nine remaining men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972, and Totally Wired. He was raised in the UK and currently lives in California.

THE INSECT APOCALYPSE de Brooke Jarvis

A scientific exploration of the insect world that reveals the alarming diminishment of insect life across the globe in the era of climate change.

THE INSECT APOCALYPSE
by Brooke Jarvis
Crown, March 2025

Drawn from the author’s astonishing and deeply disturbing article for the New York Times Magazine (which was downloaded over 1 million times in the first week alone), this will be a fascinating scientific exploration of the insect world that reveals, through extensive research with amateurs and entomologists in the field, the alarming diminishment of insect life across the globe in the era of climate change. The author plans to travel to different countries and environments, including Europe and Latin America, to explore the causes and urgent consequences of life on Earth without insects.

Brooke Jarvis is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, and has written for The New Yorker, Wired, The California Sunday Magazine, GQ, Harper’s, and others. She also teaches feature writing at NYU’s American Journalism Online Master’s Program and mentors young science journalists through The Open Notebook and the Northwest Science Writers Association. Jarvis’ stories have been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing (Houghton-Mifflin); The Best American Travel Writing (Mariner Books); Love and Ruin: Tales of Obsession, Danger and Heartbreak from The Atavist Magazine (Norton); and New Stories We Tell: True Tales by America’s Next Generation of Great Women Journalists (The Sager Group).

ALMOST BROWN de Charlotte Gill

An award-winning writer retraces her dysfunctional, biracial, globe-trotting family’s journey as she reckons with ethnicity and belonging, diversity and race, and the complexities of life within a multicultural household.

ALMOST BROWN: A Memoir
by Charlotte Gill
Crown, June 2023

Charlotte Gill’s father is Indian. Her mother is English. They meet in 1960’s London when the world is not quite ready for interracial love. Their union, a revolutionary act, results in a total meltdown of familial relations, a lot of immigration paperwork, and three children, all in varying shades of tan. Together they set off on a journey from the United Kingdom to Canada and to the United States in elusive pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness—a dream that eventually tears them apart.
ALMOST BROWN is an exploration of diasporic intermingling involving parents of two different races and their half-brown children as they experience the paradoxes and conundrums of life as it’s lived between race checkboxes. Eventually, her parents drift apart because they just aren’t compatible. But as she finds herself distancing from her father too—why is she embarrassed to walk down the street with him and not her mom?—she doesn’t know if it’s because of his personality or his race. As a mixed-race child, was this her own unconscious bias favoring one parent over the other in the racial tug-of-war that plagues our society? ALMOST BROWN  looks for answers to questions shared by many mixed-race people: What are you? What does it mean to be a person of color when the concept is a societal invention and really only applies halfway if you are half white? And how does your relationship with your parents change as you change and grow older?
In a funny, turbulent, and ultimately heartwarming story, Gill examines the brilliant messiness of ancestry, “diversity,” and the idea of “race,” a historical concept that still informs our beliefs about ethnicity today.

Charlotte Gill is a bestselling and award-winning writer of fiction and narrative nonfiction. Ladykiller, her first book, was the recipient of the Danuta Gleed Award for short fiction. Eating Dirt, a tree-planting memoir, was a #1 national bestseller in Canada. Her work has appeared in Vogue and Hazlitt. Gill teaches writing in the MFA program in creative nonfiction at the University of King’s College and is the Rogers Communications Chair of Literary Journalism at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She lives in British Columbia, Canada.

OUTLIVE de Peter Attia & Bill Gifford

Visionary thinker and renowned longevity physician Peter Attia reimagines medicine and redefines aging through his innovative science-based strategies to maximize longevity.

OUTLIVE:
The Science and Art of Longevity
by Peter Attia, MD & Bill Gifford
Crown, May 2023

To Peter Attia, longevity does not mean merely living longer. He sees longevity as the opportunity to live better for longer. But, accomplishing this requires a complete change in the way we think about and approach health and wellness. Attia proposes an exciting, new vision of Western medicine that reframes our thinking and our actions.
Attia’s goal is to shift the mindset we currently have in medicine that focuses on solving the health issue once it arises to assessing the risks and customizing treatment before they actually occur. He calls this Medicine 3.0, a new way of thinking about chronic diseases, their treatment, and how to maintain long-term health. Most books and physicians are interested in improving your lifespan (how long you live), but Peter’s focus is on improving healthspan (the quality of your life). In OUTLIVE, Attia shows readers exactly how to do this through nutritional interventions, exercise physiology, sleep physiology, emotional and mental health strategies, and pharmacology.
Dr. Attia is a sought-after speaker, is well-connected with big names like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Tim Ferriss, among others, and his podcast, The Drive, averages 150K downloads/episode and 1M monthly downloads. He will also be featured in the forthcoming Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, a series on longevity from National Geographic.

Peter Attia, MD is a physician focusing on the applied science of longevity. He trained for five years at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in general surgery. He is the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of the fasting app Zero. He is also on the editorial board for the journal, Aging. And has a podcast called The Drive. He is the expert that the “big names” of the world get their medical information from.

ROLLING STONE: THE 500 GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME

From Rolling Stone, the definitive and lavishly illustrated companion book to one of the most popular and hotly debated lists in the world of music.

ROLLING STONE:
THE 500 GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME
by the editors of Rolling Stone
Abrams, November 2022

In partnership with Abrams, Rolling Stone has created an oversized companion book to celebrate the all-new 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, telling the stories behind every album through incredible Rolling Stone photography, original album art, Rolling Stone’s unique critical commentary, breakout pieces on the making of key albums, and archival interviews.
This brand new anthology is based on Rolling Stone’s 2020 reboot of the original 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, launched in 2003 and last updated in 2012, polling the industry’s most celebrated artists, producers, executives, and journalists to create the ranking. The voters include both classic and contemporary artists, including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish; rising artists like H.E.R., Tierra Whack, and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail; as well as veteran musicians, such as Adam Clayton and the Edge of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and Stevie Nicks. The book is boldly designed, includes hundreds of images, and is packed with surprises and insights for music fans of all ages.

Rolling Stone was founded by publisher Jann S. Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason in 1967. It has a circulation of more than one million readers and widespread international circulation.