Books like American Prometheus

01

A Beautiful Mind

Sylvia Nasar · Biography

Sylvia Nasar's biography of the mathematician John Nash — Nobel laureate, game theory pioneer, and paranoid schizophrenic — is one of the finest accounts of genius and mental illness in biographical literature.

A kindred biography read.

02

The Soul of a New Machine

Tracy Kidder · Memoir

Tracy Kidder's account of the engineers at Data General Corporation who designed a new minicomputer under enormous competitive pressure in the late 1970s won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1982 and effectively invented the genre of technology-company narrative journalism.

A kindred biography read.

03

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson · Science

The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's history of the digital revolution, tracing the development of computers and the internet from Ada Lovelace's conceptualization of programming in the 1840s through the emergence of the modern internet, personal computer, and smartphone.

A kindred biography read.

04

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Walter Isaacson · Biography

Walter Isaacson's Einstein biography is the most widely read account of the physicist's life in English, written after Isaacson was granted access to forty thousand previously sealed documents in the Hebrew University Einstein Archives.

Both dig into science.

05

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin · Biography

Doris Kearns Goodwin's account of Abraham Lincoln's formation of his cabinet — which included his three main rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination: William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates — is one of the most widely discussed leadership books of the twenty-first century and one of the most readable biographies of the Lincoln era.

Both dig into politics.

06

The Path to Power

Robert A. Caro · Biography

The first volume of Robert A.

Both dig into politics.

07

A Promised Land

Barack Obama · Memoir

A Promised Land is the first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his 2008 campaign through the first two and a half years of his presidency, ending with the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Both dig into politics.

08

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

Roger Lowenstein · History

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913, but the story of how it came into existence spans three decades and involves a level of political resistance, financial panic, and legislative maneuvering that makes the eventual outcome seem unlikely in retrospect.

Both dig into politics.

09

American Moonshot

Douglas Brinkley · History

Douglas Brinkley's American Moonshot focuses less on the engineering triumph of Apollo 11 than on the political decision that made it possible: John F.

Both dig into science.

10

American Nations

Colin Woodard · History

American Nations is Colin Woodard's argument that North America is not a single nation but a continent of 11 distinct regional cultures, each founded by different waves of settlers with different values, institutions, and political philosophies, and that understanding those foundational cultures is more useful for explaining American political conflict than the standard red-state/blue-state framing.

Both dig into politics.

11

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Eric Schlosser · History

Command and Control is Eric Schlosser's investigation into the hidden history of nuclear weapons accidents and the organizations that tried to prevent them from detonating by accident.

Both dig into nuclear weapons.

12

Enlightenment Now

Steven Pinker · Science

Enlightenment Now is Steven Pinker's argument that the ideals of the Enlightenment — reason, science, humanism, and progress — have been responsible for a dramatic and continuing improvement in human wellbeing across virtually every measurable dimension, and that these ideals are under threat from counter-Enlightenment movements on both the left and the right.

Both dig into science.