"The Dawn of Everything - a new history of humanity" by Graeber & Wengrow. It is the first book I'm aware that takes the general intellectual public's conversation through history and compares that against now known facts from archeological data. It demonstrates, quite soundly, that the current narrative of human civilization is a comforting fiction and the truth is... the content of the book. Extremely engrossing and constantly relevant to the political conflicts dividing human civilization across the globe.
It's from 2018, but I just read it a few weeks ago and really
enjoyed the story.
It's about a couple from Michigan who “hacked” the lottery (and the basis of an upcoming movie starring Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening as the couple).
Looking back at this moment from the lens of a not too distant future history, the image that may become indelible: the volunteer indian funeral pyre builder
But the piece that most reverberates in my brain is the one about ex-state executioners. It's part of the current vogue in humanizing front line workers, showing the toll modern life takes, and designing new systems from the ground up
If you haven't read all of these yet, start there:
* The Iliad
* The Odyssey
* .....(list continues for a few hundred items)
Once you get through that list, the next thing to check out is Tim Rogers' review of Cyberpunk 2077 (I mean the new Action Button one, of course - https://youtu.be/LnBKX_vdYQI)
This is one of my favorite long reads of the year, although it is extremely disturbing.
HN thread from earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27435384