The Economist’s picks for your reading list

What can A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke tell us about AI? Does Shakespeare’s Othello contain a warning for the 2024 US presidential election? Our journalists (and our listeners, too) recommend books that might help us better understand our times. Runtime: 35 min

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Books mentioned in this episode:

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1968)

A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo (2023)

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935)

Othello by William Shakespeare (1622)

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut (1952)

Queen of Angels by Greg Bear (1993)

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (1961)

The Control of Nature by John McPhee (1989)

The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill (1948)

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (2010)

Tower of Secrets - Victor Sheymov - 1993

Twilight War by David Crist (2012)

Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert (2021)

The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinovich (2004)