WHO'S ON TOP: NONFICTION

TOP 5 NONFICTION:

HARDCOVER:

1. DUTY, by Robert M. Gates

2. THINGS THAT MATTER, by Charles Krauthammer

3. DAVID AND GOLIATH, by Malcolm Gladwell

4. KILLING JESUS, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

5. LEAN IN, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell

SPOTLIGHT:

THE SECOND MACHINE AGE

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

In recent years, Google s autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM s Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies with hardware, software, and networks at their core will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human. In The Second Machine Age MIT s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee two thinkers at the forefront of their field reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives.

Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change. Professions of all kinds from lawyers to truck drivers will be forever upended. Companies will be forced to transform or die. Recent economic indicators reflect this shift: fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar.

Drawing on years of research and up-to-the-minute trends, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies for survival and offer a new path to prosperity. These include revamping education so that it prepares people for the next economy instead of the last one, designing new collaborations that pair brute processing power with human ingenuity, and embracing policies that make sense in a radically transformed landscape.

A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will alter how we think about issues of technological, societal, and economic progress.

PAPERBACK:

1. LONE SURVIVOR, by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson  

2. MONUMENTS MEN, by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter  

3. WOLF OF WALL STREET, by Jordan Belfort  

4. PROOF OF HEAVEN, by Eben Alexander

5. OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell

SPOTLIGHT:

THE SECRET ROOMS

Catherine Bailey

A castle filled with intrigue, a plotting duchess and a mysterious death in Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms.

At 6 am on 21 April 1940 John the 9th Duke of Rutland, and one of Britain's wealthiest men, ended his days, virtually alone, lying on a makeshift bed in a dank cramped suite of rooms in the servants' quarters of his own home, Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire.

For weeks, as his health deteriorated, his family, his servants - even the King's doctor - pleaded with him to come out, but he refused.

After his death, his son and heir, Charles, the 10th Duke of Rutland, ordered that the rooms be locked up and they remained untouched for sixty years.

What lay behind this extraordinary set of circumstances?

For the first time, in The Secret Rooms, Catherine Bailey unravels a complex and compelling tale of love, honour and betrayal, played out in the grand salons of Britain's stately homes at the turn of the twentieth century, and on the battlefields of the Western Front. At its core is a secret so dark that it consumed the life of the man who fought to his death to keep it hidden. This extraordinary mystery from the author of Black Diamonds, perfect for lovers of Downton Abbey, Brideshead Revisited and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.

E-BOOK:

1. LONE SURVIVOR, by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson

2. TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, by Solomon Northup

3. DUTY, by Robert M. Gates

4. MONUMENTS MEN, by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

5. KILLING JESUS, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

SPOTLIGHT:

THE DOCTOR WORE PETTICOATS

Chris Enss

"No women need apply." Western towns looking for a local doctor during the frontier era often concluded their advertisements in just that manner. Yet apply they did. And in small towns all over the West, highly trained women from medical colleges in the East took on the post of local doctor to great acclaim. In this new book, author Chris Enss offers a glimpse into the fascinating lives of ten of these amazing women.