Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: the company’s chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.

In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer. Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI.

In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.

In 1981, Jack Welch took over General Electric and quickly rose to fame as the first celebrity CEO. He golfed with presidents, mingled with movie stars, and was idolized for growing GE into the most valuable company in the world. But Welch’s achievements didn’t stem from some greater intelligence or business prowess. Rather, they were the result of a sustained effort to push GE’s stock price ever higher, often at the expense of workers, consumers, and innovation.

On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.

With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at One First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it’s running on vibes. By “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes. Major decisions adopt the language and posture of the law, while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority: the religious conservatives and Republican officials.

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, José Cuervo inherited his family's humble distillery, La Rojeña, in the Tequila Valley. Within a decade, it would become Mexico's leading producer of tequila. But when the Mexican Revolution erupted, a charge of treason and a death threat against him by Pancho Villa forced Cuervo to flee. In Tequila Wars, award-winning author Ted Genoways restores Cuervo to his place as a key player in Mexico's formative period. Before the revolution, Cuervo's acclaim spread worldwide, and once war broke out, Cuervo remained an impresario, kingmaker, and cultural force.

Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You’re not alone. AI is everywhere—and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn’t, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil—products that don’t work, and probably never will.

Drawing in part on his own experiences, including with policymakers and world leaders, Kenneth Rogoff animates the remarkable postwar run of the dollar—how it beat out the Japanese yen, the Soviet ruble, and the euro—and the challenges it faces today from crypto and the Chinese yuan, the end of reliably low inflation and interest rates, political instability, and the fracturing of the dollar bloc.

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

How Countries Go Broke also shows how these debt problems are related to the other forces—political within countries, geopolitical between countries, natural (droughts, floods, and pandemics), and technological (most importantly, AI)—that together are causing what Dalio calls the “Overall Big Cycle” changes in the world order. By listening this audiobook, you will improve your understanding of what’s happening now and what to do about it.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

It’s January 2, 1960: the day that Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy declared his candidacy; and with this opening scene, Chris Wallace offers listeners a front-row seat to history. From the challenge of primary battles in a nation that had never elected a Catholic president, to the intense machinations of the national conventions—where JFK chose Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate over the impassioned objections of his brother Bobby—this is a nonfiction political thriller filled with intrigue, cinematic action, and fresh reporting.

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.

From two of America’s most respected journalists, an unflinching and explosive reckoning with one of the most fateful decisions in American political history: Joe Biden’s run for reelection despite evidence of his serious decline—amid desperate efforts to hide the extent of that deterioration.

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes' acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance.

How Countries Go Broke also shows how these debt problems are related to the other forces—political within countries, geopolitical between countries, natural (droughts, floods, and pandemics), and technological (most importantly, AI)—that together are causing what Dalio calls the “Overall Big Cycle” changes in the world order. By listening this audiobook, you will improve your understanding of what’s happening now and what to do about it.

On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.

Drawing in part on his own experiences, including with policymakers and world leaders, Kenneth Rogoff animates the remarkable postwar run of the dollar—how it beat out the Japanese yen, the Soviet ruble, and the euro—and the challenges it faces today from crypto and the Chinese yuan, the end of reliably low inflation and interest rates, political instability, and the fracturing of the dollar bloc.

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.”

In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer. Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI.

Writing in his own singular voice, Barry Diller delivers both an astute and entertaining business memoir and a surprisingly frank coming-of-age story. After starting his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, Diller went on to have one of the most extraordinary ascents in show business history, inventing the TV Movie of the Week for ABC at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four.

With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at One First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it’s running on vibes. By “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes. Major decisions adopt the language and posture of the law, while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority: the religious conservatives and Republican officials.

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.

Crypto Titans isn’t just another book about digital currencies—it’s a front-row seat to the explosive rise of the crypto industry. From the chaotic early days of Bitcoin to the breathtaking bull markets of 2011, 2013, 2017, and 2021, this book reveals the hidden forces driving the market, the powerful players who shaped it, and the fortunes won and lost along the way. If you’ve ever wondered why crypto prices soar one moment and collapse the next, this is the insider’s guide you’ve been waiting for.Inside, You’ll Discover: The Real Story Behind Each Crypto Bull Run: What ...

An intimate and masterful biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski—President Carter’s national security advisor and one of America’s leading geopolitical thinkers—from one of the finest columnists and political writers at work today.