| title and author | description | proposed by | rank | pages |
| Moral Freedom by Alan Wolfe | ventures into the minds and hearts of Americans to determine how we really think about morality in today's age, focusing on traditional values of loyalty, self-restraint, honesty, and forgiveness | Kevin | 3 | 224 |
| Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana | Written after a two-year sea voyage from Boston to California on a merchant ship starting in 1834. With his writing I can almost feel I am on a sailing ship trying to make it around Cape Horn or anchored off a very early California. I know I will read this book a couple more times before I depart this planet. | Kevin | 6 | 420 |
| Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins | once a disturbing love story and an up-close look at Sudan: a world where international aid fuels armies as well as the starving population | Kevin | 7 | 416 |
| Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit | radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history | Kevin | 2 | 184 |
| Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt | a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small material particles in eternal motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions. Its return to circulation changed the course of history. The poem’s vision would shape the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein, and—in the hands of Thomas Jefferson—leave its trace on the Declaration of Independence. | Kathy | 4 | 377 |
| AI 2041: TEN VISIONS OF OUR FUTURE by Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan | imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping short stories, they introduce readers to an array of eye-opening 2041 | Doug | 1 | 452 |
| The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson | How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" | Doug | 5 | 219 |
