Topics
13 curated shelves. Each explains what qualifies, suggests where to start, and lists every book in the directory on that subject along with who recommended it.
History
The largest shelf in the directory. These picks range from Gibbon's six-volume Rome to 2024 histories of Byzantium and Indonesia, and from object-by-object world history to a single speech at Gettysburg.
Science
Popular science and a few genuine textbooks. Physicists Sean Carroll and Carlo Rovelli contribute expert picks on cosmology and time, while Long Now contributors add reference works meant to help rebuild knowledge from scratch.
Computing & software
Two working programmers, Dan Luu and Jeff Atwood, supply detailed, opinionated reading lists; founders and futurists add the history of computing and books on AI. Dan Luu's list also includes anti-recommendations, which we deliberately leave out.
Economics & progress
A compact shelf about how societies get richer and what limits them. Matt Ridley's optimism picks sit beside Robert Gordon's sober account of American growth and Elinor Ostrom's work on managing shared resources.
Psychology & decisions
How minds work and how to decide better. Derek Sivers's high-rated notes and Shane Parrish's Munger-inspired list overlap heavily here, which makes this a good shelf for practical psychology.
Philosophy & how to live
Old and new answers to the question of how to live well — Stoics and Montaigne, Frankl and Alan Watts, and contemporary books on attention, mortality and parenting.
Science fiction
When Long Now asked novelists to stock a library for rebuilding civilisation, they reached for speculative fiction as well as manuals. Most picks here come from writers who know the genre from the inside: David Brin, Bruce Sterling, Daniel Suarez and Stewart Brand.
Fiction & literature
A small, varied shelf: Homer in translation, Proust as a book about time, and recent prize-winning novels from presidents' and authors' year-end lists.
Writing, art & ideas
For people who make things with words and images. Craft books such as On Writing Well and Bird by Bird sit next to histories of the book itself — Papyrus and The Notebook — which both Ryan Holiday and Austin Kleon loved in 2024.
War & violence
Anchored by Steven Pinker's Five Books interview on the decline of violence, this shelf also includes the nuclear histories Neal Stephenson chose and Tyler Cowen's top book of 2024.
Business & investing
Less about tactics, more about judgement: Buffett and Munger, the founder of Walmart, and classics on running software teams.
Politics & society
How states see, how crowds behave and how democracies hold up. Picks run from Tocqueville and Hobbes to 2024 books on youth mental health and political resentment.
Design, cities & engineering
From the scale of a room to the scale of a city, plus the everyday infrastructure most people never notice. A Pattern Language is tied for the most-recommended book in the whole directory.