“If you’re going to read all five of these books at once, make sure you take regular breaks!” fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"How could I, as a 3- or 4-year-old, understand that someone didn’t like me because of the colour of my skin?" fivebooks.com/best-books/r...

"I accept that people eat meat; I myself was a carnivore. Those who are vegetarian have already made their choice, so I wanted to talk to the carnivores about how they could be more ethical." fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

“Although American wines might not be as complex as those in Europe, they are brighter and livelier” fivebooks.com/best-books/r...

NEW Sally O'Reilly, author of Hagtale, recommends five creative retellings of Shakespearean stories—from a brilliantly absurdist Tom Stoppard play to an elliptical short story by Jorge Luis Borges fivebooks.com/best-books/r...

"The mountaineering book offers privileged access to a level of deep, embodied experience that the mountaineer has gained in often quite extreme settings." fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

"I can remember as a nine year old child learning about Brussels, and at nineteen travelling to Brussels to see all the things I learned about as a nine year old." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"St Augustine of Hippo was one of the first thinkers to struggle with the concepts of time, memory and eternity." fivebooks.com/best-books/c...

“For me, being Jewish is also about this feeling of not belonging anywhere, or of belonging in many places” fivebooks.com/best-books/j...

"It just so happens that the capital of Ghana, Accra, is located next to the prime meridian and the equator, making it, essentially, a center of the world." fivebooks.com/best-books/h...

"Wright was orchestrating the stream of his thoughts through the use of line breaks and the dropped line. These were signals that allowed him to wander around the spaciousness of his own head without losing his reader." fivebooks.com/best-books/k...

"Gandhi was profoundly indifferent to films, cricket, even music. He was not someone who had a keenly developed aesthetic side." fivebooks.com/best-books/g...

"Once the term “scientist” started to be used consistently, it signaled a narrowing of the role of the researcher tied to the professionalization of science (typically white, male, Anglo, university-educated, card-holding careerman)." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"Of course the Islamic regime constitutes a dominant framework for people’s lives, but they manage nonetheless to lead fully complex lives within that framework." fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

“Alice in Wonderland is about sideways thinking, lateral thinking and connections” fivebooks.com/best-books/c...

"The Baker Street Irregulars was founded in the 1930s by three brothers..The Morley kids had grown up reading the Sherlock Holmes books and used to tease each other with questions about the most minor details in them." fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

"I had a hunch that there was a difference between bottled and boxed wine, but that was about it." fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

"We have dates, events, maybe letters or autobiographies. But we don’t ever get to know what was said behind closed doors, or what people’s motives and intentions were. So we have to fill in the gaps." fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

"Basic income is a regular, secure, predictable, modest payment made to citizens by the state. It’s a form of social security that’s paid to people who are in work, as well as those who are out of work." fivebooks.com/best-books/u...

"We were involved in supporting a government, the South Vietnamese, and they weren’t nice and, obviously, getting thrown into the situation when it’s like – what really is going on here?" fivebooks.com/best-books/v...

“People have been able to get early diagnosis of conditions like Down’s Syndrome and, in some countries, to get abortions based on the results” fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

"It’s a country that is about five times the size of France, with great resources. Did you know Algeria does not have any debt?" fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

“We might confidently say that Goethe is a major figure in both humanistic and scientific scholarship” fivebooks.com/best-books/g...

"Utilitarianism is the view that you should do that which produces the most happiness or wellbeing." fivebooks.com/best-books/d...

"Darwin said to truly appreciate beetles we should imagine them to be the size of a dog or a horse." fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

“Politics is an iterative game. What happens in one stage affects what happens in another” fivebooks.com/best-books/j...

"He lived an admirable life and a warm, generous spirit breathes through all his writings. I find that very attractive." fivebooks.com/best-books/d...

"To me, Afro-futurisms is not just about the diaspora and all that nonsense. The Afro- prefix in any definition means relating to, out of, African." fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

"The World Atlas of Wine has unrivalled maps. Hugh did a fantastic job, the real spadework, of getting some top quality maps of the world’s classic wine regions and many of the new ones." fivebooks.com/best-books/w...

“It’s a bit like learning to ride a bike. At first, it can be a bit of a challenge, but once you get the hang of it you think, ‘How was I ever unable to do this?’” fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"Digitization is expected to emancipate people from poverty and inequality around the world." fivebooks.com/best-books/d...

"With my grandmother I’m a five year old and in the village it’s hard to behave like an adult." fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

"There’s a legend about a Han dynasty Chinese envoy called Zhang Qian who is supposed to have brought sesame, coriander, alfalfa and other things from Europe along the silk road." fivebooks.com/best-books/f...

"Going back to the same place as it changes through the seasons and physically linking myself to the land in some sort of way could be more rewarding and I could gain a deeper understanding of the place, and myself." fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

"It’s usually a joke, but even if it’s not it’s mostly about communicating one idea, and when you get that idea it makes you feel good. In my cartoon in The Guardian that’s always what I aim to do – to give some joy of understanding." fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

"If you humiliate any population you will not engender peace, you will engender a resentment that will flare back at you." fivebooks.com/best-books/h...

“Since his death, Mao has enjoyed an ambiguous, unstable legacy in China” fivebooks.com/best-books/m...

"The short story form is certainly a lot easier to assimilate – many of the great Russian short stories are real page-turners, and fun to read." fivebooks.com/best-books/r...

"One of the ironies a century on from the revolution of 1911 is that in some ways China is a completely different country from what it was a century ago and yet many of the problems are still very relevant to China today." fivebooks.com/best-books/c...

"The field probably goes back about 40 years. That’s when people began seriously writing about food in academia." fivebooks.com/best-books/f...

“Ackroyd is not afraid of the supernatural side of Blake—his life with angels and his communications with the dead” fivebooks.com/best-books/w...

“You might be seeking salvation from things that can’t really provide what you need” fivebooks.com/best-books/s...

NEW Interested in speculative fiction through an Afrocentric lens? We asked @EugenBacon of the @sauutiverse collective to recommend us five great Afrofuturist books. fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

NEW: The best books about China of 2025, as recommended by Chinese modern history specialist Jeffrey Wasserstrom fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

"Taxes minus spending is equal to the government surplus; accumulating government deficits—which is the negative of the surplus—gives rise to debt." fivebooks.com/best-books/f...

"Thoreau developed a sense that connecting deeply to nature was the way to reconnect with his lost brother." fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

“Every part of my life now is focused on how we weave the ghost lines of possibility across the terrains of tomorrow” fivebooks.com/best-books/e...

“He changed from being a rather arrogant young man into someone who had deep empathy for people who were suffering” fivebooks.com/best-books/f...

"In my clinical work and my personal life, I am acutely aware that we can all be harsh to ourselves; we all have an ‘inner critic’ to contend with." fivebooks.com/best-books/b...

"There is a gap between where we would like to be and where we are in terms of our behavior." fivebooks.com/best-books/h...