9 Great Tech Books to Bring to the Beach

Sometimes we think our attention span doesn’t last more than 140-characters. Until we pick up a great book, that is.

Check out 9 of our favorite tech and startup books of 2017 (so far).

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls reveals one of 20th century science’s strangest, and bleakest, detours: the belief that the radioactive element Radium wasn’t just harmless, but could cure a variety of ailments.

Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art

Part memoir, part cultural history, Virginia Heffernan’s Magic and Loss sets out to claim that internet itself is a massive work of art. It’s a perfect counterpoint to the endless doom and gloom among many tech writers today.

Startup

The only book on our list not to feature a colon, followed by a run-on sentence, Doree Shafrir’s Startup is also the only novel. Senior Tech Writer at BuzzFeed News, Shafrif takes a gimlet-eyed, and often hilarious, look at the strange, weird world of startup employment.

The Art of Invisibility: The World’s Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data

One of the world’s first, and most, high-profile hackers, Kevin Mitnick has since used his skills for good, rather than the illegal. In The Art of Invisibility, he offers a practical guide to protecting your privacy online (at least as much as that’s possible).

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

After delving into mankind’s past with the monumental Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari turns to the future with Homo Deus, examining how AI, nano-technology, and more might shape our tomorrow.

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

We’re suspicious of any book with an exclamation point in the title, but Laszlo Bock, author of Work Rules!, comes with a serious pedigree: he’s the head of Google’s much-heralded People Operations.

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

Want to go deep on the disruptive (and tumultuous) giants of 21st-century tech? Brad Stone’s The Upstarts tells the wild origin stories behind Uber and Airbnb.

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right

Want to know how exactly we got here? (And by “here”, we’re talking about the boiling cauldron of rage that has consumed the online world…) Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies is an all-too-brief but fascinating look into the world of trolls.

The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter

And finally, a breather from all that digital life. David Sax’s The Revenge of Analog examines our re-burgeoning love affair with vinyl records, independent bookstores, and board games.