Jack Dorsey: "Incredible book by Stewart Brand. Best I’ve read this year."

Marc Andreessen: "[A book on] why even environmentalists should be pro building, pro cities, pro nuclear, and pro genetic engineering."

Matt Ridley: "Stewart Brand is the god of the environmental movement."

Matt Ridley: "It’s fascinating on how, inch by inch, Augustus and his successors surreptitiously turned a republic into an autocracy."

One of Matt Ridley's recommended books on technology and optimism.

Matt Ridley: "Gareth Williams has woven a truly superb narrative from short biographies of all the scientists who contributed to, and in some cases just missed out on, the epochal discovery that the secret of life is a digital linear code written on DNA."

One of Matt Ridley's recommended books on technology and optimism.

Matt Ridley: "A delightful verse novel about philosophy"

One of Matt Ridley's recommended books on technology and optimism.

Matt Ridley: "The account of the 1920s Everest expeditions, ending in Mallory and Irvine’s disappearance high on the mountain in 1924, is interwoven with the World War I back stories of each participant, in a truly original way."

Matt Ridley: "Outstanding"

Matt Ridley: "From the moment of its publication 40 years ago, it has been a sparkling best-seller and a scientific game-changer."

Brian Armstrong: "It was interesting but I found I had already heard many of the ideas in this book, which speaks to how influential it is."

Matt Ridley: “Witty popular science that you enjoy reading for the writing as well as for the science. No other science writer makes me laugh so much.”

Matt Ridley: "A charming account of the events of 1927 in America is told with [Bill Bryson's] usual dry wit."

One of Matt Ridley's favorite science books of 2015.

One of Matt Ridley's favorite science books of 2015.

Paul Graham: "It is a wonderful book"

One of Matt Ridley's all-time favorite books that he recommends to everybody.

Matt Ridley: “In this, his third book about energy and life, [Lane] comes triumphantly close to cracking the secret of why life is the way it is, to a depth that would boggle any ancient philosopher’s mind.”

Matt Ridley: "It’s a great piece of detective work on a key scientific blunder, based around the work of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, and it forensically dismantles the mistakes that led to people believing they had at last found evidence that current climate change is unprecedented in rate or scale in this millennium."

Chris Sacca: "'The Martian' by Andy Weir is a fantastic read. The best."

Matt Ridley: "I loved the fact that the hero never once implies that it’s courage, spirit and faith that saves him — as so many modern books and films would do — just lots of practical tinkering and problem-solving"

Paul Graham: "The most impressive feature of The Double Helix is how much Watson admits he didn't know.

He's constantly talking about papers he couldn't understand and important concepts he didn't grasp."

Matt Ridley: "[This book] gave me the important message — which my teachers had somehow mostly missed telling me — that science is not a catalog of facts, but the search for new and bigger mysteries."

Matt Ridley: "I think [this book] is very profound."