I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

Patty Lyons, Patty Lyons’ Knitting Bag of Tricks: ( useful! )
Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future: ( learning from failure )
Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World, Joanna Davidson & Dinah Hannaford, eds.: ( super interesting anthropological studies )

Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds: ( what is consciousness for? )
Eugenia Bone, Mycophilia: ( she likes mushrooms )
Richard Cohen, Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past: ( Western historians )
Anand Giridharadas, The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy: ( learning from the best )

Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization:( yikes )
Adrian Hon, You’ve Been Played : How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All: ( against gamification, for pleasure )

Anat Rosenberg, The Rise of Mass Advertising: Law, Enchantment, and the Cultural Boundaries of British Modernity: ( how ads took over the world )