Wired – “One of the best things about working at WIRED is the number of topics we get to be interested in. That range really shows when you look at the book excerpts we’ve published this year. We are allowed to interrogate park benches and poker statistics, census machines and cosmic rays. The books that fascinate us might loop us thousands of years into the past, introducing us to the inventor of the wheel, or they might immerse us in the burned-out, Slack-addicted Millennial present. Whatever the topic, these are books that dive deep and tell stories in a smart, deeply researched, beautifully written way. We’ve dropped in some of our favorite quotes below as a kind of sneak peek; pick presents for your friends and family (the nice ones get two), and save a few for yourself to dig into in the new year. —The Editors”