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Today, March 1, is World Book Day, and with a layer of snow blanketing the UK, what could be better than curling up with a good read? Here, some of WIRED's biggest bookworms recommend their favourite books of recent time. From the inside story of the Hulk Hogan-Gawker trial to a sci-fi classic about to get a Netflix adaptation, we're convinced all WIRED readers will find something to keep them engrossed.

One Breath: Freediving, Death, and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits

One Breath is about reaching the body's limits. Author and journalist Adam Skolnick follows the controversies of the freediving community - a sport that requires competitors to dive as deeply as possible on one lung full of oxygen. At events around the world, athletes attempt to reach new depths but, rather inevitably, the boundaries of what the human frame can handle are sometimes surpassed. Expect personal stories, death, and an unending drive to go further than before. Matt Burgess, senior editor


Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

Even now, it still feels too surreal to be true. But Terry Bollea, the man better known as Hulk Hogan, did indeed bring down feared New York publisher Gawker Media, with clandestine funding from Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, because of a secretly-filmed sex tape. Stoic populariser and self-declared "media manipulator" Ryan Holiday secured in-depth access with Thiel and Gawker founder Nick Denton for this elegant account, which combines a full serving of gory detail (Thiel's lawyers packed the jury with "overweight women" because they would empathise with Hogan's body-shaming) with a provocative meditation on the consequences of conspiracies: "Perhaps," he writes, "we have too few conspiracies, not too many." Agree or disagree, it's all part of the pleasure. Rowland Manthorpe, senior editor

Inferior: The True Power of Women and the Science that Shows It

In what ways are women different to men, and why? In Inferior, science journalist Angela Saini wades bravely into this tumultuous territory, covering everything from why women have longer life expectancies to potential evolutionary reasons for the menopause. She carefully breaks down some of the key studies that have shaped contemporary thinking on sex and gender differences and explains both sides of the debate on some of the most heated issues - including whether women are inherently less promiscuous than men, and why grandmothers might play a bigger role in our evolution than we give them credit for. The result is a book that demystifies the scientific method, debunks myths and reminds us that scientists are far from immune to holding their own biases. Victoria Turk, senior editor



Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

North Korea is barely ever out of the news cycle, but almost everything we hear about the isolated nation boils down to maniacal leaders trading insults and firing ballistic missiles into the sea. Barbara Demick's book reaches far beyond the geopolitical bluster to tell the stories of six ordinary North Koreans who lived through the terrible famines of the mid-90s, when as many as several million people died. Demick writes about her sources with precise sensitivity, describing how they fall in love, build careers and struggle to survive under the yoke of one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth. When some of them defeat the odds to make it across the border to South Korea, they find that freedom isn't simple either, as they deal with the guilt of leaving loved ones back home and struggle to live in a nation that seems to revile everything they were taught for so many years to hold dear. Matt Reynolds, staff writer

Graphic Design for Art, Fashion, Film, Architecture, Photography, Product Design & Everything In Between

This new soft-back from Prestel Publishing documents some of the most exciting, influential and trendy graphic design projects of the last few years. All right, they're hedging their bets with a title that long - but the seven chapters of collaborative relationships between designers and industry sit together rather nicely. It's a banger from the get-go, starting with creative agency Bond's fiendishly clever (read: I wish I'd done that) branding for ArtRabbit with a flipped R making the rabbit's head and ears - the perfect introduction to the quality of work to come. There's a wealth of full-colour imagery punctuated by interviews with the designers and agencies involved, and it's a real treat finding trends among the work (lowercase bold geometric sans serif fonts run "white out" being one). Already an essential briefing on all things graphic for the ever-curious and influence-hungry WIRED art desk. Andrew Diprose, group creative director




Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

So much writing about the history of the native peoples of North America fails to represent their views. Dee Brown's forensic account, first published in 1970s, tells the story of the brutal massacre of America's native people from 1860 to 1890. By piecing together first-hand documentation and records kept on both sides, Brown presents a factual, non-sensationalised account of the acts of treachery and brutal violence carried out by white settlers as they pushed westward in search of liberty at any cost. This is essential reading for anyone looking to understand how the United States of America came into being. James Temperton, digital editor

Consider Phlebas

Back in 1987, after four acclaimed fiction novels, Iain Banks published his first sci-fi book, Consider Phlebas, a true space opera and his first book of many to feature the Culture, an interstellar utopian society of humanoids, aliens and sentient machines ostensibly run by hyper-intelligent AI "Minds". A war rages across the galaxy with one side fighting for faith, the other a moral right to exist. Banks melds this conflict with something approaching a traditional fantasy quest: the search for a rogue Mind that has hidden itself on a forbidden world in an attempt to evade destruction. Intelligent, rich and detailed, the Culture series is a classic of modern science fiction and has garnered some high-profile fans - Elon Musk named two SpaceX drone ships after starships from Banks' series. And just last week Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon Studios is adapting Consider Phlebas and the rest of the Culture series - "a huge personal favourite" - for its streaming platform. Jeremy White, executive editor

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life

This memoir by David Cornwell, better known as John Le Carré, is a collection of what he describes as ‘true stories told from memory’ that serve as a record of a writer’s life and an exemplary meditation on the human condition. For all the richness of Le Carré’s extraordinary encounters with the great and the good of the post-war years – from the former head of the KGB to Alec Guinness, Yasser Arafat to Richard Burton, then in his pomp – what is most memorable about the book is Le Carré’s rare voice and his measured but acute observations of his characters. Most vivid of all is his father, a con man and bon viveur of uncommon appetites, who slipped between borders and assumed identities in ways unimaginable in an era of biometrics and strictly regulated borders. These are high-wire lives from a very different time, yet the resonance of Le Carré’s prose renders them utterly familiar in their humanity. Greg Williams, editor in chief