Giving Compass' Take:

• TED speakers are renowned for their expertise in their field - whatever that may be. This list offers insight into making yourself, your business, and your community better. 

• Which of these books need to be on your reading list? How do these books relate through common goals?

• Looking for more suggestions? Try the Giving Compass reading list of books by and about inspiring women. 

The theme of TED2018 is The Age of Amazement, and these speakers’ books are bursting with wonders of every kind: intellectual, scientific, urban, technological, economic, historical, aquatic, even extraterrestrial. TED2018, our biggest conference of the year, takes place April 10 through 14 in Vancouver. The talks from the conference will be released on TED.com over the next year. This reading list showcases books from some of our speakers.

  1. A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America by Vishaan Chakrabarti
  2. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
  3. Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies by Cesar Hidalgo
  4. Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold with David Roberts
  5. Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier
  6. Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices about Giving Back by Will MacAskill
  7. The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann
  8. Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski
  9. Sunday Sketching by Christoph Niemann
  10. Renzo Piano: The Complete Logbook by Renzo Piano
  11. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress by Steven Pinker
  12. Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth
  13. Pristine Seas: Journeys to the Ocean’s Last Wild Places by Enric Sala
  14. Streb: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero by Elizabeth Streb
  15. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
  16. How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston
  17. If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life by Stephen Webb

Read the full article on the TED2018 reading list by Rebekah Barnett at TED