Are you an audiobook fanatic, well there is some great news! In 2021 you no longer need to depend on Audible and OverDrive to get your fix, you can download from many different sites safely and for free. There are a ton of places to get audiobooks for free, but some torrent sites don’t cater to audiobooks and many seem to be overrun with porn advertisements. Therefore, I tested dozens of the most popular audiobooks sites that let you download free audiobooks in 2021 and here are my top 10.

Each site was tested for usability by searching for and downloading the first Harry Potter book and all these sites passed the test with flying colors. Fake download buttons and porn ads still abound, but I found these 10 to be just about the best. I still recommend using a VPN (I find TorGuard or FastVPN to be the best for your money) and a cloud drive (I prefer to use the encrypted cloud drive Mega.nz) for downloading and hosting your files.

First, the TL:DR list…

Best Direct Download Audiobook Sites

1. The-Eye.eu
2. TokyBook.com
3. AudiobookReviews.com
4. Mobilism.org
5. Snahp.it

Best Torrent Audiobook Sites

1. AudioBook Bay
2. The Pirate Bay
3. Zooqle
4. My Anonamouse
5. Abtorrents

Direct Download Sites

1. The Eye

The-Eye is a non-profit, community driven platform dedicated to the archiving and long-term preservation of any and all data including but by no means limited to audiobooks, they also host: websites, books, games, software, video, audio, other digital-obscura and ideas.

The-eye.eu as an open directory allows them to serve large chunks of data back to the community that helps find and provide it. They currently host various large scale data-sets amounting to millions of files in 140TB of data and you can view their real-time bandwidth statistics here.

2. TokyBook.com

The mission of TokyBook is to connect people who love books all over the world. All resources are contributed by fans who want to stream their favorite books and share them with others. If you have a great book and want to share it, you can add it to the site. They don’t own the books posted on the site and they decline legal responsibility for all books stream by their users. They have a larger collection than The Eye but with a ton of romance and low quality posts to wade through.

3. AudiobookReviews.com

One of the best new DDL audiobooks sites of the last few years, ABR hosts their entire collection on Mega, is completely free and has a dead simple UI. Not the largest selection by far but they have all the top books and the easiest and most direct download interface.

4. Mobilism.org

A home for book lovers, app enthusiasts, and much more. The single largest user-powered database of apps, games and books for mobile device users of all platforms! With over a million members and millions of users, over 600,000 releases and countless posts, Mobilism is one of the largest and oldest mobile content sites, as well as, in myopinion, by far the most organized one. Sit back, download some books, learn something new, and enjoy your stay!

5. Snahp.it

An invite is required for this site but it is the best I have found. If you want an invite feel free to ask me on Twitter.

Most of you must already have heard about this on r/megalinks, but for those that haven’t, they now have their very own forum to take release and general discussions to. The forum can be accessed at forum.snahp.it.

Posts on their blog will get posted on the forum automatically twice every day. You should be able to subscribe to the forum’s RSS feed to keep up with all new posts, change the forum’s theme and even access their discord server.

Torrent Sites

1. AudioBook Bay

AudioBook Bay is among the most beloved torrent sites for audiobooks. It mainly focuses on audio books and thus you can easily find audio book torrents which are not available on other similar sites. Its content is well-organized and sortable by language, genre, and age. This site boasts a great community to guide all users toward the best torrents. Also, this site allows you to share your audio book safely with high quality.

2. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is one of the most popular torrent sites for not just audiobooks and ebooks but also for movies, music and more. It gives you free access to millions of audio books and is a delight for all book lovers.

3. Zooqle

Zooqle is another amazing torrent site to download audio books as well as movies, games and TV shows. Everything available there is of very high quality. Also, the content available is verified by the community members.

4. My Anonamouse

My Anonamouse is also one of the most used websites. It currently tracks over 35,000 audio book torrents. Both new released audio books and old renowned ones are available here for free. As it is a closed community, you need to apply for an invite and sign up.

5. Abtorrents

Abtorrents mainly focuses on providing audio books. Users must be registered and receive an invitation from the developers to fully access the page and download any content. And one thing must be kept in mind that if you fail to log in 5 times in succession, your IP will be banned.

Thank you for looking over these are the top 10 free audiobook sites. Open any of them to download audio books. If you sometimes listen to Audible audio books, you might want to play them on your MP3 player. Actually, Audible not only has encoded specific AA/AAX in audiobooks, but also has applied DRM copyright protection in them for avoiding unauthorized playback. With Epubor Audible Converter, you can remove Aubile DRM and convert Audible AA/AAX to MP3 effortlessly. Then you can listen to them on various devices or share them with your friends.

Honorable Mentions:

Library Genesis — mostly eBooks but a great community.

BiblioTik.me — Impossible to join but I’ve heard good things, please PM me if you want to share an invite.

IntoTheInter.net — Another one that I can’t get into but comes recommended.

LibriVox.org — Only free, open source audiobooks but still a great resource.

Igglybuff’s Awesome Piracy List — I am aware that a number of websites featured in this list rely on operating under obscurity, and that this list could potentially contribute to their demise through excess exposure. I’m sorry about that, I just like making lists.

Top 10 Torrent and Direct Download (DDL) Sites for Audiobooks 2020 was originally published in AudioBookReviews.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Updated 6/7/2020

Between Covid-19, techie billionaires running the world and the general decline of western civilization some might argue this is no time to have our head in the clouds with popular SciFi. For whatever reason though we seem to be in a golden era of amazing authors publishing a record number of great novels to choose from. With the flood of great work it can be hard to find your next favorite author. This list is based on my personal opinion as well as pulling from Amazon top sellers and the best reviewed of GoodReads. I’d love any thought or feedback on titles I missed and get more reviews at AudioBookReviews.com. Thanks and on to the list!

TL:DR List

1. The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey

2. Eden by Tim Lebbon

3. The Hidden Girl by Ken Liu

4. The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

5. The Bear by Andrew Krivak

6. Mazes of Power by Juliette Wade

7. The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

8. Blue Screen by Kyle Benzle

9. Agency by William Gibson

10. The Last Human by Zack Jordan

11. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

12. The Light Years by R.W.W. Greene

13. The Resisters by Gish Jen

14. Docile by K.M. Szpara

15. The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

16. Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

17. Finna by Nino Cipri

18. A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

19. The Mother Code by Carole Stivers

20. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata

1. The Book of Koli

by M.R. Carey

”Weakness is a matter of context, Koli Woodsmith. Until it becomes a matter of logistics.”

Part coming-of-age tale, part survival fiction, The Book of Koli was yet another post-apocalyptic gem from M.R. Carey. Having loved both of his previous end o’ the world books, I didn’t know what to expect from this particular one, but I knew it would have the hallmarks I’ve come to expect from him — phenomenal world-building, incredible, resilient characters, and plenty of heart and in an otherwise heartless landscape. And that’s what I was given, plus several fantastic surprises.

• Kindle Store $11.99
• Amazon

2. Eden

by Tim Lebbon

Eden is an explosive novel, with a lot to say about the current situation that the planet faces. Lebbon employs several smart literary techniques throughout the novel, such as preceding each chapter with accounts from various sources not directly connected the main narrative thrust of the novel. These excerpts from personal accounts of those affected by the rehoming and resultant lockdown of the zones and press releases form those tasked with defending the integrity of the zones, add an extra layer of social commentary to the novel. It allows Lebbon to explore the discontent and frustrations of those who have not fully signed on to the concept. It also allows an insight into the workings of the Zone Defence Zone and the fact that they may not be the white knights in shining armour as they would have us believe.

• Kindle Store $2.99
• Amazon

3. The Hidden Girl and Other Stories

by Ken Liu

3.96/5 · 166 ratings

From award-winning author Ken Liu comes his much anticipated second volume of short stories.

Ken Liu is one of the most lauded short story writers of our time. This collection includes a selection of his science fiction and fantasy stories from the last five years — sixteen of his best — plus a new novelette.

In addition to these seventeen selections, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories also features an excerpt from book three in the Dandelion Dynasty series, The Veiled Throne.

• Kindle Store $13.99
• Amazon

4. The Vanished Birds

by Simon Jimenez

4.09/5 · 518 ratings

A mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever in this captivating debut of connection across space and time.

“This is when your life begins.”

Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her; all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.

A boy, broken by his past.

• Kindle Store $12.99
• Amazon

5. The Bear

by Andrew Krivak

3.81/5 · 458 ratings

From National Book Award in Fiction finalist Andrew Krivak comes a gorgeous fable of Earth’s last two human inhabitants and a girl’s journey home.

In an Eden-like future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They own a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches his daughter how to fish and hunt and the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can learn to listen. A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion.

• Kindle Store $11.99
• Amazon

6. Mazes of Power (The Broken Trust #1)

by Juliette Wade

3.78/5 · 54 ratings

This debut work of sociological science fiction follows a deadly battle for succession, where brother is pitted against brother in a singular chance to win power and influence for their family.

The cavern city of Pelismara has stood for a thousand years. The Great Families of the nobility cling to the myths of their golden age while the city’s technology wanes.

When a fever strikes, and the Eminence dies, seventeen-year-old Tagaret is pushed to represent his Family in the competition for Heir to the Throne. To win would give him the power to rescue his mother from his abusive father, and marry the girl he loves.

• Kindle Store $13.99
• Amazon

7. The City We Became (Great Cities #1)

by N.K. Jemisin

4.08/5 · 146 ratings

Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin.

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

• Amazon

8. Blue Screen: How Peter Gustafson Defragmented the World

by Kyle Benzle

4.33/5 · 31 ratings

One of the best new SciFi novels and debut author of 2020!

A young computer hacker takes on the greatest AI of all time to try and save the world, but fails.

Congratulations and welcome to the InterEra network!
Your timeline must have just completed your first gravitational wave antenna. For all but a few of you, this will be your first incoming message. For all but a few of you, that means there is still time.

• Amazon
• Kindle Store $2.95

9. Agency (The Peripheral #2)

by William Gibson

3.95/5 · 2,149 ratings

“One of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working” (The Boston Globe) returns with a brand-new novel.

In William Gibson’s first novel since 2014’s New York Times bestselling The Peripheral, a gifted “app-whisperer,” hired to beta test a mysterious new product, finds her life endangered by her relationship with her surprisingly street-smart and combat-savvy “digital assistant.”

• Kindle Store $14.99
• Amazon

10. The Last Human

by Zack Jordan

3.68/5 · 84 ratings

The last human in the universe is on the run from a godlike intelligence in this rip-roaring debut space opera.

Sarya is the civilized galaxy’s worst nightmare: a Human.

Most days, Sarya doesn’t feel like the most terrifying creature in the galaxy.

Most days, she’s got other things on her mind. Like hiding her identity among the hundreds of alien species roaming the corridors of Watertower Station. Or making sure her adoptive mother doesn’t casually eviscerate one of their neighbors. Again.

• Amazon

11. Interior Chinatown

by Charles Yu

4.14/5 · 771 ratings

From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here too. . . but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy — the highest aspiration he can imagine for a Chinatown denizen. Or is it?

• Kindle Store $12.99
• Amazon

12. The Light Years

by R.W.W. Greene

3.82/5 · 56 ratings

The captain of a family-owned starship arranges a marriage for her son in hopes of achieving faster-than-light travel and maybe, just maybe, marital bliss.

Before Hisako Saski is even born, her parents make a deal on her behalf. In exchange for a first-class education and a boost out of poverty, Hisako will marry Adem Sadiq, a maintenance engineer and self-styled musician who works the trade lanes aboard his family’s sub-light starship, the Hajj.

• Amazon
• Kindle Store $8.99

13. The Resisters

by Gish Jen

3.72/5 · 307 ratings

An audacious marvel of a novel about baseball and a future America, from the always inventive and exciting author of The Love Wife and Who’s Irish

The time: a not-so-distant future. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet — the new face of government — is “Aunt Nettie”: a mix of artificial intelligence, surveillance technology, and pesky maxims. The people have been divided, and no one is happy. The angel-fair “Netted” still have jobs and literally occupy the high ground, while the mostly coppertoned “Surplus” live on swampland if they’re lucky, on the water if they’re not.
Kindle Store $13.99

• Amazon

14. Docile

by K.M. Szpara

3.94/5 · 319 ratings

There is no consent under capitalism

Docile is a science fiction parable about love and sex, wealth and debt, abuse and power, a challenging tour de force that at turns seduces and startles.

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents’ debts and buy your children’s future.

• Kindle Store $14.99
• Amazon

15. The Last Smile in Sunder City

by Luke Arnold

3.81/5 · 263 ratings

A former soldier turned PI tries to help the fantasy creatures whose lives he ruined in a world that’s lost its magic in a compelling debut fantasy by Black Sails actor Luke Arnold. Welcome to Sunder City. The magic is gone but the monsters remain.I’m Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are a few things you should know before you hire me:1. Sobriety costs extra.2. My services are confidential.3. I don’t work for humans. It’s nothing personal — I’m human myself. But after what happened, to the magic, it’s not the humans who need my help. Walk the streets of Sunder City and meet Fetch, his magical clients, and a darkly imagined world perfect for readers of Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

• Kindle Store $9.99
• Amazon

16. Riot Baby

by Tochi Onyebuchi

4.00/5 · 686 ratings

“Riot Baby bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power that in the end it turns what we call a narrative into something different altogether.” — Marlon James

Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience.

Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella — through visits both mundane and supernatural — tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down.

• Kindle Store $9.99
• Amazon

17. Finna

by Nino Cipri

4.16/5 · 223 ratings

When an elderly customer at a big box furniture store slips through a portal to another dimension, it’s up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company’s bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but our two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.

Can friendship blossom from the ashes of a relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.

• Kindle Store $3.99
• Amazon

18. A Beginning at the End

by Mike Chen

3.63/5 · 534 ratings

How do you start over after the end of the world?

Six years after a global pandemic wiped out most of the planet’s population, the survivors are rebuilding the country, split between self-governing cities, hippie communes and wasteland gangs.

In postapocalyptic San Francisco, former pop star Moira has created a new identity to finally escape her past — until her domineering father launches a sweeping public search to track her down. Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world on behalf of those too traumatized to go outside, determined to help everyone move on — even if they don’t want to. Rob survived the catastrophe with his daughter, Sunny, but lost his wife. When strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city’s eyes by connecting with people again.

• Amazon

19. The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

3.85/5 · 96 ratings

It’s 2049, and the survival of the human race is at risk. The earth’s inhabitants must turn to their last resort, a plan to place genetically engineered children inside the cocoons of large-scale robots — to be incubated, birthed, and raised by machines. But there is yet one hope of preserving the human order: an intelligence programmed into these machines that renders each unique in its own right — the Mother Code.

Kai is born in America’s desert southwest, his only companion his robotic Mother, Rho-Z. Equipped with the knowledge and motivations of a human mother, Rho-Z raises Kai and teaches him how to survive. But as children like Kai come of age, their Mothers transform too — in ways that were never predicted. And when government survivors decide that the Mothers must be destroyed, Kai must make a choice. Will he break the bond he shares with Rho-Z? Or will he fight to save the only parent he has ever known?

• Amazon

20. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

by Michael Zapata

3.87/5 · 299 ratings

The mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans

In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel titled Lost City. It is a strange and beautiful novel, set in a near future where a sixteen-year-old Dominican girl, not all that unlike Adana herself, searches for a golden eternal city believed to exist somewhere on a parallel Earth. Lost City earns a modest but enthusiastic readership, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she and her son, Maxwell, destroy the only copy of the manuscript.

Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious package containing a manuscript titled A Model Earth, written by none other than Adana Moreau.

• Amazon

Thanks for reading and see our full Top 100 SciFi books of all time at AudiobookReviews.com/SciFi

The 20 Best Science Fiction Novels of 2020 was originally published in AudioBookReviews.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My sister and I both read this book recently. I loved it but I’m pretty sure she took it as a personal attack just like all American’s under the age of 80 will and most of the ones over.

Fantasyland rails against the made-up nonsense world that many Americans are today living in. The world where capitalism is King, the world where what you feel is just important as what is and opinions are just as important as facts. According to this book and my personal observation most of the people living in the United States today cope with the stresses of modern life by retreating into their own personal fantasies and ignoring reality as much as possible.

What is Fantasyland? Fantasyland is the world where everyone is equal and must be compensated equally. Fantasyland is the world where hard work is repaid with success and money. Fantasyland is the world that Americans inhabit when they believe that there are no consequences to buying cheap Chinese goods or Mexican cartel grown avocados and The Federal Reserve system is the best we can do. In short Fantasyland is everything that is wrong with America but is also central to America’s ability to succeed. It is the ability to ignore reality, it is the right to construct your own world where what you believe is just as important that’s what actually exists.

The world where everyone deserves what they desire and no one is at fault for their faults.

Fantasyland is the land of Amber Heard, the horrible evil woman who accused Johnny Depp of physically attacking her after she was the one who had attacked him. How is it that a famous woman could get away with a bald-faced lie to the court, the public and her husband about being physically abused and everyone believed her? That can only happen in Fantasyland where not being #Believed is tantamount to abuse and everyone deserves to be “Heard”.

Certain types have a hard time in Fantasyland, especially autistics who more naturally see a less distorted version of reality. Greta has said it herself, autism makes it hard to lie to others but also to yourself.

In my opinion the millennial generation in the United States has been peek Fantasyland. The world where everyone deserves what they desire and no one is at fault for their faults. Only the most privileged generation in the history of the world could occupy such a nonsense mentality. Financially, the average American is in something like the top 0.5% in the world, yet we were central to the “fight for the 99%” protests, a literal nonsensical stand to take. Fighting for the 99% would have meant pledging to send 50% of your income oversees, or sponsoring poor families in the third world. Not yelling about how the top 0.5% should really be in the 0.1% and the top 0.001% brought down an order of magnitude. This was a great read but if you are a citizen of Fantasyland (like my sister) stay away. You will not be happy with this book.

I love nearly everything about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but the simple fact is that she’s vying for Queen a Fantasyland. AOC lives in the world where everyone deserves health care where everyone deserves a job where everyone deserves to be happy. It is a fantasy occupied by idiots who have never had to step foot in the real world. People suffer, for a brief blip of time this last 70 years the West has had a respite from the brutishness of life but it never really went away, just the top 0.5% are too high up to see it.

Citizens of Fantasyland believe that decisions are made at the top and that if you’re not getting what you want it’s because you’re being abused or oppressed. The biggest challenge for occupants of Fantasyland is trying to figure out who their oppressors are. For women it’s often men, for minorities it’s whites, for the poor whites it’s the government…

Conservatism may be a mental disorder but on the other end, liberals living in Fantasyland are capable of doing much more harm.

Read more reviews at AudioBookReviews.com

Fantasyland, Non-Fiction At It’s Best was originally published in AudioBookReviews.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Image: Elena Berton

In 2020 a decentralized currency is more important than ever.

With many predicting the Petrodollar ready to be dethroned amidst the Covid chaos, Bitcoin, now 10 years old, is waiting patiently on the sidelines to take reigns as wold reserve.

Bitcoin is without a doubt still the most important digital currency, Ethereum is nipping at its heals and the countless others are not far behind. If you’ve been in Bitcoin since day one or you are just now buying your first Satoshi, here is my list of the best and most important Bitcoin reading material.

TL:DR List:

1) The Book of Satoshi: The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto — Phil Champagne

2) Bitcoin White Paper — Satoshi Nakamoto

3) Bitcoin Technology and the Future of Money — Alan Wright

4) Cryptoassets The Innovative Investor’s Guide — Chris Burniske

5) The Fourth Industrial Revolution — Klaus Schwab

6) Bitcoin Billionaires, A True Story of Genius — Ben Mezrich

7) The Bitcoin Standard — Saifedean Ammous

8) The Death of Money — James Rickards

9) Tor and the Dark Art of Anonymity — Lance Henderson

10) American Kingpin — Nick Bilton

1) The Book of Satoshi: The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto — Phil Champagne

This is the place to start to understand everything about the block chain generally, and bitcoin specifically. The first three chapters are indispensable as a start up guide “quick start”. Thereafter each chapter deals with distinct and very interesting FAQ type issues. They can be dipped into for insight in each subject’s turn, as and when required.

I read the greater part of the book on Kindle, then bought it on Audible, and listened to the rest in the car while travelling between cities. The Audible version is a bit repetitive, as the concept of summarising quoted (in-bedded) forum entries is beyond the intellect of the Audible producer. But that aside, the content of the work is superb.

Get it now. Highly recommended.

2) Bitcoin White Paper — Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto stated in his white paper that: “The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”

3) Bitcoin Technology and the Future of Money — Alan Wright

Blockchain: Uncovering Blockchain Technology, Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, and the Future of Money, by author Alan Wright, is an in-depth explanation of BlockChain. It goes into immense detail about what Blockchain is, where it came from, and how it is going to affect the digital world in the future. Alan Wright did an excellent job of creating a book that was full of information while still maintaining a voice that is accessible and easy to read. It was nice to find a book that put this information together in a well organized, understandable format that got me excited about the future of this technology. It is apparent from the writing that Wright put in a lot of research and was very passionate about the technology. The writing style, images, facts, and stats came together to create an interesting and accessible book. This was an excellent read that I enjoyed very much. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about Blockchain.

4) Cryptoassets The Innovative Investor’s Guide — Chris Burniske

Cryptoasets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide, provides a clear, concise overview of a rapidly emerging market and group of tools that will impact our lives for the better. Context is everything. I am not a professional trader or investor. Prior to getting involved with cryptoassets, I wasn’t even remotely a hobby trader. I contributed to my retirement through work in typical mostly hands-off ways i.e 401k or mutual funds. I got involved with Bitcoin because I liked the technology and the societal implications. Once that hooked me, I had to figure out how to put that interest to use. That is where Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar come in with Cryptoassets. The authors provide a timely description of the investing landscape without turning over every stone or looking behind every tree. They paint with broad brush strokes using various cryptoassets to articulate a point. Without getting bogged down in too many details that change quickly in cryptomarkets, they filled in significant knowledge gaps and helped me understand how much I did not know about investing or how cryptoassets compare to conventional assets. There is a place for the highly technical description of cryptoassets or investing. That is not this book.

5) The Fourth Industrial Revolution — Klaus Schwab

This is an excellent assessment of social and technical developments coming in the next decade. It is rooted in current research and development. Schwab makes a convincing case that the next 10 years will create a paradigm shift in our lives similar to the shifts of industrial revolutions 1.0. 2.0 and 3.0.

6) Bitcoin Billionaires, A True Story of Genius — Ben Mezrich

After reaching a multimillion dollar settlement with Mark Zuckerberg (for allegedly stealing their idea for an Internet social network), the Winklevoss twins start a venture capital firm, hoping to make their mark in the business world. Surprised to learn that their money is unwelcome in Silicon Valley (entrepreneurs are afraid of antagonizing Zuckerberg), they discover Bitcoin. Convinced that cryptocurrency will be the “Next Great Thing,” they invest in a Bitcoin exchange start-up run by an unstable but brilliant young man, and they also buy directly large amounts of Bitcoin. The resulting wild and crazy ride (for both the volatile value of Bitcoin, and the fortunes of the main characters) becomes the central story of this well-written and fascinating book. On the plus side, the author does an excellent job of explaining the basics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

7) The Bitcoin Standard —Saifedean Ammous

About mid-way through reading this book I realized there was a problem with the book. The title doesn’t quite do it justice. Though it would be a bit hubristic to title your own book “The Bitcoin Bible” it won’t stop me from doing so on Ammous’ behalf.

That’s right. This book is the missing treatise on “Why Bitcoin?”. It is not technical from a coder’s point of view; however, it is technical on its treatment of economics. Don’t let that scare you away. If you ever considered “getting into Bitcoin”. If you never heard of Bitcoin. If you are a long-time holder of Bitcoin. This book is for you.

8) The Death of Money — James Rickards

This is a great book, the second I have read by James Rickards. He’s written the previous best selling book, “Currency Wars”. Mr. Rickards has had a career in varied realms, he has degrees in Int’l. Economics (went to grad school with the likes of Timothy Geitner) and several legal disciplines. He’s a regular on many MSM including CNBC where I first saw him about 8 years ago. He’s an insider in more ways than one. Six years ago he pointed out that China was bent on accumulating gold to diversify their assets (boy was he right). Then 3 years ago he began talking about plans to revive an old 1960’s era monetary maneuver which he called “Operation Twist”, sure enogh a couple of months later the Fed announced Operation Twist which entailed buying long term US Treasury debt and selling short term.

9) Tor and the Dark Art of Anonymity —Lance Henderson

Now I know why the NSA and others want to ban Tor. I had wondered why so many in law enforcement and those who “protect us” by surveilling us want to get rid of this browser which was, incidentally, originally funded by the US military and they released it.
I knew something about TOR but 90% of the information in the book was new to me. I’m a writer and don’t actually use TOR myself but I was astounded by the information the author put together after what is clearly exhaustive and personal research. This book does what few books like this do: it tells you what, why and then tells you specifically “how to”.

10) American Kingpin — Nick Bilton

This book covers both the broad strokes of the Silk Road that you might have missed as the story was unfolding as well as the small nuances that you almost certainly didn’t know even if you were one of the participants.

Bilton takes a balanced reporting perspective and describes both the highs and lows of the building and ultimate downfall of the Silk Road as well as the investigative efforts that brought it down.

Probably the most striking element is the number of small mistakes that lead to setbacks and victories on both sides of this cat and mouse game.

I would say one place some may disagree with the author is in what to include and what to leave out. In any writing that is the challenge the author faces. I am satisfied with his decisions but others may not be.

This is a well written book that will fill in many of the holes left by other sources.

Ten Best Books on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency in 2020 was originally published in AudioBookReviews.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I could spend everyday watching SciFi movies (and have spent more than a few doing just that during this quarantine). But like many fans of Science Fiction, I’ve run out. I’ve made it through all the Top SciFi Films of All Times lists, 40 Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century, Wired’s Sci-Fi Movies Everyone Needs to Watch and finally to lists like, The 20 Most Underrated Science Fiction Movies and The Best Sci-Fi Movies that Most People Haven’t Seen. But I want more.

Most SciFi fans are happy to get our fix in any format we can. We spend our time reading, playing video and board games and even acting out our fantasies cos-playing our favorite characters and stories but nothing compares to bringing it all to life on the big screen.

After exhaustive research conducting polls, questionnaires and asking as many SciFi fans as possible I have come up with a list of books that we (the SciFi community) most want to see turned into movies or re-adapted after a lackluster first attempt (looking at you, “The Congress”). If you can add anything or have suggestions please let me know, now onto the list!

1. Robert A. Heinlein’s “Future History” mini-series:

• Season 1 — The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• Season 2 — Stranger in a Strange Land
• Season 3 — Have Space Suit, Will Travel (Attach James Purdum)
• Season 4 — Methuselah’s Children
• Season 5 — If this Goes On
• Season 6 — Starship Troopers
• Season 7 — The Gay Deceiver, a combination of plots from The Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Wall and To Sail Beyond Sunset. An all star series finale of characters from the previous seasons. (Attach Charlie Brooker)

2. The Machine Stops — E.M. Forester (Attach Rian Johnson)
3. Mars Trilogy — Kim Stanley Robinson
4. Sleeping Giants — Sylvain Neuvel (Neill Blomkamp)
5. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
6. The Forever War — Joe Haldeman
7. The Lensman series — Doc E.E. Smith
8. Borne — Jeff VanderMeer
9. A Canticle for Leibowitz — Walter M. Miller Jr.
10. The Futurological Congress — Stansislaw Lem
11. The Stars My Destination — Alfred Bester (Attach Paul Verhoeven)
12. The Demolished Man — Alfred Bester
13. Station Eleven: A Novel — Emily St. John Mandel
14. Blue Screen — Kyle Benzle
15. The Day Of The Triffids — John Wyndham
16. All the Birds in the Sky — Charlie Jane Anders
17. Downbelow Station — C. J. Cherryh
18. Cyteen — C. J. Cherryh
19. The Peripheral — William Gibson
20. Infomocracy — Malka Older
21. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
22. Rainbows End — Vernor Vinge
23. Hardwired — Walter Jon Williamson
24. Halting State or Glass House — Charles Stross
25. Player of Games — Ian M Banks
26. Inversions — Ian M. Banks
27. Heavy Weather — Bruce Sterling
28. Out On Blue Six — Ian McDonald
29. Rendezvous with Rama — Arthur C. Clarke (Attach Denis Villeneuve or Alex Garland)
30. Ringworld — Larry Niven
31. Timescape — Gregory Benford
32. Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World — Haruki Murakami
33. The Forever War — Joe Haldeman
34. The Dispossessed — Ursula K Le Guin (Attach Bong Joon-ho)
35. Stainless Steel Rat — Harry Harrison
36. The Three Body Problem — Liu Cixin
37. The Long Run — Daniel Keyes Moran
38. A Maze of Death — Philip K. Dick
39. The Carpet Makers — Andreas Eschbach
40. Perdido Street Station — China Miéville
41. Kraken — China Miéville
42. The Interdependency Trilogy — John Scalzi
43. The Wall — John Lanchester
44. Ventus — Karl Schroeder
45. The Company of Time Saga — Kage Baker
46. United States of Japan — Peter Tyerias
47. The Foundation — Isaac Asimov
48. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet — Becky Chambers
49. Otherland Series — Tad Williams
50. BLINDSIGHT — Peter Watts

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A sad thing about the alt-right movement is that so many of the Trump attendees are simply being taken for a proverbial ride. For many they are only looking for what Obama supporters wanted a decade ago, hope. They are guilty only of being desperate for a better tomorrow and it is the number one reason they were so easily duped by this horrible con man.

“American Carnage” is a Steve Bannon phrase taken from Trump’s inaugural address as well as the title of this great book all about how Donald Trump became president. This books is just barely about Trump, the focus is the Republican party 2016–2017 and its complete and utter destruction. The reasons Trump became president turn out to be relatively straightforward and simple, foremost Hillary was without question the worst candidate ever put forward by the Democratic party. With her long history of corruption and abuse of power it is no wonder she was so well hated. Second was the ability of the Republican party and more than anyone Republican strategists like Frank Luntz and Karl Rove who were able to boil down exactly where and when Trump needed to spend his time campaigning. Along with the decades long perverse work of The GOP all over the country in gerrymandering their districts in order to maximize the poll of each Republican voter while minimizing Democrats influence.

Republicans are the party of do anything, say anything to win, in this case all they had to do was pledge loyalty to Donald Trump, one of the most repugnant men in American History. More than anything what put Donald over the top was middle class voters who’s number one issue in this last election was reportedly the nomination of Supreme Court Justices. His first nomination was only possible because of Mitch McConnell’s blocking of Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in a completely insane and unheard of manner. The lesson of American Carnage is that luck favors the prepared and the Republicans had been preparing for well over 8 years. The bad news is, it worked they were exceedingly successful in mobilizing their base on the most important issues for them, Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Court nominee and forcing women to have babies they don’t want.

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Have you seen that episode of Rick and Morty where our duo are trapped in an alien virtual reality that is so good that they can’t tell they are in the real world or the virtual one? Rick figures it out and finally they make a daring escape from the VR, they remove the interface helmets and start to run away from the evil alien facility. As they run the camera zooms out and we see that our heroes are actually still in a now larger virtual world, designed in a way that makes them only think they have escaped into the real world. The deception is layered and everything the protagonists see, hear and feel is controlled by a higher power.

The feeling Rick and Morty must have had when they realized there was no way out and they had been intellectually out matched is how I felt upon finishing this amazing book, The Invention of Nature by profound author Andrea Wulf.

I had never heard of Alexander von Humboldt, the man who invented nature, and I now feel that is like saying you never heard of Darwin, Einstein or Newton, men so integral to our everyday way of understanding the world around us that their names are synonymous with genius. von Humboldt arguably has had an even greater influence over society than any of these other historical individuals and whats crazy is that most people have never heard his name. Except, they have, because his name is everywhere. All over the world there are mountains, rivers, currents, cities, streets, schools, libraries and more that carry the name, and for very good reason.

This review should be just long enough to get this book on your reading list and no longer. I hope I have piqued your interest in Humboldt at least enough that you will check his Wikipedia page if not get the book as well. The fact that we have culturally forgotten such an influential giant has stolen a hero from our children, has withheld a better vision of the future from our elders and made this world a little less natural. Bring von Humboldt back to the forefront of the American mind and 90% of our problems will be solved, put this book in the hands of every teenager and half our issues would disappear overnight. I’m calling for it now, Humboldt needs to be the hero of generation Z, he needs to be, as he deserves, a name synonymous with genius.

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Sapiens

A History of All the Things!

If you wanted to know everything there is to know about Human Beings, you might imagine it would take multiple lifetimes of diligent study and a dedicated research team helping you, not to mention the mind of a genius. But all you would really need is this book, Sapiens by Yuval Harari. The author, tops himself again and again in every chapter as he masterfully weaves us though the age of Man, starting with the earliest periods when dozens of different Human-like animals reluctantly shared the Earth.

More than anything, I love how he narrates human sentiment through the ages. Why did it take so many millennia for man to start using tools, building structures, using money. Most titillating, what made the sapiens the ones to eventually win out over the many other species. Essentially, we read, modern man was especially good at working together in extraordinarily large groups under shared delusions to slaughter competitors or game en masse. While Neanderthals would have had a maximum group size of a few hundred and a hunting party of much fewer H. sapiens could go to battle in the thousands all fighting for the same “god”. Presumably this is what gives us our ability to congregate peacefully around an idea such as religion, but also use that shared idea to encourage hatred for a shared enemy. This gives us religion, good memories, big brains, color vision, war, ability to innovate, trade…

Sapiens is a book better than I could have imagined books being. An objective take of our species is exactly what I have always wanted. So much of this book, taken out of context, could be taboo but in this undertaking of understanding humanity for what it is, Harari is free to explore the best and worst of what makes us H. sapiens, like it or not.

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America is a Slave State and Dark Money is another great book about the dozen or so richest men in the world that control nearly all the money and most aspects of our lives. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation the Cato Institute and Fox News are essentially all combinations of tax havens and lobby groups for rich people that have somehow been successful in masquerading as conservatives.

One of the biggest lies that this group of people has been telling is that conservatism is somehow good for big business that in some way people like Donald Trump can call themselves conservative when in fact what they want is socialism for the wealthy and capitalism for the poor.

People like Robert Mercer and the Koch brothers are the greatest villains of our time they have used their ill-gotten gains in the stock market and by polluting at levels never-before-seen profiting off the back of the very destruction of nature and society.

Most disgustingly given the chance they have not used these ill-gotten gains to help their fellow man to improve the communities in which they depend or even help restore some of the very natural wonders they were complicit in destroying. Instead they’ve chosen to use their massive amounts of wealth to what else but further expand their massive amounts of wealth by stealing from the poor through reduction of their own taxes and maximizing the burden on the lower class, socialism for the wealthy capitalism for the poor.

Billionaires should not exist. As soon as one man can have such an unequal influence on millions of people something is wrong. In a democracy where only the wealthy can run for office, something is wrong. By all accounts we no longer live in a democracy, we no longer live in a world that is governed by the desires of free men and women, we live in a world governed by the desires of the wealthy. As soon as there is one set of laws for the rich and another for the poor something is wrong with democracy.

My Hope is that Donald Trump was the apex of this mistake, electing a “businessman” to run a country is certainly the apex of stupidity. I for one hope that the destruction that Donald Trump has rought will be enough to teach us our lesson, that democracy run for the benefit of the wealthy is no democracy at all and every country has the choice between allowing the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few or having a democracy but we can’t have both.

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Dark Money: The Hidden History of Billionaires was originally published in AudioBookReviews.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In terms of ability to hold my interest and breadth of coverage this was one of the all-time best books about modern finance I’ve ever finished. How Money Became Dangerous is an incredible inside story about how the modern American financial system became as inequitable, disjointed and completely unsustainable as it is.

The author claims to have made north of 10 million dollars a year working on Wall Street if that’s the case he is well-qualified to call himself an insider. For me this was an ideal personable look through the career of one man at the evolution of modern finance. The story begins with our author in grad school and soon joining Solomon Brothers as a young analyst. It seems that in almost no time he was rubbing shoulders with celebrities and receiving million dollar bonuses for his work.

What is absolutely amazing and what I love about this book is his honesty and self-awareness of the disgusting machine he was a part of. He openly discusses being let down by a 4 million dollar bonus and negotiating for more but at the same time recognizing how insane it was.

Christopher Varelas is special because he was not born into the Hamptons house class but ended up spending most of his life there. That gave him a particular and wildly interesting outsiders view on the billionaires currently running the country.

One of my favorite vignettes is when the author tells of the time he and his family visited Disneyland and were able to skip the lines for all the rides because of who he worked for. He talks about the cringe on people’s faces forcing him to consider his privileged status and even how such events may end up shaping his own daughter as they were chauffeured to the front of each line.

This is a great memoir that reads like fiction but is clearly almost all factual. If you want to get an inside view of Wall Street for the past 20 years this is a must read book and if you fancy yourself the next Jordan Belfort this book needs to be on the top of your reading list.

I loved the ending, the last chapter is about the influencer generation and how chasing wealth and fame as goals in and of themselves is empty and pathetic, but also very American.

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