Brilliant, practical, and grounded in the very latest research, this is by far the best book I've ever read on the how and why of scaling. If you care about changing the world, or just want to make better decisions in your own life, The Voltage Effect is for you.

How many books are funny and wise, practical and profound? John List is a scientist, but he's also a magician, and he's changing the world. The Voltage Effect shows how. This is one of the best economics books I have ever read - and an instant classic in behavioral economics.

The Voltage Effect is the toolkit for the ambitious. Packed with proven principles and pro tips made real through inside stories ranging from Silicon Valley to African NGOs to university fund-raising, List fills the gap between startup books and management books to show how any idea can achieve its full potential.

Ideas from the ivory tower or Davos fail often and fail badly because they do not recognize the deeply political and historical nature of the problems they are trying to deal with and the social realities in which these problems are embedded. This thought-provoking and engaging book proposes an original framework for thinking about how good policy proposals can be applied at a scale large enough to do social good, and for avoiding predictable mistakes that prevent such scaling. A must-read.

One day soon, when computers are safely driving our roads and speaking to us in complete sentences, we'll look back at Cade Metz's elegant, sweeping Genius Makers as their birth story - the Genesis for an age of sentient machines.

Many books proclaim that true artificial intelligence is on the horizon, and this expert overview makes a convincing case that genuine AI is . . . Metz tells his engrossing story through the lives of a dozen geniuses, scores of brilliant men (mostly), and an ongoing, cutthroat industrial and academic arms race . . . A must-read, fully-up-to-date report on the holy grail of computing.

The book is thorough and well researched. It provides a good grounding in the challenges and issues that AI has faced, and the big ethical issues that will need to be addressed going forwards too.It is also written in an accessible and non jargon heady manner, which ensures that it is a good read for the general reader . . . Overall it is a great read, thought provoking, readable and a really useful AI primer.

Colourful and readable . . . As computers steadily encroach into almost every corner of our lives, these AI researchers are emerging as the architects of our algorithmic age, shaping the information we absorb and the decisions we make. As you would expect from a New York Times technology reporter, Metz's book draws on extensive access and meticulous research.

The book brings forth a compelling narrative that does not only put into perspective what AI means to us humans, but also tells a definitive story of how a project confined to the fringes of scientific community became a buzzword for humanity . . . it's a story that shows both the inventive best of humankind and its darker side.

I hope that Cade Metz is already working on the sequel to this . . . an author with a firm grip on his field, he makes a knowledgeable guide to the intriguing corners of Silicon Valley and beyond.