Year-end book recommendations are one of my favorite methods to discover new reading material and frequently expose books that I wouldn’t have come across otherwise. I’ve put together this list hoping to helps readers find engaging books for the new year. In a new change for historical lists, I’ve included interesting quotes for some books. Also as a note, I didn’t limit this list to books that were published in 2024, rather books that I encountered in 2024.

Frostbite by Nicola Twilley

The refrigerator and freezer are among the most essential appliances in a modern kitchen, yet they are often the most taken for granted. In today’s world, most daily meals include foods that would be impossible to preserve and serve without this cooling technology. This work weaves together two fascinating narratives: the historical development of refrigeration technology and an exploration of the complex supply chains that deliver food to our modern refrigerators and freezers.

The United States already boasts an estimated 5.5 billion cubic feet of refrigerated space—a third polar region of sorts. This is an almost unimaginably large volume: the tallest mountain on Earth, Everest, occupies only roughly two-thirds that amount of space from base to peak

One Day by Gene Weingarten

This book offers a fascinating reminder that while most days may seem uneventful to most people, each day is deeply eventful for someone. The author’s premise is simple yet compelling: they randomly selected a single day and thoroughly investigated its events and their aftermath, even years later. For readers who often wonder about the long-term consequences of daily news headlines, this book provides a satisfying follow-up to those stories.

The Falcon Thief by Joshua Hammer

The protagonist of this book, obsessed with naturalist collecting from a different era, is led into a life of crime. Though reading like a novel, this true story follows the protagonist across continents as the author digs into the logistics and motivation behind this obscure crime.

Fat Leonard by Criag Whitlock

This exposé begins with small incidents and builds toward revealing systematic corruption by a contractor on a massive scale involving the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet. The resulting narrative implicates a broad spectrum of naval personnel in the scandal and exposes troubling cultural failures within the military’s procurement process. The account also provides insight into logistical operations in the U.S. Navy and how a culture of corruption arises and persists over time.

The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger

Although plant biomass massively outweighs human biomass, the view of plants as passive organisms has led to a disproportionate lack of attention. This wide ranging survey of recent plant research aims to correct this imbalance by exploring the sophisticated methods through which plants sense and react to their environment. The engaging analysis reveals the vast gaps in our understanding of plant life, challenging our assumptions about these complex organisms.

In the case of the arabidopsis, the way a plant notices that its sibling is beneath it is by sensing the quality of light reflected back. In other words, the sunlight passes through its own leaf, hits the sibling’s leaf beneath it, and bounces back up to hit the underside of its own leaf again. Somehow the information contained in that reflectance includes everything the plant’s photoreceptors need to decipher the other plant’s genetic relatedness.

Judgement at Toyko

While the Nuremberg trials are well known and commonly discussed as part of the reconciliation process after World War II, the parallel Tokyo trials are rarely mentioned despite having the same aim. The Tokyo trials’ proceedings reveal some of the most horrific conduct in the Asian theater of the war as evidence came to light. The court, composed of a coalition of international judges, faced considerable difficulties in both the day-to-day operation of the trials and the delivery of the final verdict. Though a challenging read, studying these trials offers a valuable insight into a different aspect of the postwar justice process.