About

A library holds more than the books we’ve read.

Every personal library reflects the person who builds it: their interests, experiences, and ways of seeing. It also holds possibilities—unread books, forgotten passages, and ideas waiting to be discovered.

Writing about Umberto Eco’s library, Nassim Nicholas Taleb called its unread books an antilibrary. They remind us how much we have yet to learn. That is our starting point.

Antilibrary brings together books from my own shelves and others I consider valuable from around the world. We pay particular attention to voices missing from familiar accounts: people whose experiences complicate the story, writers who know a place from within, and perspectives we might never encounter on our own. The collection grows by asking whose view we have yet to consider.

We use AI to help you explore the ideas these books hold. Follow a question through several authors’ eyes. Discover connections across subjects. Return to a highlight that once caught your attention. AI, like any reader, can miss a nuance or get a detail wrong. Every idea names its book, so you can always go and see. Sources offer a path back to the books, where you can explore the context and form your own view.

Together, the books reveal the shape of the library itself: the questions it returns to, the voices it gathers, and the places it has yet to reach.

Above all, we encourage you to buy, own, and read books. There is no substitute for spending time with a whole book and letting its ideas unfold. We hope something you discover here leads you to a book you’ll make your own.