January 2026 INFORMS Book Club Survey

1.Which of the books listed below would you like to read for the January Book Club?

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age - Brad Smith, Carol Ann Browne
From Microsoft's president and one of the tech industry's broadest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates.

The Gold Standard: An ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIC HISTORY of the TWENTIETH CENTURY - Saifedean Ammous
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Data Independence - Reclaiming Privacy in an Era of Evolving Tech - Wes Chaar (INFORMS Member!)
In the digital age, our personal data has become a valuable commodity, sought after by corporations, organizations, and governments alike. Data Independence: Reclaiming Privacy in an Era of Evolving Tech is a groundbreaking book by data scientist Wes Chaar that exposes the hidden world of the data economy and offers a revolutionary solution to reclaim our data rights.

The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design - Michael Kearns, Aaron Roth
Over the course of a generation, algorithms have gone from mathematical abstractions to powerful mediators of daily life. Algorithms have made our lives more efficient, more entertaining, and, sometimes, better informed. At the same time, complex algorithms are increasingly violating the basic rights of individual citizens.

Leonardo da Vinci - Walter Isaacson
Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson “deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo” (San Francisco Chronicle) in a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.