Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) / Christian Rudder 300 p.

Thought Gone Girl was a page-turner?  Try Dataclysm!  Truly, I couldn't turn pages fast enough.   Rudder is a mathematician and a co-founder of  dating site OKCupid, and he has a spin on our data that I hadn't heard before: while we're losing privacy every time we click, we're also assembling the first-ever social history that isn't the story of  kings and presidents.  Our Facebook habits, our Tweets, our dating matches are the most democratic means possible to glean what all of us really feel about race, gender, and politics.  Because our online habits are more truthful than what we say about ourselves on surveys (or to our friends, co-workers, and even family members), and because the sheer volume of data is so massive, we can draw conclusions about ourselves at moments in time that are sort of, well, accurate.

To prove his point, Rudder starts with the obvious: a woman's sexual attractiveness to men begins to decline after her 21st birthday (tell us something we don't know, right ladies?).  But by slicing data from OKCupid, Reddit, Craigslist and Google, among others, he shows us who we are in ways that astonish.  Read Dataclysm: Rudder would tell you that we're all the authors of this story.