Stripe Press publishes books about technological, scientific, and economic progress. For many of the most significant breakthroughs in each of these categories, the key ingredient is ideas.

We hope these books can be broadly useful to high-agency, fiercely curious individuals, whether they're interested in **scaling a company, building new institutions for science,** or thinking about the fundamentals of what makes for a robust, flourishing community.

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We’re expanding our portfolio of stories and also experimenting with new mediums. Below you’ll find a **crowdsourced list** of interesting books we’d be excited to explore. If you have a proposal, suggestion for any of the following topics (or a suggestion for excellent writers!), we’d love to hear from you at **[email protected]** or **[email protected].**

Technology

• In-depth accounts of the dominant technology companies of the 90s — among them, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, and more.
• A history of the evolution of identity verification
• A history of office technologies from 1400-1900, covering ledgers, accounts, telegrams, memos, desks
• Histories of specific technologies
• A follow-up to Regional Advantage

Business

• The history of financial regulation and its role in company formation today (from Evan Armstrong)
• A book or series of essays exploring the unit economics of different kinds of businesses
• A book about the evolution of postal and banking networks

Infrastructure

• From Brian Potter: The history of civilization through the lens of risk aversion/risk management. Development of insurance, finance, other technology for managing it, how risk tolerance shapes a society's trajectory, etc
• A book on the machine tools industry. As a starting place, readers of this list might like Ben Landau Taylor’s paper on the subject.
• A history of cement and concrete

Cities and urbanism

• An economic history of city-states across the world focused on regional competition for capital and entrepreneurs.
• A book on the history of land-reclamation / terraforming earth

Governance

• Histories of particularly important government agencies (not limited to the U.S. — in fact, non-U.S. agencies might be much more interesting.)
• A book on electrical grids and how they’re governed

Science

• A popular history of Teller, von Neumann, the State Department and civilian control of the [atomic] bomb
• A true atlas of science, connecting disparate fields of study
• A history of the global space industry

Philanthropy

• Quite a lot has been written about philanthropy, but there are very few comprehensive books about the evolution of philanthropy, and/or particularly interesting surveys of varying approaches to philanthropy.

Climate

• We’re particularly interested in the less-traversed areas of climate change: nuclear energy, geothermal energy, carbon pricing, and more.

Biographies

• “Founders at Work” for media companies
• Biographies and dispatches from under-examined industries

Economics

The history of financial regulation

The Paris Review, but for _______.

Fill in the blank with your subject of choice. We’d be interested to see this model applied beyond writers to practitioners — of science, economics, or anything else that might make for an interesting book.

Misc

• A book or essay on the role of fiction in advancing innovation and technological progress
• Books about math

Last updated January 26, 2022 | Proposal or suggestion? Email [email protected] or [email protected]