If you are interested in politics/economics, read Launching The Innovation Renaissance. The e-book is only $2.99, and it's short and easy.. only 1137 "locations" on the kindle, and the book actually ends 70% through that (the rest is references). The author is a libertarian-ish economics professor, but I think people of all political persuasions can find something interesting and convincing in this book.
The book argues that our society needs to be more structured in favor of technological advancement and gives a few suggestions for how our government should change and why. It gives really interesting statistics on how times/places of high innovation truly help everyone as well as how different policies contribute or hold back. Most of the arguments are really persuasive with data to back it up. One example that was particularly interesting was why a much lighter patent system would foster more innovation. I was disappointed with his arguments for deregulation though; on that part he seemed to just explain the logic of his thinking but without many concrete examples to show that what he claims is actually true.
The book is conservative, but it doesn't really match up well with a particular political party. He describes the basic functions of government as split between innovation, warfare, and welfare, where we can't realistically put much funding into all three. Republicans generally want more spending in "warfare" at expense of the other areas, Democrats do the same with "welfare", and Libertarians usually just argue for a reduced government role in all three. But this book argues for increased government funding in innovation which would require reduction in both "warfare" and "welfare". One convincing way that he argues for this is by saying that Republicans/Democrats are usually arguing over zero-sum games: how to shift the same amount of resources within society between the wealthy and the poor. But focusing on innovation is win-win.. it benefits everyone.
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