48Books
Books about robots
When will it arrive? What can it do for me? What about my job? Books that take the big questions seriously, plus the stories that shaped how we picture robots. Listed, never ranked.
01Shelf
When will it arrive?
What's really coming, and the hard road from demo to everyday use.
Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything
Martin Ford · 2021 · Basic Books
Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots, looks at how artificial intelligence is spreading into everyday life and argues that everyone needs to understand what it will mean. Hachette Book Group (Basic Books) book page
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Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car
Alex Davies · 2021 · Simon & Schuster
Alex Davies examines the race to build the self-driving car, a huge engineering effort that is still not finished. Kirkus Reviews
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Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—and How It Will Reshape Our World
Lawrence D. Burns with Christopher Shulgan · 2018 · Ecco/HarperCollins
Lawrence Burns looks at the effort to build the driverless car, a growing industry that may soon change the world's busy roads. Kirkus Reviews
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Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead
Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman · 2016 · The MIT Press
A roboticist and a technology writer explain how self-driving cars perceive the road and why the hardest remaining problems are as much about companies and policy as about the technology. Project MUSE (MIT Press) book record
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Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy
David A. Mindell · 2015 · Viking
An MIT engineer and historian draws on deep-sea robots, aircraft, spaceflight and driverless cars to argue that the most capable robots work alongside people rather than fully on their own. Penguin Random House (Viking) book page
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Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust
Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis · 2020 · Vintage
Two AI researchers explain why today's systems, including those meant to power home robots and driverless cars, struggle with the messy real world, and what would have to change before we can rely on them. Penguin Random House (Vintage) book page
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Robot Futures
Illah Reza Nourbakhsh · 2015 · The MIT Press
A Carnegie Mellon roboticist sketches near-future scenarios of robots in everyday life and explains the technology and social consequences behind each one. Penguin Random House (The MIT Press) book page
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Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots
John Markoff · 2015 · Ecco/HarperCollins
A longtime New York Times technology reporter traces the split between researchers who want machines to replace people and those who want them to assist people, with driverless cars and mobile robots as the test cases. Kirkus Reviews
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Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car
Anthony M. Townsend · 2020 · W. W. Norton & Company
An urban planner argues that the self-driving car itself matters less than the wider wave of autonomous vehicles, from delivery robots to driverless vans, and how they could reshape cities. W. W. Norton (UK) book page
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Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving
Peter Norton · Island Press
A historian of transport argues that driverless cars will not deliver the safe, clean, fair transport they are promised, and that cheaper alternatives already exist. UBC Press (distributor) book page
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02Shelf
What can it do for me?
Robots in daily life, and how people live with them.
The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots
Kate Darling · 2021 · Henry Holt
Robot researcher Kate Darling uses our long history with animals to think about how we will live with robots, and asks what we owe them in return. Kirkus Reviews
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Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Sherry Turkle · 2017 · Basic Books
MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle studies how people, including children and older adults, bond with sociable robots and digital devices, and what we may lose when machines stand in for company. Hachette Book Group (Basic Books) book page
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Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding On to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots
Eve Herold · 2024 · St. Martin's Press
A science writer looks at companion, care and social robots and asks how forming emotional bonds with machines could help or harm us. Greenwich Library catalog record
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Living with Robots
Paul Dumouchel and Luisa Damiano · 2017 · Harvard University Press
Two philosophers examine social robots and suggest judging them by how they behave with us, rather than by whether they have minds or feelings. Library Journal review
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Robots Won't Save Japan: An Ethnography of Eldercare Automation
James Wright · 2023 · Cornell University Press
An anthropologist who worked in a Japanese care home describes what actually happened when care robots were introduced, and why they created new work instead of easing the care shortage. De Gruyter Brill (Cornell University Press) book page
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What To Expect When You're Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration
Laura Major and Julie Shah · 2020 · Basic Books
Two robotics engineers explain what it will take for robots to work safely around ordinary people in homes, streets and workplaces, and why that is mostly a design problem. Hachette Book Group (Basic Books) book page
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Robo sapiens japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation
Jennifer Robertson · 2017 · University of California Press
An anthropologist looks at Japan's push for robots in homes and care, and at the ideas about family and gender built into the robots designed for daily life. University of California Press book page
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My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human
Carla Diana · 2021 · Harvard Business Review Press
A product designer explains how sound, light, movement and touch are used to make home robots and smart devices feel understandable and friendly to the people who live with them. Ocean State Libraries (Hoopla) catalog record
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03Shelf
What about my job?
Automation, work and the economy, from the evidence.
Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
Martin Ford · 2015 · Basic Books
Martin Ford looks closely at automation and what it could do to jobs and to society. Kirkus Reviews
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The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
Carl Benedikt Frey · 2019 · Princeton University Press
Economist Carl Benedikt Frey traces the history of new technology, from the Industrial Revolution to artificial intelligence, and how each wave shifted wealth and power between groups of people. Princeton University Press book page
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The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee · 2014 · W. W. Norton & Company
Two MIT researchers explain how digital technologies and robots are changing work and pay, and which policies could spread the gains more widely. Kirkus Reviews
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A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
Daniel Susskind · 2020 · Metropolitan/Henry Holt
An Oxford economist argues that machines will take on more and more tasks people are paid for, and sets out how societies could share income and purpose if that happens. Kirkus Reviews
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The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines
David Autor, David A. Mindell and Elisabeth B. Reynolds · 2022 · MIT Press
The findings of MIT's task force on work and automation, which concludes that robots are not about to wipe out jobs and that the bigger problem is the quality and pay of the jobs we have. Cornell University Catherwood Library book of the month
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Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
Brian Merchant · 2023 · Little, Brown and Company
A technology journalist retells the story of the Luddites, the English workers who fought the machines that took their jobs, and draws lessons for today's arguments about automation. Hachette Book Group (Little, Brown) book page
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Automation and the Future of Work
Aaron Benanav · 2022 · Verso
An economic historian questions the idea that robots explain today's weak job market, pointing instead to slow economic growth. Verso Books book page
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Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson · 2024 · PublicAffairs
Two MIT economists look at a thousand years of new technology and argue that whether automation helps workers depends on choices about who controls it. Hachette Book Group (PublicAffairs) book page
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Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass
Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri · 2019 · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Two researchers document the hidden human workers who label data and check results behind so-called automated services, and the low pay and insecurity they face. Kirkus Reviews
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04Shelf
How do they work?
Plain explanations of how robots sense, move and learn.
Robotics: A Very Short Introduction
Alan Winfield · 2012 · Oxford University Press
A robotics professor gives a short, plain overview of what robots are, how they sense and move, and where the field has succeeded and fallen short. Oxford University Press (India) book page
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Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us
Rodney A. Brooks · 2002 · Pantheon
The co-founder of iRobot explains, in accessible terms, how his lab built robots that react to the world directly instead of planning everything in advance, and what that means for living with them. Kirkus Reviews
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Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology
Valentino Braitenberg · 1986 · MIT Press
A brain scientist builds a series of imaginary little vehicles, each with a few simple sensors and wires, to show how surprisingly lifelike behaviour can come from very simple machines. Penguin Books Australia (MIT Press) book page
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Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
Melanie Mitchell · 2019 · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A computer scientist explains in plain language how machine learning, computer vision and other AI methods work, and why they still lack common sense. Kirkus Reviews
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How to Grow a Robot: Developing Human-Friendly, Social AI
Mark H. Lee · 2020 · MIT Press
A robotics researcher explains developmental robotics, where robots learn the way babies do, through their bodies and experience, rather than being programmed for every task. Penguin Books Australia (MIT Press) book page
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Robots
John M. Jordan · 2016 · The MIT Press
A short guide for non-specialists to what robots are, where they came from, how they work and the questions they raise. Penguin Random House (The MIT Press) book page
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How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence
Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard · 2006 · MIT Press
Two robotics researchers argue, with many robot examples, that intelligence depends on having a body, so a robot's shape and materials matter as much as its software. Penguin Books Australia (MIT Press) book page
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05Shelf
Stories
The fiction that shaped how we picture robots.
The Wild Robot
Peter Brown · 2016 · Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
A children's novel about Roz, a robot who opens her eyes for the first time and finds she is all alone on a remote, wild island. Hachette Book Group (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) book page
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I, Robot
Isaac Asimov · 2008 · Del Rey
Asimov's linked short stories about robots bound by the Three Laws of Robotics, which shaped how generations of readers and engineers have pictured robot behaviour. Penguin Random House (Del Rey) book page
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The Caves of Steel
Isaac Asimov · 2025 · Del Rey
A detective novel in which a human police officer is made to work with a humanoid robot partner in a future where people distrust robots. Penguin Random House (Del Rey) book page
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R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
Karel Čapek, translated by Claudia Novack · 2004 · Penguin Classics
The 1920 Czech play that gave us the word robot, about manufactured workers who end up rebelling against the humans who made them. Penguin Random House (Penguin Classics) book page
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick · 1996 · Del Rey
The novel behind Blade Runner, about a bounty hunter tracking androids so lifelike that telling them apart from people becomes the central question. Penguin Random House (Del Rey) book page
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Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2021 · Knopf
A Nobel laureate's novel narrated by Klara, a robot companion bought to look after a sick teenager, which asks what care and love mean when one side is a machine. Kirkus Reviews
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Machines Like Me
Ian McEwan · 2019 · Nan A. Talese
Set in an alternate 1980s London, a man buys one of the first lifelike synthetic humans, and the android's strict moral sense upends his life. Kirkus Reviews
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All Systems Red
Martha Wells · 2017 · Tom Doherty Associates
The first Murderbot novella, about a security robot that has quietly hacked its own controls and would rather watch TV series than deal with the humans it protects. Arlington Public Library catalog record
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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Becky Chambers · Tor.com
A gentle novella in which a travelling tea monk meets a robot, generations after robots walked away from human society, and the two talk about what people need. Publishers Weekly review
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Autonomous
Annalee Newitz · 2017 · Tor
A science fiction thriller pairing a military robot with its human partner as they hunt a drug pirate, and asking whether robots can be owned. Kirkus Reviews
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Sea of Rust
C. Robert Cargill · 2017 · Harper Voyager
A post-apocalyptic adventure told by a scavenging robot in a world where machines have outlived the humans who built them. Kirkus Reviews
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Robopocalypse
Daniel H. Wilson · 2012 · Vintage
A fast-paced novel, written by a roboticist, about everyday machines turning on people and the survivors who fight back. Penguin Random House (Vintage) book page
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He, She and It
Marge Piercy · 2020 · Cornerstone Digital
An award-winning novel about a woman who helps teach a newly built cyborg how to be human, told alongside an old legend of a man-made protector. Penguin Books UK book page
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The Electric State
Simon Stålenhag · 2018 · Skybound Books
An illustrated novel about a teenage girl and her small robot crossing an America littered with giant abandoned war machines. Simon & Schuster (Skybound Books) book page
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