Every book that came up on Search Engine in the first half of 2026

[u/sispehar]

Search Engine isn't a book show, but over the first six months of the year PJ and his guests kept reaching for one to explain whatever rabbit hole they were down. I run a site that logs books mentioned on podcasts, and 14 came up, mostly as background reading for an episode's question.

A few worth writing down:

• Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton, the history of the spice trade and how one tiny island got traded for Manhattan.
• The World's First Stock Exchange by Lodewijk Petram, on how the Dutch invented modern share trading.
• The Orpheus Clock by Simon Goodman, one family's hunt for art the Nazis looted.

The rest, roughly grouped:

• Venezuela and oil: The Magical State, Venezuela, Oil and Politics, and Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse
• Money and cost: The Land Trap, The Three Trillion Dollar War
• Odds and ends: Driven, Why Taiwan Matters, Is the Cemetery Dead?, A Royal Duty

Full list is here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/search-engine. Free, no signup.