1) Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Graeber is one of the founders of Occupy Wall Street. Indeed, his book Debt is to this movement what Empire (by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri) was to WTO. Meaning, it arrived at the right time with the right ideas and focus. I also completely adopted Graeber's concept of communism.

2) The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital by Massimo De Angelis (This profound and meaty book was read twice this year.)
3) The Violence of Financial Capitalism by Christian Marazzi (My favorite Marxist economist.)
4)23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang (My favorite mainstream economist.)
5) Harlem is Nowhere by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (An elegant essay by an elegant person.)
6) Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species by Lynn Margulis (R.I.P. Margulis. You fought and you won. We are the stuff of bacteria.)
7) Keynes: The Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky (We must live with uncertainty.)
8) Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation by Anton Zeilinger (The future is here.)
9) What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr (Clear, direct, substantial, and written as the author's life was nearing the century mark.)
10) The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin (It's actually better than On the Origin of Species.)

Darwin:

A fox (Canis fulvipes) of a kind said to be peculiar to the island, and very rare in it, and which is a new species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or more scientific, but less wise than the generality of his brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological Society.