Quantum computing: it sounds more complicated than quantum mechanics, but it isn’t. Mathematician Chris Bernhardt, author of Quantum Computing for Everyone, explains why you need to know about it and which books will help you understand what it’s all about.

From complex techniques only used by academic statisticians, data science has risen to extreme popularity in only a few years. Roger D. Peng, Professor of Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University and founder of one of the largest data science online courses, helps us understand this discipline and recommends the five best books to delve into it.

Data science is often said to be built on three pillars: domain expertise, statistics, and programming. Hadley Wickham, Chief Scientist at RStudio and creator of many packages for the R programming language, chooses the best books to help aspiring data scientists build solid computer science fundamentals.

How do computers work? What is well-crafted code? How do you write an algorithm? Ana Bell, lecturer in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chooses the best books to learn computer science and programming.

Video games have never been more popular – or more intricately designed. But we haven’t yet developed the vocabulary to analyse a game’s impact the way we do a film’s, says professor of computational media Katherine Isbister. Here, she chooses five of the best books that explore the art of video game design, and the subcultures that grow up around them.

It could lead us all to immortality or spell the end of the human race. Author Calum Chace picks the best books on Artificial Intelligence or AI.

As we approach the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth, science historian George Dyson looks back at the achievements of wartime code breaking and the “human computers” who enabled our modern age of iPhones and laptops

Is the Internet dividing our attention? Are we so buried in technology that we ignore one another? The technology writer discusses the history and implications of the information age, from the mechanical clock to the iPhone

There’s an unseen, mostly unacknowledged cyber war going on. British journalist Misha Glenny, author of Dark Market, tells us who’s involved, how far it spreads and what could happen if we let it continue unchecked. He picks the best books to get a better handle on cybersecurity.

Former BusinessWeek writer recommends five books that deepen our understanding of the science and psychology behind Jeopardy!’s computer champion, Watson

Computer games aren’t just for teenage boys locked in their bedrooms says author and former Prospect senior editor Tom Chatfield – they are vital tools for social development. Here he selects five of the best books on the theory behind games, and the culture that grows up around them.

The book critic and technology columnist for Time magazine says there’s a level on which the Internet is a mass tool for pacification. It allows people to play out their lives in a fantasy context, which is very politically unthreatening. He picks the best books on the World Wide Web.