Galapagos

A ghost looking back across a million years narrates Kurt Vonnegut's satirical science fiction novel, his eleventh. He is Leon Trotsky Trout, son of the recurring character Kilgore Trout, a Vietnam veteran who died in Sweden while helping build the ship Bahia de Darwin. The vessel was meant for a celebrity Nature Cruise of the Century to the Galapagos Islands, until a global financial crisis wrecks the world economy. The ghost tells the story of that ill-fated cruise and of the people bound for it. Named for the islands and in tribute to Darwin, the book asks whether the oversized human brain has served humanity well.

Bogdana Butnar, head of strategy at Poke, listed it among the books that changed her in significant ways.