I promised that if the health-care bill passed I would hold a contest for an autographed hardback edition of WEIT. So here it is—I’m hoping to glean your minds for some good reading over the next few months.
Please recommend one nonfiction book that you think everyone should read, and explain in no more than three sentences why we should read it. The book need not be about science, though those entries are welcome too. The only books excluded from this contest are mine and Darwin’s Origin, which has been done to death.
Entries will be judged on both the suggested book and the sales pitch. Take your time, since the deadline is one week from today (April 23) at 5 pm. Please put your entries as comments on this thread. Participation will, I think, benefit all of us.
UPDATE: You can recommend a book that was already mentioned if you give your own justification for why it’s worth reading. It’s probably better, though, to choose a book different from those already chosen.
I recommend that everyone read Victor Stenger’s, “God, The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows that God does not Exist.” Like Coyne’s WEIT, it provides ample, solid evidence that a supernatural force did not (and could not) have played any role whatsoever in the creation of anything.
~Rev. El
OK, Stenger’s book was not my nomination, but I think it’s excellent, too.
(Also WEIT is excellent, but that’s just preaching to the choir here.)
I’m going to nominate Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene”. This book does a great job explaining to both laypeople and scientists the mechanisms that drive life on this planet — and probably anywhere else life has arisen.
Reading The Selfish Gene was a rare “aha” event. I’d read several books about evolution by other authors, and thought I understood the basic ideas. But The Selfish Gene was transformative. “Oh, so *that’s* what’s really going on with Natural Selection. Now I get it. This makes so much sense. Why did no one say that before?” Equally valuable for the practicing biologist and the intelligent layperson.
“Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” – Douglas Hofstadter
Hofstadter draws from such impossibly diverse subjects as mathematics, physics, linguistics, molecular biology, art, artificial intelligence and baroque music, and somehow manages to tie them into a thesis about the nature of consciousness. Like D’Arcy Thompson’s “On Growth and Form”, even if it’s wrong it’s enlightening, amusing and beautiful. This should be read by anyone with an interest in anything, because it incorporates just about everything.
This was going to be my nominee as well. I would have mentioned cognitive science as well, and the way the structure of the text itself is used to further explain the content. But your last sentence is a perfect sales pitch.
I would like to recommend “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. On top of being a truly entertaining, engaging non-fiction read, it touches on enough distinct disciplines of science that it could/should/will be a springboard to future reading material(s) for anyone.
Damn, that was going to be my recommendation too! This was an excellent book.
My vote too. It is a nice basic “what everyone should know” kind of book. And my mom loved it, read it three times just to get it right.
Well, strong disagreement on this one from me. I am ~80% through it, and it started fine, but then got weaker and weaker as it went along. For each topic he covers (after, maybe the first couple of chapters) it struck me as maybe a good first attempt by someone who really knew little about the particular topic. And I never get the sense that he progressed to the point where he understood things at more than just a superficial level.
SIX EASY PIECES by Richard P. Feynman
For the elucidation of physics as it relates to everyday experience, few books can compare to this accessible masterpiece suffused with educational awareness of how complex material interactions behave in our cosmos. Feynman makes the abstract tangible and meaningful as he provides a conceptual framework and practical rubric for observing the natural world.
I was going to recommend his “Surely you’re joking”, it’s so much fun to read, and gives such a craving for learning how wonderful and weird the natural world is!
For best effects, watch a few Youtube video of him first, so you can hear his joyful voice in your mind as you read…
“Intellectual Impostures” by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.
Because you don’t understand them but you know they are full of shit.
Meaning, I assume, the impostures, not dear Sokal and Bricmont. Are full of shit.
Of course. This is WEIT’s blog, not Benstein/Choprawoo land!
“Freethinkers,” by Susan Jacoby.
Here in the United States, where science is vastly under-appreciated and often watered down in public schools, it is unsurprising that there is a fundamental (and ignorantly willful) misunderstanding about the very history of this country.
Susan Jacoby offers an accurate narrative regarding the secular (/ humanist) underpinnings of the United States, and does so by providing the necessary evidence and contexts to support it.
Robert Green Ingersoll, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, among others: Titans of American history whose words and actions sculpted and influenced the notion of government into a system that represents all its citizens: by divorcing public policy from private dogma.
My recommendation goes to the most underrated piece of Scandinavian science writing there is.
Tor Nørretranders – Mærk verden (Mark the World).
Motivation:
Mark the world is a story about some amazing scientific discoveries that forces us to question the ingrained notions of awareness, information and civilization.
It presents us with the prospect that the idea of consciousness as man’s central, governing body can no longer be upheld.
A challenging overview of the epoch-making breakthroughs for us with a scientific view of the world.
Although Nørretranders’ book is apparently published under the title “Mark the World”, which I didn’t know, it’s also available as “The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size”.
Ah, good to know. I read it in Swedish, so I didn’t know the English title.
Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science – By Carol Yoon
This book is for anyone who thinks taxonomy is boring and not science. Yoon takes this dry subject and makes it exciting by tracking the history of taxonomy and it’s growth into a real science. Along the way we get the history of evolutionary thought and insight into our innate ability to classify the living world.
Everyone should read “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” by Carl Sagan. I’m sure a hundred other people will suggest this book, and I don’t expect to win the contest with such an obvious entry. Still, every human being should read this book, because we’ll all be better off once every person has developed a good baloney detector.
This is all true.
I agree!
That’s the book I was going to recommend.
Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors was my pick, but like I said already, Sagan was one the foremost advocates of science’s role in humanity. And a damn good writer to boot.
I didn’t even consider suggesting this book because I knew it would be well covered. However, I would like to add my voice to the chorus. It is a wonderful book and doesn’t shy away from calling irrational thinking (including religion) baloney. It does however do so with respect and decorum.
Climate Scientist Dr. James Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren.
Scientifically literate people should be able to reasonably conclude that climate change will at a minimum be one of the century’s top stories and challenges, if not #1. Yet most of us are woefully ignorant on the physics, findings, and veracity of various policy proposals designed to supposedly mitigate global warming. Dr. Hansen does a great job of explaining the physics, explaining both the findings, their import, and the absurdity of denialist challenges while also kickstarting our own thinking regarding current policy proposals.
When Jerry blogged about “biographical page turners” I wanted to suggest, The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace Columbia, 2004. ARW was a longed-lived genius and this biography documents his contributions quite well.
Everyone should read Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
Before I read it, I didn’t ask myself about the most important questions in the world: I was one of those people who was either too busy or just didn’t care, and so I accepted, not necessarily a Christian worldview, but certainly a close-minded conservative one.
Since I finished DDI, I have tried to read a book or two every week in philosophy, history, science, religion/atheism, literature and more. Dennett’s book started me on this worldview-shattering journey, and it could change your life too.
Great pick…
I recommend “The Science of Liberty” by Timothy Ferris. Ever since his two-hour video “Life Beyond Earth” I’ve been a fan. His latest book (The Science of Liberty) makes the case that Science and Liberty go together (we really can’t have one without the other) and that maybe we’re falling behind in the Libery department and we should fix that – “Democracy, Reason, and The Laws of Nature,” indeed (is the books subtitle).
“The song of the Dodo” by David Quammen
Because this song will never be heard again (I wish I had a time machine). The world is an emptier place without the Dodo (and without so many other recently extinct species). Qammen shoves the finality of extinction in our faces, center stage, for incurious ignorants to disregard only (and by Jove, there are droves of them).
Seconded. Quammen explains the straightforward and sobering application of island biogeography theory to biological conservation through a fascinating mix of history, interviews with working scientists, and personal travel anecdotes. The writing sparkles, the science is correct and clear, and there’s lots of very cool biology mixed in.
“A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson.
At no other point in my life have I started to read the book again as soon as I finished it; Fabulous story-telling, making boring tidbits thrilling, always extremely charming and witty, and thoroughly poignant at every turn, this book not only gave my thirst for science a new burst, it changed my life and how I wanted to spend it. Who knew science could be this seriously funny?
One nonfiction book I found hard to put down (despite its length, 700 pages) was ‘The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions’ by David Quammen. In it, the history of evolutionary biology and ecology is laid out beautifully, starting with the voyaging of Alfred Russell Wallace through the island experiments of Edward O. Wilson. Extremely readable, it also describes the extinction stories (which never cease to fascinate me) of the dodo, the passenger pigeon, or the thylacine.
“The World without us” by Alan Weisman.
It shows how nature might retake the environment that humans have changed if humans were to sudddenly disappear. It uses some spectacular examples, for example the zone between North and South Korea which is now virtually untouched. So although it’s about a hypothetical book it is very educational about the world as it is now as well.
“The Coldest Winter” by David Halberstam
The book is not only a fascinating read into a long forgotten section of American history, but also a foray into failure of the global politics of good intentions. He carefully explains the failing of American foreign policy before, during, and immediately after World War Two, especially towards China, in causing the war. It is easy to see these same mistake make again and again, and this book allows for a more informed opinion on national security issues.
I would have to nominate a book that I recently completed and enjoyed immensely, Simon Singh’s “Big Bang”. Singh illuminates the uplifting tale of human endeavour in mathematics, physics, astronomy and cosmology while deftly and congruently detailing the personal and professional stories of scientists both familiar and unfamiliar. This is a book that gives valuable insight into our present picture of universe, how the scientific method has triumphed countless times to create that picture, and helps us to realize that science is not only a method but it is in truth a story that should be told and cherished by everyone.
“Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond.
OK, so it’s not exactly unknown (it won a Pulitzer Prize, after all), and it was first published 13 years ago. Still, it’s fascinating, a delight to read, AND it might be one of the best arguments against racism, showing how things could have been very different in our history.
Alternately, I might pick “How We Know What Isn’t So” by Thomas Gilovich. I wish everyone could understand how easy it is to believe in things that aren’t true, just because of the nature of our brains. His comparison of “cognitive illusions” with optical illusions was just brilliant.
The God Virus
Just because nobody’s nominated it yet: Guns, Germs, and Steel.
It’s highly speculative and so should be taken with a grain of salt, but it functions as both a gripping narrative of how the history of the world might have unfolded, as well as a contemplation on the idiosyncratic nature of history. It also handily destroys both the myth of the Noble Savage, as well as the idea that successful cultures are somehow more “civilized”. And of interest to this audience, his thoughts on the role of religion in early society both thought-provoking and merciless.
Bah, I said nobody had hominated it, but somebody did while I was typing… and then somebody else right afterwards! I lose 🙁
Everyone should read Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. If I have to choose, it is probably the best book I have ever read. It presents the origin of diversity in cultures in a totally different and scientific point of view, which makes the book very enlightening. Besides, it is a gem of prose, most entertaining, and a joy to read.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (the revised and expanded edition)
In this fun book behavioral economist Dan Ariely shows how emotions, social norms and even mental anchoring to random numbers skew our reasoning. The book’s empirical evidence and examples make you question and study your own decision making. Our misguided behaviour isn’t random but systematic and predictable so it’s possible to break through our irrational patterns.
I will nominate A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan.
It looks at one man, John Paul Vann who was a US General during the Vietnam War and uses him as an illustration as to why the US failed in that war. Sheehan chronicles how the US failed to learn the lessons the British had learnt in Malaya in how to fight insurgents. There are clear parallels to be drawn with the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is not at all clear the lessons of Vietnam have been learnt.
seconded
I would like to take a different route and recommend the newly released “The Christian Delusion” edited by John W. Loftus.
In it you will find everything from anthropology, to psychology to philosophy and history. There is even a chapter titled “The Darwinian Problem of Evil” that should pique anyone’s attention. Go read it and enjoy!
I nominate “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.
It is one of the very few books I have read more than once. It offers a nice overview of philosophy while showing its relevance to the human condition. Don’t be put off by the title—there is no New Age nonsense in it.
Also recommended is the sequel to ZATAOMM, Lila.
I thought of nominating something by Steven Pinker, namely one of his books which actually had a big influence on my thinking, rather than just adding details to a life of reading. However, I couldn’t decide between How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate.
Indeed, Zen and the Art is a great book! I read it many times when I was studying (20 years ago) and am always happy to see it mentioned. Even Dawkins references it (I think in the God Delusion).
Spoiler alert:
The author has diarrhea.
I highly recommend Barbara Ehrenreich’s newest book, Bright Sided.
This book is a great antidote to the inundation of positive thinking philosophy our culture is experiencing(especially in business).
If you’ve ever been asked to watch The Secret, been invited to an Amway meeting or attended a Get Motivated seminar the book will cure that sick feeling you felt afterward.
I’d been part of a company in which employees who didn’t subscribe to this positive thinking movement were known as “destroyers” instead of the desired “builders”. No shades of grey there. Reading Ehrenreich’s book helped me realize that I wasn’t so odd to think this kind of culture was a bit crazy.
Oranges, by John McPhee.
It is the best writing I have ever read.
Yes to McPhee, any and all of McPhee. The Founding Fish leaps immediately to mind, because it is his most biological book and also the one I have read most recently.
His geological writings are probably his best known, all collected into Annals of the Former World. Great stuff.
Sven, is Annals of the Former World all of McPhee’s geological work or just a good sample?
There’s a “Best of John McPhee” volume, which is both substantial and satisfying.
I highly recommend Haruki Murakami’s “Underground.” It is an account of the Aum Shinrikyo 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attacks. It is told through a series of interviews with the victims of the attacks, telling how their lives have been impacted, and then a few interviews with members (or ex-members) of the Aum cult, telling how they became drawn to the cult and how they became wrapped up in a terrorist action. It is well told, and quite emotionally effecting. And it is a surprising insight into the Japanese culture and mindset, as well as how people are influenced by a charismatic cult leader and how home-grown terrorists are made.
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near. The evolution of human biology and technology and the inevitable transcendence. I have yet to finish. Can be dense but very compelling.
“Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior” by Mark S. Blumberg. Takes a developmental approach to behaviour and deflates all the recent nativist and evolutionary psychologist posturing by the simple method of comparing their weakly-evidenced hyperbole to excellent, painstaking experimental science performed on animals. You’ll discover how chicks learn to recognise their mothers and how things as simple as fear responses are dependent on experience in early life (often prenatal experience). A must read for anyone who likes to see pseudoscience get beaten up by science and all achieved with a truly entertaining and appropriate level of snark.
Can I mention two?
A Pattern Lanquage, by Christopher Alexander. Ostensibly about architecture, it describes why some rooms, buildings, spaces, cities seem to just be “right” and others make you want to flee. He does this by proposing that there are timeless principles of building that all people find satisfying. It changed the way I look at the world.
I love A Pattern Language.
It’s right up on my shelf. Loaned it out once, it never came back and I had to buy another one. It was worth it.
I think every designer should have a copy.
I just read 2003’s The Man Who Found Time, by Jack Repcheck. It’s about James Hutton, the 18th century Scotsman who discovered that the earth is very, very old — and thus set the stage for all modern developments in geology, cosmology, biology, and more. It’s short (250 pages) but tremendously entertaining and informative, and also provides great descriptions of Hutton’s Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment.
“Universe” – Various Authors (Edited by Martin rees)
You are a tiny insignificant piece of wet carbon standing on a tiny insignificant rock of mostly sand and you are the product of a long, slow and morally indifferent chemical process that cares nothing for you or your thoughts.
But now, thanks to entirely human driven processes of iterative reasoning, logical inference and empirical observation, you can see the ultimate shape, structure, composition and beauty of the entire Universe. For barely a few thousand years we have been staring up and each generation sees more than the last and so, in this book, is a comprehensive collection of the most beautiful and awe inspiring images of the Universe that bipedal mammals managed to capture with their own tools in their pursuit of knowledge.
In the wake of the bafflingly protracted senate battle to pass healthcare reform in the United States, many of us are left wondering why passing that bill was so difficult, why so many Americans who would benefit from it were so opposed to it, and why healthcare reform stirred the pot of resenment exemplified by the Tea Partiers. In “Master of the Senate”, Robert A. Caro weaves a compelling tale detailing the man whose life, more than any other, lies at the intersection of these questions: Lyndon Baines Johnson. Caro’s riveting prose breathes life into the Biography genre like few other authors and will propel you through the tumultuous LBJ years that defined how power flows through the U.S. Senate and sets the stage for how the conservative reaction to civil rights legislation presaged today’s Tea Party movement.
Hardcover: 1200 pages
Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (April 23, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0394528360
ISBN-13: 978-0394528366
Not my submission (obviously, it is fiction), BUT:
For a lazy afternoon, I recommend “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. Not particularly “high brow”, but it is a fun page turner and serves as a useful point of reference for thought experiments when you are in an armchair-philosophizing mood.
OK, I haven’t read much books lately.
[But Stenger’s is one of them and I would recommend it heartily too. For a simple explanation for how physics laws can spontaneously come from nothing. And for how increasing entropy doesn’t necessarily mean that initial entropy was relatively low. So no mysteries of initial conditions need to apply.]
In any case and FWIW, a WEIT area (so to looong) sales pitch:
I would recommend that everyone read David Deutsch’s nonfiction “The Fabric of Reality”.
First it tests and rejects the cryptoinductionist idea of science devoid of testing against reality, an aristotelian idea that is used even today by religionists such as accommodationists to “prove” that gods can be pushed into gaps of our knowledge and a continuing danger to society’s understanding of science.
Then it goes on to demystify modern physics quantum mechanics and shows how classical realism is fully compatible with it by way of the many worlds theory, a grueling disappointment to persons like Ken Miller who claims that quantum statistics leaves such a gap for their god of choice.
It is in short an entertaining and personal account of how reality is woven from a single thread
from a modern physicist well versed in how to resolve the effects of quantum entanglement.
Just as an addendum and an explanation for the benefit of WEIT readership:
You don’t need the many worlds theory to show that QM can be fully realistic. It is enough to realize that special relativity demands that observables aren’t “real” until “observed” in any full theory of QM (more generally, decohered by the vacuum), by way of Lorentz invariance.
The problem then is that this version of realism doesn’t feel much like classic realism, and by mistaken parsimony (of objects) some are tempted to take the wavefunction as the only real object.
Many worlds theory is more parsimonious as _theory_ though (two less equations) which is what counts here. This preserves the classical structure we are used to; I’m sure there is a lesson of robustness of science in this.
MWT is also, as Deutsch shows, a better framework to understand the process of foliation of time as a dynamic “multidimensional jigsaw puzzle” instead of imagining a (quantum modified) non-processual, nonphysical, frozen block universe.
I’ll move a little way from the science arena and recommend the book “Europe – A History”, in which Norman Davies triumphs in the immensely challenging task of presenting a history of the whole of Europe which is both comprehensive and very readable. Like it or not – and some of the reasons are indeed not to be liked – the history of the rather small continent of Europe underlies to an absurdly large extent the current state of the entire human world. Although I had a good layman’s knowledge of European history before starting on this book, it is no exaggeration to say that almost every one of its pages contains at least one point that made me think “I didn’t know that” or “I never thought about it that way before”.
Hypothesis: Sometimes great writers and great stories just naturally collide.
Exhibit A: Evolution and Jerry Coyne in Why Evolution Is True.
Exhibit B: Everest and John Krakauer in Into Thin Air.
In A Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright likens the study of failed civilizations to the analysis of flight data recorders in crashed airliners. Looking at the “black boxes” of Easter Island, Mayan Central America and the Roman Empire among others, Wright details how each of these societies crashed and burned once their activities had exceeded the carrying capacity of the local environments upon which they depended and how we are flying the same course. He concludes that without a massive redirection and scaling back of human activity that degrades the planet’s ability to support us, our nascent global civilization is little more than a suicide machine and that its inevitable result will be a catastrophe from which recovery will be much more difficult than any previous societal collapse that humans have experienced.
IIRC they didn’t exceed their carrying capacity, at least both the Mayan and the Easter Island societies foundered because of changing environment. They couldn’t adapt to that, while modern technology gives us adaptive capacity as has been demonstrated by the green revolution. (Though it was used mostly to counter demand for higher carrying capacity. But it also made societies impervious to earlier drought et cetera.)
Luckily, since we are nowadays changing our own environment. What would happen if our society tries to “scale back” and abandon global civilization so we would lose technology (and so most modern science) and adaptive capability is in this light a decided threat not to be considered lightly. It was never a realistic option and now the state change makes it impossible in practice. But some argue against better judgment, and it’s scary! 🙁
Actually the Easter Island society did exceed its carrying capacity by changing the environment. Notably chopping down ALL the trees to move the big head statues from the quarries to their current location by the shore. Sea birds no longer had a place to hide or live. People killed off all the “large” animals and the population crashed.
This is what J. Diamond says. No evidence to support it.
I agree with many of the books listed above, and I will recommend “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker. Pinker does a remarkable job of introducing you to the academic study of language and presents a compelling argument that there is an innate language center in the brain, a topic that has been developed further is his later books as well. In my favorite chapter of the book, “The Language Mavens”, he shows why most of those English teachers and grammar nuts who constantly “correct” your words are misguided at best and often completely wrong as well.
Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House, 2003)
This is a beautifully written and enthralling book about a man who lives a consummately moral life, giving up almost all to save lives in Haiti and and other destitute countries. Reading this stimulates reflection about what moral goodness is, and how good we must be. For those who frequently focus on the wicked end of the religious spectrum, the book is food for thought, as Farmer is partly motivated by “pure ethics” and partly by Christianity.
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane.
I often don’t learn much from other popular biology books, however pleasant they are to read, which is not the case with this one, written as it is from the vantage point of a biochemist. Lane gets right down to the biochemical nitty-gritty of ten milestones in the history of life, as chosen by an interested party having the benefit of hindsight (there’s no teleology here). Starting with the origin of life and ending with the origin of death, Lane presents his take on how such things came about, evaluating competing ideas in a clear and objective manor.
Yes, I learnt more than I expected to from this book too. Particularly the chapters on the beginings of life and on eyes. Less interesting towards the end though.
“objective manner”
The imagery of an objective manor is interesting, though. Or, rather, it’s interesting to imagine what an objective manor looks like compared to a subjective manor.
I’m going to shock some people here, so bear with me:
I’d like to nominate the New Testament, which contains overt elements of fiction, yes, but can be viewed as a collection of “what that dude said”). As atheists, we rightly decry ignorance of our basic standpoints in our religious opponents — let’s not be guilty of the same offense. Smite them with facts, first and foremost, but also rob them of their own ammunition!
I think everyone should read the Bible at least once, in part just to be culturally literate but also to understand the dominate religion of our culture. But it’s mostly fiction and groundless speculation, and so it it doesn’t make the “nonfiction” cut.
Oh, no worries – much of the Jesus story is really quite enthralling. It’s not as unusual (let alone unique) as Christians think, but it’s still gripping.
Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. This book literally changed the way I think about the world, myself and my place in it. In short, Zimmer has written a love-letter to the parasitic lifestyle. His meticulous research and fluid prose evoke simultaneous reactions of awe, wonder and abhorrence that make this book impossible to put down or forget.
Yup.
ANYTHING by Carl Zimmer, but particularly these three: Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea;
Parasite Rex;
At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs.
The Face of Battle- John Keegan
Keegan came up with a new way to study and present military history- getting rid of stories of general and policy and dealing with the social history of the ordinary soldier.
[b]The Book[/b]
I recommend “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives” by Michael Specter.
[b]The Motivation[/b]
The enormous intellectual progress made by science is under attack by mindless and irrational movements who deny crucial scientific advancements.
From anti-vaccination lunacy to people who oppose genetically modified foods and animal testing, Specter makes a lucid tour de force of these types of anti-scientific viewpoints.
He provides a frightening look at the dangers of denialism and demolishes the so-called “arguments” of those charlatan who prefer their ideological crusades over well-tested scientific solutions to some of the major problems that face humanity in the new millennium.
Quantum.
Subtitled: Einstein, Bohr and the great debate about the nature of reality.
Author: Manjit Kumar
It deals with the history of quantum mechanics from Planck stumbling on the quantum while experimenting with blackbody radiation on to Bohr, Einsteins and a host of later nobel prizewinners perspectives on the subject.
Only Darwin’s theory might be more paradigm shifting that quantum theory: Since you are familiar with the former you might want to familiarize with the latter – sans the formulas 🙂
I’ve read this one, it’s hard going in places because he tends to jump from person to person and back again, but well worth the effort. I love the quantum stuff, it boggles the mind.
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams
Most know of Adams through the Hitchhiker’s series and his wit and humour carry over brilliantly in narrating the journey to observe the world’s most endangered creatures. From the hilarious story of trying to buy condoms in China to the awe of patiently searching for white rhinos in Africa, Adams remains endearing and never condescending while educating the reader about such pressing environmental issues. This is the uproarious and enlightening story of an Englishman so far displaced from his clean and proper life.
I very much second this nomination – Douglas Adams is a wonderfully quirky writer (as readers will know from his works of fiction) but his style never works better than in narrating this fascinating travelogue. It’s hilarious, informative and moving (and would also get my nomination for the best chapter heading ever – ‘Here be Chickens’ works on many levels as a description of his encounter with Komodo dragons)
Give yourself a treat and after reading the book watch the very recent DVD of “Last Chance to See”, the follow-up journey twenty years after the original trip, the journey that Douglas Adams very sadly missed but that has the wonderful and almost as witty Stephen Fry accompanying Mark Carwardine on a six-leg trip around the world. It’s a phenomenally attractive documentary at a very attractive price indeed.
I recommend “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch.
An inspirational book from the point of view of an intellectual computer science professor who is facing his death due to pancreatic cancer. The book focuses on how to achieve your childhood dreams, how he himself has lived his life, and how he hopes that he can leave the knowledge to his kids. Overall, this book made me laugh, cry, laugh some more, and then when it was done, I reevaluated my life and tried to incorporate some of the lessons.
I nominate Ernst Mayr’s The Growth of Biological Thought. This book deals with many of the ideas that led to reasonably current thought on Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Mayr does an excellent job of providing a historical account leading to these ideas, which is difficult to obtain anywhere else.
I’ll go out on a limb and recommend “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” by William Shirer, not so much because I think I’ll win (I already own a copy of WEIT) but I think anyone reading the thread should check it out.
It’s an extremely interesting and very readable account. I’ve heard that professional historians and academics have mixed feelings about it, but for a layman like myself it was a fantastic introduction to a critical time in world history.
Good recommendation, Andy — I found it a compelling read.
Just don’t rely on Shirer’s account of the Reichstag fire being set by Nazi provocateurs – that’s been thoroughly disproven.
QED by Richard Feynman.
This book is easily the most accessible introduction to quantum electrodynamics without sacrificing on content. By showing how every day objects are founded on impossibly bizarre phenomena and can be explained with simple rules, Feynman’s book is truly a gem that opens eyes and minds to our absurd little universe.
There have been lots of excellent science recommendations already, so as a change of pace, I’m going to suggest the ‘Autobiography’ of the Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. Cellini’s life was one long string of affairs, brawls, duels, feuds, squabbles with noblemen and popes; he gets caught up in wars and keeps having to flee cities. He wasn’t a man to let the facts get in the way of a good story, and his version of events is fabulously self-aggrandising, but it’s also a rattling good yarn and just very very funny.
The Disclaimer:
I’m too lazy and indecisive to wrack my brain and consider weighing things like history against science so I’ll stick to evolution here.
The Book:
Neil Shubin’s ‘Your Inner Fish’.
The Sell.
Your Inner Fish draws together three main threads: a paleontological discovery to which predictive power of evolutionary theory was critical, modern genetics that is so much in the news that people will have a curiosity about it and ties them together through developmental biology to make a satisfying whole. Your Inner Fish is an ideal book to get someone excited about evolutionary biology and it is inexpensive, well-written and short. It will also prompt the reader to ponder in order to understand the connections between scientific fields it lays out it and ponder on our deep connection to our ancestors and fellow organisms.
Also very good
“How We Die” by Sherwin B. Nuland.
We who’ve crossed 40 can see the darkness at the end of the tunnel. Just as teenagers need education about sex, grownups need to learn about death. This book teaches that, in gruesome, scary and wonderfully enlightening detail.
Philosophers Without Gods, edited by Louise Antony. A collection, like 50 Voices of Disbelief (also recommended of course), but all by philosophers rather than just some by philosophers. Lovely chewy thoughtful interesting essays – not technical, not off-putting to the general reader (like me), but reasoned and reasonable and forthright. Great stuff. (You can see I’m not going for the prize, I’m just recommending!)
“Toxic sludge is good for you: Lies, damn lies, and the public relations industry” by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. This is a book about how reality died in America.
‘The Doctrine of DNA’ R J Lewontin
It is, precise, well written, cuts directly to the point and is fun to read.
Even if you disagree with him, he makes you think, hard.
Oh, and it predicted the outcome of the Human Genome Project seven years ahead.
So sorry, typo, R C Lewontin
Wait, what am I saing?
Does God Hate Women?, of course!
Hahaha – just kidding.
Seriously though, a couple more, just for gleaning purposes – the Essays of Montaigne, preferably in the massive Penguin edition translated by Michael Screech; and Norman Levitt’s Prometheus Bedeviled.
off the beaten path:
“The Corruption Notebooks: 25 investigative journalists report on abuses of power in their home country.” by Global Access, a project of The Center for Public Integrity.
ISBN: 1-882583-19-1
(202)466.1300 contact@publicintegrity.org
Twenty-six leading investigative journalists from Argentina to Zimbabwe detail corruption in their home countries, providing the reader with an overarching view of the many ways in which our leaders abuse their power. To address these abuses, it is first necessary to expose them, educating the public so that such corruption cannot thrive. This book details many convergent themes, which all involve what happens when the public is either uninformed about abuses of power happening under their noses, or are powerless to do anything about it.
http://www.publicintegrity.org
“The Nurture Assumption” by Judith Rich Harris
Steven Pinker predicts that this book “will come to be seen as a turning point in the history of psychology.”
You may want to read the book to find out if there is any evidence to support the claim that parents have control over their children’s personality. This book was discussed once between Pinker and Dawkins, after Dawkins kept insisting that parents are largely responsible for how irrational (religious) their children will grow up to be.
I wish to second this suggestion. A truly life changing read.
Since Guns, Germs and Steel has been mentioned already, I’ll suugest Jared Diamond’s other book, Collapse.
Collapse is rich on history and chronicles the demise of many civilizations, from Easter Islanders to Haiti and Rwanda. It is an absolutely eye opening to see how many societies have brought about their own downfall and how they managed to do so, mostly through environmental destruction, going hungry, and then turning against one another. A very dire warning indeed.
Not his only other book, there was one about primate nature or similar before Guns et al. I forget the details…The Something Chimpanzee?
“The Third Chimpanzee” its on my to be read shelf.
Mr Ape: plenty of what j Diamond said in his book has been critically reviewed. Take a look
I would like to recommend Robert Fisk’s “The Great War for Civilisation”, an honest journalist’s account of the wars of the Middle East. It is a monumental book, covering the atrocities, betrayals, and inhumanity of all the participants from the Turkish genocide of Armenians to the 2003 Gulf War, via, among other conflicts, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Algerian Civil War, Lebanon and the West Bank. It should be compulsory reading for anyone who thinks the history and politics of this region are straight-forward or that any of the states involved has clean hands – and as a prime example of compassionate, humane, honest journalism.
The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester
This book describes the life and work of William “Strata” Smith. Smith, a mining and civil engineer, noticed things, in particular that stratigraphic sequences extended for long distances – and that each stratum contained a unique and specific assemblage of fossils.
His insight was that fossils were not arbitrarily distributed (as would be expected from a global flood) – they were organized!
The organized Fossils (which might be called the antiquities of Nature) and their localities also, may be understood by all, even the most illiterate: for they are so fixed in the earth as not to be mistaken or misplaced; and may be as readily referred to in any part of the course of the Stratum which contains them, as in the cabinets of the curious; and, consequently, they furnish the best of all clues to the knowledge of the Soil and Substrata.
Unfortunately they are not understood by many people today, who deliberately choose to be illiterate, but Smith’s insights led to a better understanding of geology and directly on to Darwin’s insights.
I would nominate Smith’s book Strata but I think it is out of print – although it can be read on the web
Quidam, that was my pick! Not only is a good read and a fascinating glimpse of life in the 18th century but it comes with a map. I’ll always buy a book with a map.
Mostly 19th century 🙂
Whenever a creationist starts talking of “Flood Geology” there is a phrase coined Smith’s that can (or at least should) shut them up – “Faunal Succession”.
“Faunal Succession” is a Fact of Evolution, Natural Selection is the Theory explaining it.
Already mentioned this week, in another thread:
The Eighth Day of Creation
a history of the birth of molecular biology, by Horace Freeland Judson.
Reasons:
This book relates the mid-20th century transformation of biology into its modern form in three acts: the discovery of DNA as the agent of heredity and the successful modeling of its double helical structure, the development of protein structure by the technique of X-ray crystallography, and the elucidation of the genetic code. It is comprehensive, pretty darned accurate, and narrated with great skill. Judson does an outstanding job of relaying key research results in a way comprehensible to nonspecialists.
I’ll nominate “The Ancestor’s Tale” by Richard Dawkins. I found it a fascinating journey through evolutionary time, with plenty of vivid examples. It is written for people who know little of evolution, and it vigorously whets the appetite for more on the subject – now there are many more books on evolution I want to read.
-mark.
(I can’t believe I’m the first to suggest this one!)
Well, I was tossing up between this one, “The Map that Changed the World” and “Europe – A History”. All are superb, but as most people were going for science books I decided to be different.
This is threatening to turn into a terribly expensive comment thread.
I second the recommendation for The Map that Changed the World.
I think The Ancestor’s Tale is by far the most enjoyable book by Dawkins.
I enjoyed The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins a great deal, but I don’t think it’s for everybody.
Well, since the first eight books I thought of have already found advocates I’m going to take a completely different tack.
I’m recommending The Foxfire Book. It is the first in a series of oral histories and commentary collected and written by a high school class in Georgia. Along with tons of fascinating, detailed accounts of how to take care of the basic necessities of life it also provides some insight into isolated cultures in an age before any of our modern conveniences. If you have ever spent any time in the southern Appalachian region you will be able to hear the ‘twang’ in the voices of the folks interviewed. Fun and informative on several levels.
I recommend N.N. Taleb’s The Black Swan (a much expanded paperback edition is due out next month). Here’s why.
Taleb is a wordy, mediocre writer who is far too full of himself, but the power of his ideas and arguments make the book important and memorable nonetheless. He shows how our (often mistaken) assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls “Mediocristan,” while our world is often shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of “Extremistan” (in his words, “History does not crawl, it jumps”). Read it to find out why and what it means to predictive models, markets, and the value of induction.
Since Quidam beat me to the punch I will nominate:
Why We Love – The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Helen Fisher
In this enjoyable and well-documented read, Helen Fisher strips away the “mystery” of love and replaces it with my favorite subject, chemistry. Mind-brain dualists (calling Dr. Egnor!) may howl at the moon that emotion is “mere chemistry,” but the fascinating interplay of chemicals in the brain as we grow and age explains why we do what we do when our logic says “no” though our glands say “Yes!”
If you love evolution, you’ll love reading about the evolution of love and go ape over this book as I did.
“Consciousness Explained”, by Daniel Dennett.
This book is an absolute explosion of original thinking and cunning thought experiments which does exactly what it claims to do in its title. I’m sure that in the future Dennett will be looked back upon as one of the all-time great philosophers, and “Consciousness Explained” as his masterpiece. In the meantime do your brain a huge favour and read this book.
Thanks for the recommendation!
I’d like to recommend Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh.
He has a way to make higher – dare I say it – esoteric maths understandable and enjoyable for the non-mathematician. Even with half forgotten highschool maths knowledge, you get the challenges and concepts that made that famous proof possible.
In progress!
I recommend “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” by T.E. Lawrence. Not only is it beautifully written, the autobiography of a legendary 20th Century figure, and a rip-roaring adventure saga – it also explains the roots behind the West’s present troubles in the Middle East.
“Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” by Morris Berman.
If I may cut and paste from Amazon:
In this provocative, scattershot jeremiad, cultural historian Berman (The Twilight of American Culture) likens America to ancient Rome on the brink. On the geopolitical plane, he contends, the United States is a belligerent, overstretched empire, saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy, vulnerable to terrorist blowback and, worse, collapse if foreign creditors finally pull the plug. The rot is cultural and spiritual, too: Americans are cold, alienated shopaholics immured in suburban anomie, each encased in a private bubble of iTunes and media noise and indifferent to the public good. Culprits include globalization, technology and, more fundamentally, the individualism and commercialism that is the bedrock of American identity. Because American civilization is a “package deal,” the author considers it impervious to piecemeal reform and, given Americans’ ingrained “stupidity” and willful blindness, unsalvageable. Berman’s attempts to tie every American dysfunction to an all-encompassing sickness of soul overreaches, leading him to lump together serious issues like poverty and the Abu Ghraib outrages with trivialities like annoying cell phone yakkers or the “freedom fries” phenomenon, which he bemoans as “symbolic of an emptiness at the core.” Often stimulating and insightful in its particulars, his indictment, like the jingoism it abhors, is too sweeping and essentialist to fully capture American reality.
Well this sounds like cheery bedtime reading!
It has probably already been said, but Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.”
This book was instrumental for me to overcome years of indoctrination by all manner of pseudoscience on television, in books, and from trusted friends. Sagan takes on almost every example of junk thinking and trashes it, and leaves you with the best tool to do it yourself for whatever comes later, critical, evidence based thinking.
Hell yes! I hope anything Sagan wins. I have never been able to find anyone outside of the scifi genre that gets me so pumped about scientific advancement.
I recommend The Descent Of Man by Charles Darwin. Not only did it put humans in their place in nature it also helped spawn a great hunt for our origins. It was Darwin who thought human origins started in Africa and he was right on this one also. Very well written and easy to comprehend for all of those who want to learn about our origins.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
A quick and easy read about 6 methods of influence that operate (usually) below the threshold of consciousness.
Numerous and clear examples of how marketers, advertisers and anyone with an agenda use them against us.
You’ll have an experience of “of course! That’s so true!” with each and every anecdote.
This was required reading in a Purchasing class I took in getting my Business Degree. I had all six methods memorized for a couple of decades, it really resonated with me.
It should be required reading for elected officials.
_Speak, Memory_–V. Nabokov
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first
time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged — the same house, the same people — and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.”
What’s It All About? By Julian Baggini.
In an exquisite balancing act between serious philosophy and general readability, Baggini shares penetrating insights into one of the most fundamental questions of life from a rigorously humanistic perspective. Though drawing insight from a plethora of sources, the book wears its learning lightly, and is consistently interesting from start to finish. Just like Daniel Dennett, Baggini gives a new verve to old philosophical topics, bringing to bear science, philosophy and literature, without denying the everyday and mundane, in a wide-ranging and life-affirming survey of the possibilities of a fulfilling life without myths.
On the proverbial desert island I would without doubt be found clutching my copy of “The Ancestor’s Tale” by Richard Dawkins.
As for the ‘sell’, I simply can’t put it better than the man himself:
“The Ancestor’s Tale shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.”
It was the first non-fiction book to ever make me weep!
Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl.
A great biography of one of the greatest human beings to have lived. Da Vinci showed that there wasn’t, isn’t and never shall be an unbridgeable gap between science and art. The book brings to life a kind, talented and relentlessly curious human being.
or Leonardo, The First Scientist’ by Michael White.
Dies The Fire, by S.M. Stirling.
What would you do if all the technology you relied on just suddenly stopped working? No electricity, no internal combustion engines, no firearms.
This wonderful piece of fiction explores an alternate modern reality where this Change occurs, causing a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions!
Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors
By Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
Carl Sagan’s writing was always incredibly fun reading to me. In this book he accomplishes conveying the urgent importance of science and it’s way of thinking while simultaneously using it to analyze and deconstruct the development of everything from ourselves to our universe. No other book of his or anyone else’s has had such a profound impact on my understanding of the world and my desire to understand it better.
I’m going to suggest Norman Maclean’s “Young Men and Fire”. It’s about Mann Gulch, Montana, where in August of 1949, 16 smokejumpers parachuted in to fight a small fire. The wind shifted, the fire exploded, and two hours after they landed, 13 of them were dead. This would be a compelling story of courage and tragedy if told by a hack writer, but in Maclean’s (who wrote “A River Runs Through It”, and who was undoubtedly my state’s greatest author) hands, it becomes something special. I cry every time I read it.
So many possible candidates… I think that it would have to be a biography or a history. Science fact has the disadvantage that the facts change as our knowledge deepens. Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Almost Everything”, although very good and also very funny, has the disadvantage that in parts it’s inaccurate or out of date.
Although I was considering nominating Nick Lane’s “Life Ascending The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution” which I always recommend to ID proponents as having more science in the first two chapters than the entire 624 pages of Stephen Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell” or “In Pursuit of the Gene from Darwin to DNA” by James Schwartz, which was a little mistitled, being mainly a biography of Hermann Muller (the account of his time in Soviet Russia in the ’30s reads like a thriller), everything afterwards being consigned to an epilogue.
My choices fall between two books, the first is Peter Nichol’s “Evolution’s Captain the Story of the Kidnapping that Lead to Charles Darwin’s Voyage Aboard the ‘Beagle'” (the title says it all, it’s mainly a biography of Robert FitzRoy,with a lot of Charles Darwin thrown in, with great descriptions of England during the early and mid 19th century).
But my choice is Darwin’s Armada Four Voyages and the Battle for the Theory of Evolution” by Iain McCalman, which is a history of Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Joseph Hooker went on the Antarctic expedition of James Ross (1839-43) with the famous ships HMS Erebus and Terror (which disappeared on the tragic John Franklin expedition of 1845 to the Northwest Passage). The book includes a nice account of Hooker’s time in Van Diemen’s Land (present day Tasmania and his meeting with the various figures of European society (including ironically John Franklin when he was governor there).
Thomas Huxley was on the the “Rattlesnake” (1846-50) which was sent to survey the Great Barrier Reef and to find a safe passage from Australia to China (a little ironic following the grounding of the Chinese coal carrier Shen Neng 1 on Douglas Shoal on April 4). The description of Port Essington near the site of today’s Darwin is almost classic in its description of a “colonial embodiment of hell”, a “shambles of termite-infested buildings and fever-infected soldiers”. “The cemetery remained the busiest spot in town… Crocodiles had eaten most of the dogs, …” Huxley was intrigued by the story of the accidental Catholic missionary there who’d died of fever just a week before the Rattlesnake arrived; “the priest seemed to embody the utter futility of the missionary enterprise in the tropics-or anywhere for that matter”.
I hadn’t heard of “Darwin’s Armada”–thanks!
“Primal Body – Primal Mind” by Nora Gedgaudas.
Subtitle: Empower your total health the way evolution intended(…and didn’t)
Book about nutrition, “..how did our long biological history condition us to eat?”
Well obviously we were meant to be hunting gazelles on the plains of east Africa, and eating small, dry fibrous fruits and veg. No croissants for YOU!
That is correct, I don’t do bread, rice, pasta or potatoes. But read the book yourself.
Sorry, I didn’t see the 3 sentences or less part … I nominate Iain McCalman’s “Darwin’s Armada Four Voyages and the Battle for the Theory of Evolution”. The accounts of the voyages of Joseph Hooker and Thomas Huxley nicely complement the better known stories of Darwin and Wallace.
Everyone should read The Devil in Dover by Lauri Lebo. It provides a fascinating account of one of the key events – the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial – in the fight to keep creationism out of public schools. The author has managed to create a rich narrative without compromising the facts of the trial. I learned a lot about the events leading up to the trial, the arguments used in the trial itself, and some of the consequences of the trial. The author also does a good job of putting a human face on the various people involved, even those she condemns for there actions before and during the trial. So, the two reasons to read this book are: a; because it’s a good read and b; because it’s about an event that should be important to anyone interested in quality education.
The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley
This is still the best explanation I’ve read of how morality and a sense of right and wrong can (and did) evolve naturally. It’s the perfect answer to the “you can’t be good without god” crowd. And it’s incredibly well written.
“The Ape in the Tree.” Alan Walker and Pat Shipman.
Learn how science is done. Learn about a fossil ape that is a descendant of both humans and chimpanzees, about how this is determined and why it is important. Great adventures, discoveries, set-backs, trials and tribulations and a good deal of fun, all in the name of science.
A descendant? I think you mean ancestor…
-mark.
Aaarrgghhh!! I’ll surely lose because of that! ;^}
Am re-reading one of my all-time favorites, and highly recommend: Names on the Land–a Historical Account of Place-naming in the US, by George R. Stewart. Written in 1945, republished in 58, 67, 72, 86, 95, and 2008!
“An enchanting book, written with wisdom and wit and an almost austere poetry…”–J. of Am. Folklore
“Angels & Ages: A Short Book About Lincoln, Darwin, and Modern Life” by Adam Gopnik
The book takes two seemingly disparate historical figures, dusts them off, and explores their humanity. I’ll admit that it took me awhile to get into the book and the disjointed narratives threw me at first. However, by the end I felt like the author had weaved a compelling web that explored big themes: the power of language, how great figures are defined by their times, how they define history, how they challenge the status quo…
Coming Back to Earth (from gods to God to Gaia) by Lloyd Geering.
It is a thinking man’s exploration of cultural changes from spirit to religious dogma to secular faith.
Or you could read, Pathways to Bliss by Joseph Campbell, a concise exploration of the four dimensions of mythology.
I’ll recommend:
“Three Cups of Tea
One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time”
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Rarely has a book with a forgone conclusion gripped me with so much empathetic joy and frustration, suspense and relief. You feel like you know this man well, as though you are a collaborator in his incredible mission of bringing ordinary education to girls in a poor and sometimes hostile environment. The authors pull no punches, from their honest portrayals of the religious culture to their accounting of the (sometimes unwise) risks and sacrifices of the mountaineer turned crusader for peace.
Oh, and here is the website: http://www.threecupsoftea.com/
Really good book, too. He’s got a new one as well. I’ll read it when my mom’s done with the one I got her for Xmas.
I will nominate Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth by Lawrence Krauss.
The reasons? It encompasses many of the areas of science I am interested in (cosmology, chemistry, biology) and also include historical context. His sense of humor also comes through in his writing.
—
I’ve read half or more of the previous nominees and agree that many are excellent. I have to say I was frustrated by the two books I have read by Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel and Third Chimpanzee), and would have a difficult time putting them on even a lengthy best books list. My perception in reading them is that he made way too many unfounded (or badly evidenced) conclusions.
Am I permitted more than one nomination? There have been so many in the last year or so.
“”The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
Priestley was a central figure in the scientific revolution and post-revolutionary America. Besides his researches into electricity and oxygen, he mediated the rapprochement between Jefferson and Adams. Who knew that Franklin inferred the existence of the Gulf Stream from the observation that it took longer for mail to reach America from England than it took mail from the colonies to reach London. Franklin took temperature measurements on his way home. Priestley confirmed them years later during his emigration to America.
This sent me back to Gordon S. Woods’ “The Radicalism of the American Revolution.” It destroys the facile, whiggish view of American history so prevalent among teabaggers, today.
Moving on to current events: The subtitle of Andrew Bacevich’s “The Limits of Power” says it all, “The End of American Exceptionalism.” John Farmer’s “The Ground Truth” debunks the Bush administration’s systematic distortion of what occurred on 9/11.
Euclid’s Elements
=================
Euclid’s Elements is one of the oldest known Greek mathematical texts, it introduced the axiomatic method, and it forms the basis of modern logic and science. Even though geometry is now considered a “dead science” in today’s schools, it is the most successful and influential textbook of any kind that has ever been written. Along with The Origin, I consider it to be one of two books that every intelligent person must read.
This is a list of great books. You should do this every year.
The suggested book is Randy Olson’s Don’t Be Such a Scientist — a fun, well-written and well-organized book explaining how scientists can and need to explain their ideas in an engaging, interesting, and convincing way.
“Substance in an Age of Style”
Feynman and Sagan had both —
I am mixed on Olson’s Don’t Be Such a Scientist. He has a point and some good ideas, but I am skeptical. More style, less substance? I shudder; wrong way to go about things.
Sense and Goodness Without God
by Richard Carrier
A wonderful work of philosophy written in every day language proposing a complete world view based on philosophical naturalism. Carrier covers all the bases including language, knowledge, reason ,science, religion, morality, aesthetics and politics. He is a true treasure as an active member of the atheist community and his exercise in clear and insightful thinking should be read by all.