One of the more enlightening books I’ve been assigned to read in school was Darrell Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics, which illustrates a number of manipulations that are made to statistics-based arguments, whether through malice or ignorance. It provides a toolbox to use when reading the newspaper, viewing advertisements, or listening to politicians. Inspired by that work was an interesting book I just finished called (ta-dah) How to Lie With Maps, in which I learned to closely consider the sometimes-misleading choices made by makers of maps used in, again, say newspapers, advertising and politics.
In a less technical vein, Robert Cialdini’s classic Influence lays out a large number of tactics used by marketers and others attempting surreptitiously to win your sympathy, combining scientific data and interesting anecdotes.
All of these books, but in particular the first and third, make for excellent general reading, promoting a healthy (but not supercritical) skepticism about what human beings say and do. Which other books make a good read for the same reason?
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It’s about the scientific method, psuedoscience, superstition and so forth. It’s been a long time since I read it though.
Similar to the specialist books mentioned in the OP: Innumeracy and it’s sequels. It’s sort of “How to Lie with Statistics” broadened to probability and general math.
Also Fooled By Randomness, and its sequel The Black Swan, about how people are fooled into believing they see patterns in places where there aren’t any (gambling, stock markets, and the like). The sequel adds a discussion of unpredictable disruptions (e.g. 9/11’s effect on the stock market) and their inevitability.
For pure skeptical thought, though, I second The Demon Haunted World.
The Demon-Haunted World, is indispensable. In a similar vein, although taking academia to task, are Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectual Abuse Of Science* and Paul Gross and Norman Levitt’s Higher Superstition: The Academic Left And Its Quarrels with Science.
*This one began when Alan Sokal wrote a parodic, deliberately bullshit “postmodern” essay entitled “Transgressing The Boundaries: Toward A Transformative Hermeneutics Of Quantum Gravity” which was crammed with meaningless academic pseudo-intellectual critical gibberish, had it published in a cultural studies journal, and then gleefully blew the whistle on himself and watched the ensuing shitstorm. Simultaneously hilarious and depressing.
Edward Tufte has some good books that do this. His main focus on is on the effective use of graphics to convey information. However, he considers integrity and accuracy to be a key part of effectiveness, so he gives some good advice on how to look skeptically at graphical information. Plus, his books are gorgeous and a delight to read.
Entertainer and prolific author Steve Allen wrote On the Bible, Faith and Morality as a critique of biblical literalism, discussing the errors, inconsistencies, self-contradictions, and morally repugnant episodes and characters of the Bible. However, he did so without discarding his faith (his wife was the daughter of Christian missionaries). One of the best books I’ve read on the Bible.
A very influential book, increadibly quotable (he’s a master of writing aphorisms) on the factors commot to all mass movements.
Some examples:
“A man is likely to mind his own business when it was worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off of his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
“Mass movements can rise and spread without the belief in God, but never without belief in a devil.”
“Those who find no difficulty in decieving themselves are easily decieved by others.”
Besides those already listed, here are some classics:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by mcKay
In the Name of Science AKA Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner – came out in 1951, but still worth reading. I recommend his other books as well, although they’re mainly collections of his essays from elsewhere (like Science: Good Bad and Bogus). The only other nonfiction original book of his I can think of, and which is definitely worth the read, is The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener UFOs Identified, UFOs Explained, UFOs: The Public Deceived and several other by Philip Klass
On the Spoor of Spooks and The Natural History of Nonsense , both by Bergen Evans, the Proto-Cecil. Highly entertaining, well-written, and well-footnoted A Budget of Paradoxes by de Morgan (the guy responsible for de Morgan’s Theorem)
Joe Nickell’s books on the Paranormal, including Inquest on the Shroud of Turin.
There are quite a few more that I can’t recall off the top of my head – I;'ve got quite a collection of these at home.
I have “Flim-Flam!” and “The Truth Behind Uri Geller”. They aren’t specifically about “skepticism” but by exposing a bunch of frauds they show why it’s important to ask lots of questions (especially the obvious ones), require evidence and have properly designed and controlled tests.