I'm a Bookaholic! Feed me more knowledge!

Cafe Society
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Below is an incomplete list of what I’ve read over the last year. Please make more recommendations, as I’m desperate to quench my thirst for knowledge!

bryson, bill a short history of nearly everything
carroll, sean from eternity to here
carroll, sean the particle at the end of the universe
crease, robert the second creation
deutsch, david the fabric of reality
ferreira, pedro the perfect theory
feynman, richard qed
feynman, richard surely you’re joking mr. feynman
feynman, richard what do you care what other people think
freese, katherine cosmic cocktail
gaensler, bryan extreme cosmos
gott, j. richard time travel in einstein’s universe
greene, brian the elegant universe
greene, brian the fabric of the cosmos
greene, brian the hidden reality
guth, alan the inflationary universe
hawking, stephen a brief history of time
hawking, stephen the universe in a nutshell
kasting, james how to find a habitable planet
kirshner, robert the extravagant universe
krauss, lawrence a universe from nothing
krauss, lawrence the physics of star trek
mann, michael the hockey stick and the climate war
miadownik, mark stuff matters
nye, bill undeniable
ostriker, jeremiah heart of darkness
pais, abraham subtle is the lord
plait, phil death from the skies
quinn, helen the mystery of the missing antimatter
randall, lisa warped passages
rees, martin before the beginning
rees, martin just six numbers
riordan, michael the shadows of creation
roach, mary gulp
roach, mary packing for mars
sagan, carl cosmos
sagan, carl pale blue dot
susskind, leonard the black hole war
susskind, leonard the cosmic landscape
susskind, leonard the theoretical minimum
thorne, kip black holes and time warps
thorne, kip the science of interstellar
tyson, neil degrasse death by black hole
tyson, neil degrasse space chronicles
weinberg, steven dreams of a final theory
weinberg, steven the first three minutes
wilczek, frank longing for the harmonies
wilczek, frank the lightness of being

2

impressive list
are you trolling
did you really read all of those?

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I read them all cover to cover.

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Moved to IMHO from General Questions.

samclem , moderator

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Everything by Jared Diamond, Dava Sobel, and Mark Girouard.

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wow, man that’s impressive!!!

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Quite the list. Here’s one I would recommend: Rare earth : why complex life is uncommon in the universe by Ward, Peter Douglas, 1949-

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Not a book but a cool video
Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

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Psst – it’s on the list.

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The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Moral Animal and Nonzero by Robert Wright
The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong
How to Live, or a Life of Montaigne, by Sarah Bakewell
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Hope this helps. They are full of yay and insight.

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Those books are all popular treatments of science. My favorite such book is Music of the Spheres by Guy Murchie. Here are three lists of someone’s choices of the best such books:

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/25-greatest-science-books

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Let’s try this in Cafe Society.

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A related thread I started recently:

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Your list is pretty much all popular-level books about science—mainly physics, astronomy, and cosmology. I can’t think of any titles to add about those subjects specifically. If you want to venture a little farther afield, Sam Kean written entertaining books about chemistry (The Disappearing Spoon) and genetics (The Violinist’s Thumb). Malcolm Gladwell and quite a few others have written popular books on social science. And as for mathematics (my own area), here’s a list of some good popular math books that can be enjoyed and appreciated by readers with relatively little math background:

Steven Strogatz: The Joy of x
William Dunham: Journey Through Genius; The Mathematical Universe
Keith Devlin: The Language of Mathematics
Edward Burger & Michael Starbird: Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz
Calvin Clawson: Mathematical Mysteries; Mathematical Sorcery

The above are all fairly general/miscellaneous. If necessary, I could add quite a few more titles devoted to more specific topics within mathematics.

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Being as the OP is interested in science, I’d recommend Matt Ridley:

The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

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For mathematics, you should read the entire set of anthologies of Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games columns from Scientific American:

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Petr Beckmann – A History of pi – Beckmann’s history is great, and he’s a wonderful loon, besides (he hates Aristotle and the Roman Empire). A great read. “Petr” isn’t a typo.

Eli Maor –e: The Story of a Number Maor isn’t a loon, unfortunately, but his history of e is clearly inspired by Beckmann.

and, just to round it out:

Paul J. Nahim – An Imaginary Tale – The Story of the (square root of minus one)

If you’re still in a mathematical mood, I recommend:

David Wells – The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers – the only dictionary I’ve ever seen where the entries are arranged in numerical order.Hours of interesting reading, and you can dip into it at any point.

also read his

David Wells – The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry – This one, though, they arranged in alphabetical order according to the name of the problem. There’s one supposedly discovered by Napoleon Buonaparte!

I’d also recommend a book on Medusa and one on Ray Guns, 'cause, you know, they’re interesting topics.

and

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A few other books:

1.) Just about anything by Stephen Jay Gould – I love the collections of his articles from Natural History (The Panda’s Thumb, Bully for Brontosaurus, etc.), but his non-collection books (Wonderful Life, The Mismeasure of Man, etc.) are great, too.

2.) Just about anything from L. Sprague de Camp – in addition to writing lots of SF, fantasy, and historical fiction, he also wrote science and history fact. The Ancient Engineers[ is a classic. The Great Monkey Trial is the most readable account of the Scopes trial I’ve read. You might want to steer clear of the bios he’s written – he’s caught a lot of flak for his attempts to psychoanalyze Robert E, Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.

3.) Anything by willy Ley, especially his essays on Natural History (even though he was literally a rocket scientist)

4.) The Popular Science books on anthropology by Marvin Harris, like Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches or Cannibals and Kings or Good to Eat/The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig.

5.) The Spoor of Spooks and A Natural History of Nonsense by Bergen Evans, the Proto-Cecil.

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You might enjoy:

The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams.
Return of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams.
More of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams
The Straight Dope Tells All by Cecil Adams

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I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said, although I might warn that Nahin’s books are not for the mathematically faint of heart: he’s a professor of engineering, and writes like one (a good one).

A few other mathematical writers I thought ought to be mentioned include Ian Stewart (Concepts of Modern Mathematics, which is more interesting and less textbooky than its title makes it sound, and numerous (no pun intended) other books) and John Allan Paulos (Innumeracy, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, and others). Simon Singh’s book on Fermat’s Last Theorem is good, and his book The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets is not to be missed if you’re a fan of The Simpsons and/or Futurama. John Derbyshire’s books Prime Obsession and Unknown Quantity deal with some fairly sophisticated mathematics but are a joy to read. And don’t let the title or cover of Hiroshi Yuki’s Math Girls scare you away by making you think the book is too juvenile or too girly; it’s a wonderful exploration of some fairly advanced mathematical topics.