Favourite non-fiction books?

[Alex]

I quite like reading non-fiction books.

My favourites list almost entirely consists of them in fact.

At the moment I seem to enjoy a mix of history and science as I greatly enjoyed The Emperor of All Maladies which is about cancer. And I am currently reading Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History which is a nice mix of history and chemistry - it's cool because I can remember some of the chemistry but I haven't studied it since Sixth Form so it's not just like reading stuff you already know - and a lot of the historical importance of the discoveries was omitted at school to leave room for memorising formulae (you can probably see why I didn't choose to study Chemistry at University :P )

Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe, Quantum Physics: A Beginner's Guide and The Fabric of the Cosmos were probably responsible for me choosing to read Physics at University and An Indispensable Truth: How Fusion Power Can Save The Planet is an awesome introduction to Plasma Physics as it pertains to nuclear fusion energy which is an interest of mine (it also explains some climate science as well - it really is an awesome book!!)

I noticed we have a lot of Comp Sci people here... The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography is a cool book on crypto and gives a lot of ideas for little programs to write (indeed he has an excellent website with ideas for encouraging young students to look at crypto/maths/coding.

Singh also wrote Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem which is very good - the closest I've come to enjoying pure mathematics even as a physics student :P and it was easily understandable when I was 14 so it's nowhere near as bewildering as other maths books like The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (seriously that books insane - I still wasn't able to finish it even when reading it concurrently with a Complex Analysis course... I don't know how they call it Popular Science...)

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is also good. And Graber posts on GoodReads occasionally answering people's questions which is cool.

Anyway what are your favourite non-fiction books?? (Please say I'm not the only one who reads them...)

[Rose, Mod]

You're the only one who reads non-fiction....


Just kidding!

I have a few favourites... I recently read The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, which I absolutely loved. I really liked The God Delusion.

I actually really enjoy memoirs and autobiographies, especially if they're historical as well. An interesting one I read last year was Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl. I also really enjoyed Angela's Ashes, Night, and Schindler's List was also pretty good.

[Alex]

I've read The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - I thought it was really good too! I found the parts about Edward Teller really interesting.

I haven't read The God Delusion but I have read The Blind Watchmaker by him, which was awesome. I'm worried The God Delusion might just be really political and just seem ridiculously obvious to an atheist as that's what The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution was like.

But I dunno, it just seems like in the UK atheism isn't as big a deal as it is in the USA, it's just kind of assumed people are atheist unless stated otherwise, whereas when I was on an international study thing in Germany almost all the American students were religious - and that was a scientific programme! o_0

Hmmm.. IIRC Roald Dahl was like a spy or something crazy, that sounds interesting though. As far as autobiographies go I really liked The Story of My Experiments With Truth in fact I should add that to my favourites.

Angela's Ashes looks pretty interesting too - I have so many books to read! >_<

[Danielle]

I love non-fiction books, thanks for the list! Of those the only one I read was The Fabric of the Cosmos (which was great), and I had Big Bang on my to-read list. I added all the rest.

I loved The Information which almost about the history of thought: how we've developed languages, how we've been affected by telegraphs and telephones, and how we developed computing and information theory. This topic is fascinating to me, and if anyone can recommend similar books I would appreciate it.

Some physics books I love are From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, A Universe from Nothing, and The Grand Design. I've also been reading through Carl Sagan's books, and they are awesome.

In biology, I've enjoyed Your Inner Fish, Life Ascending, books by Richard Dawkins, and Darwin's Ghosts, which is about the predecessors to Darwin who helped or came closer to developing a theory of evolution. I also loved Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams, which was really funny and tragic at the same time. Lately its been harder to find good biology books, because there have been a lot of really bad pop-science books that try to use evolutionary psychology to explain why girls are bad at math and boys are mean and all that crap.

For history books, my favorites have been Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Evolution of God, and History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (written in 1874). I also like books by Sarah Vowell. I have a hard time finding good history books too. I tend to like books that cover a really big range of history really broadly, because if they don't it either ends up boring or the author has to insert their own ideas or extrapolations to relate better to the people they're writing about, and if that's not done carefully it's a disaster. I would love recommendations for good history books.

Recently I read Hallucinations, which is the monthly read over at the Science and Inquiry group, and The Killer of Little Shepherds, and they were both good. I also read The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature which was really great for the first 2/3 of the book or so, but then it goes into the bad evolutionary psychology really hard. For example, "The things that male brains are usually good at, gay brains are often bad at, and vice versa."

[Danielle]

Alex wrote: "I haven't read The God Delusion but..."

Yeah, it probably would seem obvious to you. It's not that political, except the first chapter or so that explains how America is not a christian nation. When I read it (as a questioning christian) it was incredibly eye-opening and did not seem obvious at all. I actually cringed through large portions of the book because even though what he wrote made sense, it's just something you're not supposed to question or talk about. It was the book that brought me over to atheism.

[Alex]

I started reading The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language which is about language (it might mention its affects on thought?) but when it got into the details of constructing grammars it got a bit dull :/

I bought Your Inner Fish for my sister but I haven't read it myself yet, it seemed interesting though. I've read The Origin Of Species, which is actually surprisingly readable although the chapters on pigeons become somewhat tedious. I want to read The Descent of Man though, although scientifically speaking there are probably more up-to-date books!

I bought Guns, Germs and Steel for my grandfather but again, haven't read it myself - he really enjoyed it though! I read A People's History of the World which is a good history book, but it covers an enormous amount and obviously has some political bias. Howard Zinn (who wrote A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present ) liked it though!

I want to read A Cultural History of Physics which is by the father of Charles Simonyi, one of the main developers at Microsoft and the patron of the Chair for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford which was previously held by Richard Dawkins and currently held by the mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy.

Those books from the Science and Inquiry group seem interesting but yeah as you say it is hard to read popular science books that don't distort the truth or speculate too much. I suppose on the one hand they want to make things more exciting and also to simplify the ideas. "As simple as possible but no simpler" is hard to achieve!

[Danielle]

Rose wrote: "You're the only one who reads non-fiction..."

Thanks for the memoirs, I added them! I always have to be careful with books about the holocaust. When I read The Secret Holocaust Diaries I was in tears for large parts of it, and almost made myself sick from being so upset afterward.

[Danielle]

Alex wrote: "I started reading The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language which is about language (it might mention its affects on thought?) but when it got into the details of constructing grammars i..."

Awesome, thanks! I was trying to keep my to-read books at a reasonable length, but now I'm up to 90...

Yeah, there's a problem with science books that distort the truth. I recently read Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku which was really terrible with that. Kaku actually got called out by Sean Carrol recently for lying about the Higgs boson to news reporters.

[Alex]

Haha I saw one of his 'documentaries' on the TV recently - it was like an action film! It was so melodramatic and sensationalist. I think I'll stick with David Attenborough.

[Rose, Mod]

Danielle wrote: "Rose wrote: "You're the only one who reads non-fiction..."

Thanks for the memoirs, I added them! I always have to be careful with books about the holocaust. When I read The Secret Holocaust Diarie..."
I have a vast fascination about hearing holocaust stories from survivors...I want to know struggles, how they survived and what their life was before and after. Night brought me to a sense of shock, for sure. We read it in my last year of high school and it was an extremely memorable read.

[Danielle]

Scott wrote: "I intend to get to some of Mary Roach's science books; it seems like Vowell offers a similar voice to hers for history."

I hadn't thought about it, but their voices are similar. I read Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex and enjoyed it.

[Stephanie, Super Mod]

I usually don't read too much non-fiction but I did end up reading

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Maybe because Utah was in my backyard, or maybe it was a look into their culture, but I was captivated by this book.

The non-fiction books I read are usually of the same genre, a look into other people's lives and cultures. I'm looking forward to reading books base on crimes, like The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy The Shocking Inside Story and hope that I enjoy them too.

[Echo]

It will be tricky to limit myself to just a few picks.. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life by Daniel Dennett is a wonderful book. It seems to me that he leaves you with a real understanding of the implications of evolutionary theory, and he takes the time to make sure you understand why the alternative arguments aren't valid.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is really good. I read it as a little extra help with a Judgment and Decision making class I took last year. Rational thought is something all redditors possess in spades of course, but it is interesting to read about all these biases in the context of Kahneman's personal history/research. I particularly enjoy the parts talking about understanding regression towards the mean, something I feel is very important to understand.

Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain is one of my most recent reads. I think this is a pure delight, even tho I'm not completely agreeing with him. Gazzaniga's obvious scientific fluency makes it a delight to read tho. Really good introductory chapters on neuroscience in my opinion.

[Danielle]

Scott wrote: "@Danielle (et al): I see that Mary Roach has just this last week had another book published, titled
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
."

Yeah I saw that advertised at some point, and had it in my to-read list. I couldn't figure out what it was when I went through the list to purge out the stuff I wasn't interested in anymore earlier this weekend, but then I remembered again when you mentioned Mary Roach.

[Alex]

Yeah, I'm considering looking for PhD places in either Computational Neuroscience or bioinformatics (apparently a lot of the Comp Neuro Sci guys are recovering physicists) so I'll check out some of the Neuro books for sure.