Audible.com College Course: How Things Work

[Kirsten]

Audible.com's editors have created 12 college courses and required reading for the courses. Course #4 is How Things Work.

Audible.com editor Emily C.: "At my university you were required to take four math and science classes, regardless of your major, and a popular choice for the more humanities-minded student was "How Things Work" (sometimes referred to as "physics for poets"). The professor did an admirable job of engaging those of us who were math-challenged with his pop-science approach to the basics of physics. And in me this triggered a latent interest in good science writing. While I don't remember there being much required reading beyond our textbook, I've compiled here a list of books that I've come to love for their accessible approach to mind-boggling concepts."

The books:

13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks
Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries by Neil deGrasse Tyson
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos by Michio Kaku
An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M. Krauss

Lecture:

The Higgs Boson and Beyond by Sean Carroll

What do you think? Are these too sciency? Are there other mysteries you'd like to plumb?