What books would you give to an alien?

[Simon]

I was reading Sapiens and realised that it's basically a perfect primer to give an alien (capable of reading English) to understand the human race, its origins, and peculiarities. Which got me thinking. What are the other books that you would give to an alien to help them understand humans? That could be human society, how we feel about each other, international politics, history, or anything else. Interested to hear what you think!

[Maria]

On the Origin of Species of course.
Or any P.G. Wodehouse book (sense of humour important for human race...otherwise we wouldn't be able to watch news)

[BefuddledPanda]

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

If they are friendly aliens, maybe they can help us out o the mess we unintentionally created...

[Daniel]

QED by Feynman.

Anything by P.G. Wodehouse (agree with Maria!) to help them understand our humour.

A good autobiography, perhaps that of Nicolai Poliakoff (fascinating character).

[BefuddledPanda]

Daniel wrote: "QED by Feynman.

Anything by P.G. Wodehouse (agree with Maria!) to help them understand our humour.

A good autobiography, perhaps that of Nicolai Poliakoff (fascinating character)."

Do you mean Coco The Clown, By Himself?
That book is not in the Goodreads catalog.

[Valerie]

I think we'd have to give them a variety! Some children's books to show them how we teach our young to share, be kind, be creative and brave.

Two good contrasting YA novels, I think Catcher in The Rye ( JD Salinger) and Paper Towns (John Green). Just to show how we interpret ourselves and our lives, coming of age and such.

Then we would need to get in the nitty gritty,I agree with On The Origin of The Species, Human, All Too Human (Nietzsche). Throw in a lot of our great thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, Voltaire, Kafka, etc.

And for fun throw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ;)

[Michael]

The Origin of Species - Presumably a major criterion by which an alien civilization might assess our species' worth may be whether we have discovered evolution

The God Delusion - Similarly, perhaps it would be valuable to let them know what we think about religion as another way to gain their respect by measure of our intellectual progress? (obviously not all of us share the views of the book though)

Animal Farm - as a short but elegant introduction to our understanding of political theory