Top recommendations from recent reads: |
|
| Matt Ridley | The Rational Optimist |
| Raymond Ibrahim | The Al Qaeda Reader |
| Ayaan Hirsi Ali | Infidel |
| James A. Dewar | To The End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket |
| George Dyson | Project Orion |
| Jean M. Auel | The Clan of the Cave Bear / The Valley of Horses |
Science: |
|
| Daniel Boorstin | The Discoverers- A great masterpiece on the beginning of modern science. |
Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy |
|
| Simon Singh | The Code Book - This is a feast for the mind. |
|
Fermat's Last Theorem - A
book similar to Dava Sobel's "Longitude": it describes
a lifelong, all-consuming obsession, and ultimate triumph. A great
tale of perseverance |
|
| Roger Penrose |
The Emperor's New Mind - A lovely review of modern physics and many math concepts for everyone, although with a bit of a dodgy point at the end. |
| Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak | Megawatts and Megatons - This is the best text I know on the uses of nuclear power. |
| Richard Rhodes | The making of the Atomic Bomb - The definitive book on the Manhattan Project, with very clear descriptions of the physics and the political aspects of the project. |
|
Dark Sun - The
definitive book on the start of the Cold War and the development
of the
hydrogen bomb. One thought that came to my head: even at its
worst and
most destructive, science has an enormous, unique advantage over
all
other belief systems - it damn works! Unfortunately, the people
at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki felt that more sharply than most. |
|
| These books are beautifully complemented by Michael Light's 100 Suns. | |
| Marcia Bartusiak | Archives of the Universe: 100 Discoveries That Transformed Our Understanding of the Cosmos - This book puts a lot of the subjects discussed in the works below in a nice, coherent historical perspective. It is a great summary of the history of astronomy, and it has improved my understanding of many areas of astronomy outside my direct expertise. One of the great things about this book is it use of the original sources. These are generally very well written, they make the text fresh and fast-paced. A treat! |
| Einstein's Unfinished Symphony - The search for gravitational waves - a great new endeavor of Physics and Astronomy in the 21st century! | |
| Clifford M. Will | Was Einstein Right? - This is the book that brought me to my field of research (pulsars). Most popular books on physics nowadays deal with arcane subjects, like string theory, so far removed from reality that (to me) they lose urgency. This book was a very nice and refreshing surprise: it describes a real theory (general relativity) that really works in the real world. Amazingly, despite being nearly 100 years old, it has passed all experimental tests to date! This means it describes Nature in a true and deeply intimate way. |
| Galileo Galilei | Sidereus Nuncius - Follow Galileo as he discovers the mountains on the Moon, the moons of Jupiter, that the Milky Way is made of more stars than anyone had imagined... The writing is so clear and fresh that you are transported to those amazing, wonderful nights of discovery in 1610. |
| Michael J. Crowe | Modern Theories of the Universe: From Herschel to Hubble - An accessible, but rigorous and very informative book on astronomy from the 18th to the 20th centuries, with a particular focus on the Great Debate. Like Bartusiak's book, it resorts to many of the original sources, to excellent effect. |
| Dennis Overbye |
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos : The
Story of the Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe -
What
happened after Hubble, but with a greater emphasis on the human
side of
things. Very illuminating. |
Planetary astronomy and space exploration |
|
| William Sheehan | The Planet Mars: A History of Observation & Discovery - A good account of Mars exploration before the space age. |
| Tom Wolfe | The Right Stuff - A very entertaining book on the satart of the U.S. space program, project Mercury. |
| Andrew Chaikin | Man on the Moon - Yes, we have been to the Moon. What a great time it was! This book is beautifully complemented by Michael Light's "Full Moon" and "From the Nazis to NASA - The life of Werner von Braun", by Bob Ward. |
| James Oberg | Red Star in Orbit - A very clearly written, short description of the Soviet space program. The fact that this was written in 1981 counts to me as a plus, since it covered all the interesting accomplishments. However, it is a bit out of date at points, since the "Glasnost" policy later brought up many details of the lunar program and others. Sometimes a bit heartbraking, at parts I resented so much emphasis being put on the failures, particularly the deaths - the author seems to like funerals. This is annoying at points: a cosmonaut being barred from flying in space is a "casualty", he spends more time on that than describing the Venera probes, which obtained the first (and still only) pictures of the Venusian soil - many such achievements are completely ignored. In fact, the whole planetary program is barely mentioned! However, the great ability of the author at digging up embarrasing facts hidden by Soviet secrecy and propaganda (like the great tragedy he names "The Nedelin Catastrophe") make the book well worth reading, this is likely to be the reason why at the book reads like is denouncing the Soviets (There are definitely good reasons for that!). For more detail on the Soviet space program, I recommend the monumental biography of Korolev by James Harford and "Starman", the biography of Yuri Gagarin by Jamie Doran. |
| William K. Hartmann | A Traveler's Guide to Mars - The best account I've read about what has been learned so far about Mars, mainly focused on space age results. |
| Oliver Morton | Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World - A great description of the human side of Mars exploration. |
| Jim Bell | Postcards from Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet - A photographical journal of the two first travelers on the Martian surface. |
| Robert Zubrin |
The case for Mars - Yes, we could go to Mars. The technology is there. But not the will. I spent too long wishing that the
great vision of hope contained in this book would come true, but I am no longer sure this will happen in my lifetime. The future is no longer about
exploring space, going into the unknown. It is instead about social networks.
On the issue of how awesome it could have been... |
| James A. Dewar | To The End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket - I found this book surprising on many aspects. It made very clear to me that the United Sates developed fully usable unclear rockets in the 1950s - 1960s. These could have made trips to Mars and other destinations much faster than any current plans. |
| George Dyson | Project Orion - A description of another interesting idea from the 1950s-1960s, project Orion - space travel powered by small nuclear explosions - written by George Dyson, son of one of the participants in the project, Freeman Dyson. The capabilities of such a spacecraft would go far beyond any technology currently in development and would make the vast distances of even the outer solar system easily reachable. Perhaps more surprisingly, the preliminary studies found that the idea is very likely to be feasible! |
Earth Sciences |
|
| Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee | The Life and Death of Planet Earth - On the border between geology and astronomy. More concise, focused and well-argued than the better known "Rare Earth", and a better, more interesting read as well. |
| Gabrielle Walker | Snowball Earth - The Earth has been deep frozen on several occasions. A grand new idea. Should be read after the previous recommendation. Here is a Wikipedia link. |
| Robert Kunzig | Mapping the Deep - Also belongs to the "life sciences" section. An absolutely delightful book on oceanography. |
Life Sciences |
|
| James D. Watson | The Double Helix - A great story on the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule. Science can be great fun! |
|
DNA - This book answered a lot of questions I had about genetics. |
|
| Richard Dawkins |
The Selfish Gene - Everyone
should read this book, because it tells us about the real (an in my
opinion, the only discernible) purpose of all life on Earth: gene
replication. And even that is not a real purpose, it just happens that
the genes that best promore replication automatically become the
most abundant in the gene pool. The appearance of the first molecule capable of
reliable
self-replication was the central event of Earth's history; living
organisms are merely the automatons that the direct descendants of
these molecules use to compete with each other. This book is
fundamental for a true understanding of ourselves and all
remaining life
on Earth. This is important because, if you understand what your
genes
programmed you to do, and why they did so, then you will no
longer be
their slave. Knowledge is liberating indeed! Here
is a Wikipedia link. |
|
The Blind Watchmaker - Organized complexity, such as what
is
observed among living beings, is not proof of the existence of a
Creator, as proposed centuries ago by William Paley. Evolution
is not random, as some Creationists mistakenly believe. It is
the opposite of random: small random changes in genetic content
are filtered by natural selection in a very non-random
way: genes promoting survival and a better ability at
reproducing become automatically more abundant in the gene pool
with each passing generation.
After many generations, the many small changes can add to
an impressive transformation. Evolution is the only scientific
(i.e., non-magical) theory of life. It becomes mathematically
inevitable as soon as we accept some well known and abundantly
observed (to the point of appearing trivial) laws of nature:
the existence of inheritance, the existence of small genetic
variation and small random mutation, and the differential
success of living beings at reproducing. Evolution is also the
only theory can logically explain the world's existing
complexity: the Creationist viewpoint fails to explain where a
complex being like God came from in the first place. |
|
|
The Ancestor's Tale - An absolutely delightful trip of
exploration to both the near and extremely remote past of our
evolution. |
|
| Andrew H. Knoll | Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth - This book describes what happened from the origins of life to just before the Cambrian explosion. A lot more than what you would suppose from the scant fossil evidence! A fascinating view into a truly alien planet: The Earth before the emergence of animals. |
| Stephen Jay Gould | Bully for Brontosaurus - This is a wonderful collection of essays. This should be read in quick succession with Deborah Cadbury's "Terrible Lizard". |
| Wonderful Life - This book describes the discovery and interpretation of the Burgess Shale, the most famous Cambrian fossils, and perhaps the most scientifically important fossils ever discovered. They document a time soon after the appearance of modern animal life on Earth. The animals are so strange as to seem alien, they are so removed from us in time and shape that they tell us of truly lost kingdoms of life. The Burgess Shale also tells is that, apart from gene replication, life has no purpose. Evolution has no pre-established direction, and form some reason, after reading this book, I thought that was wonderful. | |
| Michael Benton | Vertebrate Paleontology - A really fun book on the origin and evolution of vertebrates, despite (or perhaps because) is is somewhat technical. This really illuminates our direct origins! |
| Jeniffer Clack | Gaining Ground: The Origin and Early Evolution of Tetrapods - This book focuses on one of the events described by the previous book, the origin of Tetrapods and their adaptation to land, but with much more (technical) detail. A difficult read for non-specialists, but very rewarding. |
| Donald Simmons | The Evolution of Human Sexuality - Again, everyone should read this book. The main rules of life's evolution presented in "The Selfish Gene" are here applied with full force to the Human species, i.e., this book concentrates on the "know thyself" part that was, to a large extent, left aside in the more general treatment of Dawkins. |
| Jared Diamond | Guns, Germs and Steel - There are some universal features of human cultures that are dictated by humanity's evolutionary past (see Donald Simmon's book "The Evolution of Human Sexuality"). However, most features in human cultures are highly variable. The central thesis of "Guns, Germs and Steel" is that these variable characteristics are determined to a very large extent by their environment, and also by their history. The ideas have such a large predictive power that this book could easily be put in the "Science" section. |
Technology |
|
| Dava Sobel | Longitude - If you ever read "Galileo's Daughter", I'll tell you: this is way better. |
Religion and the Supernatural |
|
| Carl Sagan | The Daemon Haunted World - The book that sums nicely my thoughts on astrologers and the supernatural. The word "contempt" is not quite strong enough to describe it. |
|
Bjørn Lomborg |
The Skeptical Environmentalist - A nice counterpoint to nowaday's Seventh Day Adventists, the Environmentalists. Written by a former member of Greenpeace who has the nerve to say (based on ample evidence) that the world is not doing so bad after all. My favorite periodical, The Economist, gave it this review: "This is one of the most valuable books on public policy - not merely on environmental policy - to have been written for the intelligent general reader in the past ten years. ... The Skeptical Environmentalist is a triumph.". Here is the Wikipedia page on this book. |
|
Matt Ridley |
The Rational Optimist - A nice antidote to the (rather tiresome) religion of pessimism. The world today is wonderful, far beyond the most optimistic expectations held even 100 years ago (there were almost none). Matt Ridley argues convincingly, based on the overall trends and past history, that Humanity's great ascent since the Industrial revolution is likely to continue indefinitely. The fundamental ingredients, he claims, are free trade, specialization, continued economic growth and democracy. I agree, but would also add science. He also argues that, no matter how much Humanity's lot improves, pessimism will always be fashionable and pessimists held as sages. |
| Sam Harris |
The End of Faith - Sam Harris points out the real dark clouds
threatening Matt Ridley's utopia. He argues convincingly that
organized religion and non-critical thought are among the main
problems faced by civilization. This point of view
is fully supported by History: wherever religions
(Christianity, Islam, Communism, Fascism) have been adopted without reserve, the consequences
have been invariably horrible, producing death on a scale bar beyond any other natural or man-made calamities. Here
is a Wikipedia link. |
| Richard Dawkins | The God Delusion - This book did not do much for me, because I totally agree with it. For many religious people, it won't do much either, because they will totally disagree with it. However, if you are somewhere in the middle, and have some doubts, I really recommend this book. |
| Raymond Ibrahim | The Al-Qaeda Reader- Following the September 11th attacks, most commentators in the US and Europe were trying to make sense of what happened by proposing all sorts of theories: this was anger due to poverty, to US imperialism, to the Palestinian ordeal, etc. In this book, we hear from the perpetrators themselves, which are saying, loud and clear, what many politically correct people don't want to hear: that the true, fundamental issue is one and only one: religion. And Islam, as interpreted by Al Quaeda, is definitely not compatible with democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, women's rights and rights of homossexuals, i.e., all civilized (or, as multiculturalists say, "Western") values. The book is particularly shocking for showing how strongly and clearly the holy scriptures favour the Al Qaeda interpretation. This point cannot be emphasized too much; this is the fundamental reason why I am incurably allergic to these so-called Holy Scriptures. |
| Ayann Hirsi Ali | Infidel- This is one of the most important and courageous autobiographies written in the last decade, written by an ex-Muslim Somali woman. Apart from touching on the important issues of (muslim) religious intolerance, it is a description of the devastating consequences of multi-culturalism (in this case, in Duch society). The belief that all cultures have equal merit can only be described as a poorly substantiated religious dogma. In the real world, different cultures perform very differently as soon as we dare to adopt any sort of objective yardstick (like prosperity, safety, life expectancy, freedom, literacy, contributions to science, technology and the arts). Fortunately, cultures are not static creatures either, they can also grow and evolve. Well, most of them. |
Fiction: |
|
| Voltaire | Short Stories - 18th Century philosophy at its best. Extremely funny! If you love this book as I loved it, then read Candide. |
| Alexandre Dumas | The Three Musketeers |
| Emily Bronte | Wuthering Heights |
| Victor Hugo | Les Miserables |
| Emile Zola | Nana- A great description of the corrupting power of sex in human society. |
| Flaubert | Madame Bovary - A perfect work of art. Perhaps a bit too cynical and detached for some. Not for me. |
| Leo Tolstoi | Anna Karenina - More entertaining than his better known "War and Peace". More concise, insightful and elegant as well. I identify deeply with Levin, which personifies the underlying morale of the book, far from the cynicism of the good French writers of the same epoch. |
| Oscar Wilde | The picture of Dorian Gray |
| Alexander Soljenitsine | The Gulag Archipelago - It is not a piece of cake to read this, but perhaps a salutary exercise for those silly but tiresome people that still insist on wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. This and the next 3 recommendations are for them. |
| Jung Chang | The Wild Swans - Communism (again!) in China. Different setting than Russia, same horrifying results, if not worse. |
| George Orwell | Animal Farm - This book and Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" built my present perception of communism. |
| 1984 - The ultimate nightmare, the one from which one cannot escape. Winston's recollections of his doomed mother are truly poignant. | |
| Aldous Huxley | A Brave New World - A great description of a world where suffering has been scientifically eliminated, and where everyone is happy. We are supposed to think it is a nightmare, but I found the place strangely pleasant, particularly when compared to the world described in Orwell's "1984". |
| Gabriel Garcia Marquez | Cien Anos de Soledad (One hundred years of solitude) - Great story. Magic Realism has its definition here. This also did wonders for my Spanish. |
|
Patrick Susskind |
The Perfume |
| Jose Saramago | O Evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ) - This book contains my opinions on Catholicism. A very sophisticated text, written by a well known Portuguese (communist) writer that got the Nobel prize of literature partly because of this book and those that follow. |
| O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis | |
| Memorial do Convento | |
| Albert Camus | La Peste (The Plague) - One of the best writers ever, this is perhaps the best written book I've ever read (please read the French edition, if you understand the language!). |
| Michel Houellebecq |
The Elementary Particles - This is one of the funniest books I have ever read, but one of the most bleak and depressive as well. Still my favourite novel after all these years.
For something slightly different from him, I also recommend "La Carte et le Territoire". |
Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror: |
|
| Jean M. Auel | The Clan of the Cave Bear - This extremely entertaining story explores one of my fascinations, namely the human past. In particular, it deals with Neanderthals and their psychology. They were human, but they were different from us, separated by hundreds of thousands of years of separate and parallel evolution. Compared to us, what capacities did they lack? What capacities did they have that we lack? The book explores these differences by narrating the story of a 5-year old modern human girl (Ayla) that is orphaned and is then adopted by a Neanderthal tribe (the Clan of the Cave Bear). One of the interesting things about this book is the realistic detail, faithfully based on real archaeological evidence and then blended with fanciful (and wonderful) ideas, like the ancestral memories of Neanderthals. These details really transport the reader to the recent pre-history, and makes one really wonder about the lost inner world of those other humanities. If you really like this book, then I absolutely recommend the sequel, "The Valley of Horses". There are four more in the series, but I cannot recommend them yet as I still have to read them. |
| Edgar Allan Poe | The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket - Teke lilit, teke lilit. |
| Herbert G. Wells | The Time Machine - even better than War of the Worlds. |
| The War of the Worlds - a great classic, still fresh. | |
| H. P. Lovecraft | The Call of Cthulhu and other weird stories - The works of H.P. Lovecraft are a fascinating combination of Science Fiction with the sort of horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe. |
| The Thing at the Doorstep and other weird stories - More Cosmic Horror, further elaboration of the Cthulhu Mythos. His story "At the Mountains of Madness" is directly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "Gordon Pym", and at least as amazing. | |
| J. R. R. Tolkien | Silmarillion |
| The Lord of the Rings - The masterpieces of imagination. | |
| Anne Rice | Interview with the Vampire - A great story, which inspired a great movie. |
| The Vampire Lestat - In my opinion, this is even better than "Interview with the Vampire"! Unfortunately, the film adaptation was mediocre. | |
| The Queen of the Damned - The conclusion to "The Vampire Lestat". Also pretty good, but not as amazing as the preceding book. | |
| Brian Aldiss | The Long Afternoon of Earth |
| Helliconia (Spring, Summer, Winter) - Both H. G. Wells and B. Aldiss can take you to truly alien worlds | |
| Frank Herbert | Dune - If you really like this, then you might also be interested in the many other books from the series. I liked the ones I have read: "Dune Messiah", "Children of Dune" and "God Emperor of Dune". |
| Douglas Adams | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - An extremely funny book, full of ridiculous but interestingly amusing ideas. |
| Kim Stanley Robertson | Red Mars - Green and Blue Mars are good as well, but not as fresh as the first. |