9 thoughts on “”

  1. Right now I’m reading “Glut” by Alex Wright. It’s a pretty good survey of the history of information technology — from the way insects and animals process and share information about their surroundings, to early alphabets, to the rise of the printing press, right up our modern world of wikis, hypertext and open networks. Very eye-opening in places and certainly rebuts that whole “OMG teh internetz is killing literacy!” argument.

    Also, feel free to browse through my Goodreads list and ask me about anything there. With a few exceptions, everything there is something I’ve enjoyed on some level — most of the books I’ve disliked haven’t made it to the list (yet).

  3. I’m looking to expand my reading, so no, not necessarily. Science, maybe? Although that’s really not much less vague…

  4. “The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D.” by James Reston Jr. immediately sprang to mind, even though I read it three years ago. So that’s good.

    I also like “The Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson (on English language) and “Made in America”, also by Bryson, on the American dialect of English.

  5. I’ve read Spook and Stiff by Mary Roach and they are pretty good reads. There is also always Hawking’s Universe in a Nutshell and Brief History of Time. I’ve also read Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry by Richard B. Cole, which is a great read, but may be a bit too specific for your tastes. You asked for science.

  6. I strongly second the recommendation of Bryson. Anything at all by Bryson, really. That guy can write.

    As for good science books, oh, let’s see… You’re right, that is a broad topic. Well, if you have any interest in particle physics, I might recommend The God Particle by Leon Lederman. Might be an eensy bit dated now, mainly in that it waxes hugely optimistic about a supercollider that never got built, but still well worth reading. Actually, the fact that said supercollider never got built, I suppose, renders the book less dated than it might otherwise be. Not that that’s a good thing.

    If you’re interested in astronomy and related subjects, Timothy Ferris has written some excellent stuff.

    Richard Dawkins, whatever one might think of his religious views or his expression of them, is the guy to read if you’re interested in learning about evolutionary biology. (River Out of Eden may be a good place to start.)

    I recommend Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works if you’re interested in, er, how the mind works. On the psychology front, Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness is very good, and anybody who’s remotely interested in the human brain ought to read Oliver Sacks. Actually, even people who don’t think they’re remotely interested in the human brain ought to read Oliver Sacks, and they will be by the time they’re done.

    If you want fun, painless and relevant books on math, go with John Allen Paulos. (I particularly recommend A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper).

    For fun, painless and relevant books about economics, both Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist are worthwhile.

    For excellent books about science vs. pseudoscience and other related issues, I recommend Michael Shermer.

    And to put in a plug for an author I’ve been reading recently and very much enjoying: Steven Johnson has written some great stuff on a number of subject. His most recent book, The Ghost Map (about cholera in 19th-century London) has been getting a lot of attention, but I particularly recommend Everything Bad Is Good For You, in which he takes a careful, intelligent look at pop culture and concludes that, no, it’s not eating your brain.

    Um, yeah. That’s just based on a quick skim over my non-fiction shelves, but I imagine it’ll do for starters. 😉

  7. “Consilience: The Unity of Knowlegde” by Edward O. Wilson makes a good plea for an end to academic specialization (and its related turf battles).

    “Is Pluto a Planet?” by David Weintraub answers that question with all the cutting-edge knowledge in astronomy, most of which completely goes against all the “popular knowledge” us lay folks have about Pluto.

    “Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science” by David Lindley offers a glimpse at the personalities behind the early debates over quantum physics and the uncertainty principle.

    “Fire in the Crucible” by John Briggs has long been a favorite of mine. It looks at the psychology and science behind creative genius (in both the sciences and the arts) and follows the motifs that weave through these creators lives.

  8. Thanks for all the book recommendations, everyone. You’ve given me a lot of great places to start. I’m reading Bryson’s Mother Tongue right now, and I have a bunch of other books on reserve at the library.

    Marc, Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry is maybe a little too specialized for me. I didn’t really understand this material when I was helping to publish books like that.

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