*Thank you for your responses, everyone. I will definitely be checking out some of these.
In order of recall,
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Why Nations Fail
A Short History of Nearly Everything
God Is Not Great
Gödel, Escher, Bach
The Smartest Kids in the World
Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer - it explains in detail the biology and evolutionary history of parasites, and some of the incredible science that goes into studying and understanding them.
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan - plain English explanation of what the scientific method is and why it’s our best way of understanding the world. It also explains how to think more critically about the world and how to identify pseudoscience.
Parasite Rex changed how I think about a lot of systems. Really mind expanding
Humble Pi by Matt Parker. It’s about common mistakes people make in math and the real world consequences of these mistakes
Hunter S. Thompson - Hell’s Angels
Jake Adelstein - Tokyo Vice & Tokyo Noir
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Not as tough as read as the title sounds. Just the introduction will blow your mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_MindGuns, Germs, and Steel:
Don’t do the abridged version or watch the movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_SteelThere’s some legitimate criticism of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Some of the author’s key assertions are incorrect but by and large a very well informed and exhaustively researched.
Most of the vitriol around it though seems to have missed the point. Diamond uses the book to argue against the idea of euro-exceptionalism but a loud part of society sees it as arguing the exact opposite.
Basically, what I’m saying is, don’t read it as gospel but an exceptional book that examines the way the world became the way it did from a fairly balanced perspective.
I know it really pissed off social anthropologist back in the day.
But I found the part about animal and plant domestication the most interesting. Domestication of animals created slaves you could eat.
I don’t usually read non-fiction but for a reading bingo card challenge at my local bookstore and I was blown away by Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, it was fantastic.
The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Bloom! It’s so good!
Many, but Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber is the one I’ve read most recently.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson and A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold. Hell, I’ll also throw in Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks by Mick Foley. I should reread that.
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon.
A journalist spends a year (1988) embedded in the Baltimore PD homicide division. Forensically analyses every aspect of the murder investigation from crime scene all the way through to trial.
The book, and the work behind it, became the primary inspiration for Simon’s subsequent television work Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire.
Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi.
Leroi uses classical “mutant” forms of the Human Body to examine the processes and mechanisms of how the body builds and maintains itself. Expertly explains quite complex biological concepts in an understandable and engaging way and breaks down the myths and stories around real life" monsters".
in no particular order:
The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug
The Wave: In the Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean
Among the Thugs: The Experience, and the Seduction, of Crowd Violence
Anything by Mary Roach or Bill Bryson
*I love a good subtitle. Read Stephen Jay Gould, too. The Burgess Shale one in particular.
A split third person narrative; One describes the architects that built the 1894 world fair in Chicago, and another that follows the escapades of one of history’s most notorious serial killers, HH Holmes, that prayed on the women that went to the fair.
One of my favorite books I’ve ever read.
Never at Rest by Richard Westfall is a comprehensive biography of Isaac Newton. Near the end when he works at the mint it gets pretty boring but otherwise great.
The Making of the Atom Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a fairly definitive treatment of how the US atomic bomb came about. It covers an incredible amount of background info of both the science and history that lead to it.
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsburg is a terrifying look into the wild west of nuclear weapons in the couple decades after their advent. Ellsburg is famously the person who leaked the Pentagon Papers and he had a front row seat to the insanity that was the early* Cold War. It’s a miracle we survived.
Art and Physics by Leonard F Schlain.
It was his thesis on the advancement of artistic expression and that of hard science and scientific discovery and their seemingly parallel discoveries, as an expression of how intelligence grows across two separate disciplines.
Some of the write-ups and reviews paint it as fairly plebian, but the entire read is really good.
It’s online.
