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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge
Matt Ridley · 364 pages
"The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch--the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, f
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson · 704 pages
The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk--a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate--became the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom an
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 400 pages
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins · 416 pages
Publication Date: January 16, 2008 A preeminent scientist—and the world's most prominent atheist—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11. With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker f
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Steven Pinker · 528 pages
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Jared Diamond · 494 pages
An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer
Donella H. Meadows, Diana Wright · 240 pages
A clear, thoughtful, and wide-reaching exploration of complex systems, in theory and in practice. Meadows was a masterful and elegant writer and researcher, and an early voice in systems analysis at MIT and elsewhere. This book, completed from draft manuscript after Meadows' death, is both accessible and deeply thought-provoking. She connects the dots between careful descriptions of systems analys
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't
Nate Silver · 544 pages
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. The New York Times now publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the wo
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages
*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner · 352 pages
Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week’s meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts’ predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Michael Pollan · 244 pages
What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the que
Freedom Evolves
Daniel C. Dennett · 357 pages
"Four billion years ago, there was no freedom on our planet, because there was no life. What kinds of freedom have evolved since the origin of life? Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? If you are free, are you responsible for being free, or just lucky?". "In Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, sets out to
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
Oren Harman · 451 pages
Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.
Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality
Patricia S. Churchland · 273 pages
"What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain."--Jacket.
The Ascent of Man
Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages
Traces the development of science and the discoveries that have made man unique among animal species.
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
Albert Einstein · 158 pages
The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examina
Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
Charles Seife · 312 pages
In the tradition of Stephen Colbert's concept of truthiness, Proofiness explores the intersection of chicanery and mathematics. The author explores regression, false correlation, Potemkin numbers, and a variety of other sketchy techniques used to make people think that the data reflect patterns that don't exist in actuality. How to Lie With Statistics would strike me as a readalike.
Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved
Frans de Waal · 232 pages
Une longue tradition philosophique et scientifique situe l'origine de la moralité humaine non dans l'évolution mais dans la culture : nous serions moraux par choix et non pas nature. Bien plus, la moralité serait une fine écorce recouvrant une nature par ailleurs mauvaise. «C'est l'animal en nous», entendons-nous souvent quand notre comportement a laissé à désirer.Sa réflexion va bien au-delà de l
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
Sean Carroll · 451 pages
A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward?Time moves forward, not backward-everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other univers
Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
Douglas R. Hofstadter · 852 pages
Toen 'Godel, Escher, Bach' verscheen in 1979 was Hofstadter in een klap wereldberoemd. Het is maar weinigen gegeven zo met taal en kennis te spelen: briljant, erudiet, creatief, humoristisch, en didaktisch van zeer hoog niveau. Dezelfde kwaliteiten bepalen het gezicht van 'Metamagische thema's'. Het is een bundeling van artikelen die in de jaren 1981-1983 in de Scientific American verschenen en di
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
David Deutsch · 487 pages
"A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the uni
Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails
Duncan J. Watts · 335 pages
Discusses how the concept of common sense is inadequate in an increasingly complex world and draws on multiple disciplines to offer insight into the sources of such topics as popularity, economics, and self-deception.