For me its probably the Tao Te Ching for its spiritual wisdom as well as the courage to be disliked for how it introduced me to Adlerian psychology and teleology.
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I really like nonfiction, so I’ll recommend a few.
Wonderful Life (Stephen Jay Gould) was what really helped me understand biology. Really interesting read if you want to hear about evolution or paleontology. If you prefer land animals to Cambrian bugs, Rise and Fall of dinosaurs (Steve Brusatte) is also a great read, though it didn’t blow my mind as much as Gould did.
House and Soul of a new Machine (both by Tracy Kidder) are op opposite ends of the technical spectrum but together form a rich portrait of people at work.
Exploding The Phone (Phil Lapsely) is the book you want if you’re at all interested in retro technology. I suspect many people who care enough to use a ln offbeat social network like this one will enjoy it.
Annals of the former world (John McPhee) is a hefty tome that tells the natural history of United States geology, the history of geology (especially how plate tectonics were discovered) and how geology has interacted with the people living on it.
Nature’s Nether Regions. About weird sex stuff in the animal kingdom. Evolution winds up making some strange things like dragonfly vibrators and snail impregnation duels.
It’s a tough choice, but if I had to choose it would be Betrayers of the Truth by William J. Broad and Nicholas Wade. The book deals with the problematic ways fraud is dealt with in the scientific community, namely as an exceptional phenomenon, a bad-apple type of analysis that unwittingly brushes off the structural issues of academia.
A honourable mention would be Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot which questions the layered process of producing history. The production of history is itself a product of history that should not be taken for granted. All of this is showcased through a quick overview of Haitian history.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It goes over a lot of general knowledge and science, including the history of those discoveries, in a way that’s conversational and so engaging. I wish I could find more books like it, so I’m open to suggestions!
The Selfish Gene (Dawkins): a very readable explanation of evolution that covers some key principles which even college-level classes tend to miss. Don’t let the author’s later, unsophisticated books about religion scare you away; this book is good.
Black Holes and Time Warps (Thorne): a bit dated now, but still a fun journey through what we know about black holes and how it was discovered. Almost as much a history book as a physics book, written by someone who was personally involved in the process of discovery.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. This book is a good, non-nonsense dissection of the folly of religion. He has also written many books on religion too, any of which are well worth a read.
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson - opened my eyes to the true history of race and how it is used in the US to oppress and marginalize
Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos - one of the most comprehensive yet easily digested books that successfully answers many of the fundamental questions we ask about anarchism as well as some of the silly misconceptions people might have
Cannabis by Box Brown - really approachable history of the Illegalization of cannabis
All these books really opened my eyes, I guess you could say
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
By David Graeber and David Wengrow
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 👍
