 | Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War by Peter Maass
Buy used from: £1.80 One of the most heartbreaking books I have ever read. The author's personal experience as a war journalist in Bosnia.
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 | Why I am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (Routledge Classics) by Bertrand Russell
Buy new: £7.96 / Used from: £5.60 My father read this to me when I was about twelve. I think it is still the most lucid, succint, fun and polite argument against theism
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 | Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture by J Conroy
Buy used from: £5.99 This book is not only harrowing, it is immensely enlightening. It will shine a light on the banality of evil and make you humbler and better as a human being.
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 | Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life by John Conroy
Buy used from: £10.70 I didn't live in NI, so I cannot vouch for the reliability of this book, but I can vouch for its honesty and humanity. It is uncompromising in how it avoids simplifications.
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 | Invisible Cities (Vintage Classics) by Italo Calvino
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £2.98 An incredibly beautiful book I read over and over and over again. Maybe Calvino's best book.
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 | Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Buy new: £6.73 / Used from: £1.80 I actually prefer this to The Name of the Rose, not that that is a bad book, but this is packed with so much of the humanism and lucidity I love in Eco.
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 | The Name of the Rose (Vintage Classics) by Umberto Eco
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £1.97 Well, of course. Entertaining, sharp, heartbreaking, and a roman a clef on Italian politics. Yes indeedy.
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 | The Mismeasure of Man by SJ Gould
Buy new: £9.42 / Used from: £3.96 There are so many reasons to love Stephen Jay Gould, but this is his most relevant book.
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 | The Periodic Table (Penguin Modern Classics) by Primo Levi
Buy new: £5.97 / Used from: £2.62 Together with "The Monkey Wrench" my favourite Levi. Not as famous as his books about Auschwitz, but just as good and you can read it without feeling very, very bad afterwards.
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 | At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities by Jean Amery
Buy used from: £8.97 This, on the other hand... this is not a cheery book. But if you want to know about torture, despair, bravery and utter horror, this is one of the books you ought to read.
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 | The Wrench by Primo Levi
Buy used from: £0.99 I can't believe this book is out of print. This quiet, patient celebration of life and wisdom is why so many of us where struck dumb by his suicide.
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 | Axiomatic by Greg Egan
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.50 Jeez, is this cover hideous. However, this perhaps the best book of ST stories ever written...
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 | Luminous by Greg Egan
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £1.00 ...together with this...
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 | Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree
Buy new: £9.26 / Used from: £5.54 ...and this
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