 | Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years by Jared M. Diamond
Buy new: £6.96 / Used from: £4.84 Essential, Pullitzer-Prize-winning history - explains how Fate dealt such different hands to the dwellers of each continent.
|
 | Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond
Buy new: £6.59 / Used from: £4.99 A good sequel to GG&S. Shows how societies collapse, and confronts us with the reality and size of the many problems we face. If you enjoy these two, two the Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee.
|
 | The Fabric of Reality: Towards a Theory of Everything by David Deutsch
Buy new: £7.17 / Used from: £3.49 This book changed the way I think about science. Very thought provoking. I don't agree with Deutsch on every point, but always fascinating.
|
 | The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality (Penguin Press Science) by Brian Greene
Buy new: £7.66 / Used from: £4.70 Similarly titled, but very different. Probably the best book out there at the moment for laying out Physics as currently understood
|
 | The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition by Richard Dawkins
Buy new: £5.76 / Used from: £4.00 Should be read by everyone - makes the process of evolution seem so obvious and clear, and explains, to a fair degree, why we have altruism.
|
 | The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £2.45 Dawkins' best book. A sweeping tour through the history of evolution. His masterpiece.
|
 | The Origins of Virtue (Penguin Press Science) by Matt Ridley
Buy new: £6.45 / Used from: £3.00 More specific to humans. After reading this and The Selfish Gene, you'll have a fair idea of why humans (sometimes) cooperate with one another.
|
 | Science: A History 1543 - 2001 by John Gribbin
Buy new: £9.06 / Used from: £6.09 Does what it says on the tin. If you want to know how we got to this stage, this is the book to tell you.
|
 | The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric Beinhocker
Buy new: £7.66 / Used from: £4.86 Excellent book on economics, on how the economics of the past has been so flawed, and how it is now able to take a step towards being a more respectable science.
|
 | Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Buy used from: £9.82 Excellent book about how the media distorts science. As it says on the cover, helps make everyone a better bullsh*t-detector. Humerously written too.
|
 | Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media by Nick Davies
Buy new: £6.27 / Used from: £3.77 Shocking, frightening book about the collapse of the media as a reliable teller of truth. Bit long though, read Bad Science first as a warm-up.
|
 | Pommies: England Cricket Through an Australian Lens by William Buckland
Buy new: £9.49 / Used from: £7.53 Every England Cricket fan has a duty to read this book. Explains how and why the ECB prevents England's successes from ever being more than occasional.
|
Listmania!
