Hey bookworms, hope you all are enjoying reading as more than before.
My exams are over now and I want to devour some knowledge dense books that can help me increase my knowledge and understanding about things and the world.
Suggest me some non-fiction books that involve a little history, science, general facts and which covers broad topics all together. For example here are some related books: Sapiens, Short History of Nearly Everything, Nexus, Origin of Species etc.
Also, I will love if you can share the non-fiction books you are currently reading or have read before.
Hoping for a fabulous gem ❤️🩹
by Gamerstic
9 Comments
Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro by Rachel Slade. While it’s centered on a singular event, the sinking of the titular cargo ship El Faro, it also touches on some really interesting history of the merchant marine industry.
I recently listened to “A Book of Bees” by Sue Hubbell. It’s about honey bee keeping. Very interesting read. There’s several pages of hive dimensions you can skip over.
While it was written in the mid-1990s, I recently read Carl Sagan’s *The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark*, which gives a great deal to think about. Its main focus is learning and applying the scientific method and critical thinking to examine everything. And he gives a lot of examples throughout history what has happened when humans failed to do so and what can happen in the future.
There’s also Stephen Hawking’s *A Brief History of Time* which explores many large, astrophysical questions, in layman’s terms.
Oliver Sacks was a neurologist who wrote several books, including case studies. I’ve read *Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain* and *The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.* Both were excellent.
I recently finished Ta-Nehisi Coates’ *The Message*, which touches on several subjects, including the importance of writing for clarity and the power of words, especially in giving voice to injustices and oppression. The latter half is also about a trip to Israel, where he sees and examines how Palestinians are treated. I’ve also read *Between the World and Me*, which is framed as a letter to his son, about the experience of being an African-American.
Other non-fiction I’ve read that has left an impact include:
* David Foster-Wallace’s *A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.* It’s a collection of essays on various subjects, but my favorites are his insight and experiences on a 7-night luxury cruise (the title essay) and at the Illinois State Fair.
* Several of David Sedaris’ essays, which are humorous and insightful about his life, experiences, and family.
* Cheryl Strayed’s *Wild*, about her reaching a point in life where she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
* Haruki Murakami’s *What I Talk About When I Talk About Running*, essays on, well, running, and his perspectives on pain and suffering (specifically, he believes pain is inevitable but suffering is not).
* Robin DG Kelley’s Thelonious Monk biography. This is more specialized, but if you’re interested in Monk, jazz, and the emergence of bebop it’s very detailed.
*The Making of the Atomic Bomb* by Richard Rhodes.
*The dawn of everything* by Davids Graeber and Wengrow
• Guns, Germs, and Steel – on evolution of human societies.
• The Selfish Gene/The Blind Watchmaker – Gene-centric view of evolution.
• The Silk Roads – Global history through trade.
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Paradigm shifts in science.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach – Connections between math, art, logic. But basically about how consciousness arises from strange loops.
• The Gene – History of genetic science.
• Cosmos – Universe’s history and science.
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb – Birth of nuclear science trying history, science, politics together.
• The Wealth of Nations – Foundation of modern economics.
• The Better Angels of Our Nature – Decline of human violence and how the present is better than the past and the future is getting better.
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Factfulness by Hans Rosling.
Frostbite, how refrigeration shaped the world we live in
Being wrong Adventures on the Margin of error,
Algorithms to live by,
The ghost map,
Salt a history,
The Anarchy by Dalyrimple,
King Leopold’s Ghost,
Because Internet by Gretchen McCullough,
Debt the first five thousand years,
The ascent of money,
Thinking fast and slow,
Zoobiquity by Natterson Horowitz,