After reading almost only fiction my entire life I would like to read some non-fiction. Not stories like biographies or anything, but things like facts or history. Any suggestions are appreciated, but something that I would like to read is something about math. It’s been alot on my mind lately and thinking maybe there are some good books about the history of math. Again, any suggestions in basically any subject is appreciated. Thanks!
by EmoioN
8 Comments
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: Paul Erdos
My favorite history of science (which includes much history of math) is *Horizons* by James Poskett. It covers the non-European foundations of essentially all modern science (which most European-centered histories conveniently omit or hide), which makes it great for learning where various scientific concepts *actually* originated.
For history in general, my favorite book is *The dawn of everything* by Davids Graeber and Wengrow, which discards most modern European “common sense” about civilization and related concepts, and instead focuses on real archeological and anthropological evidence regarding how cultures and societies have *actually* formed, grown, evolved, and dissolved around the world for the past 70,000 years.
Both books are absolutely wonderful for expanding your mind past the narrow confines of what generally gets taught in modern European-derived histories, including all those trite myths of European scientific and cultural superiority the whole world has been exposed to by this point.
Never Cry Wolf
A History of Water: Series I, Volume 3: The World of Water
Culture Warlords by Talia Lavin
The Return of Odin by Richard Rudgley
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris–it reads like fiction
*The Path Between the Seas* by McCullough
Algorithms to live by by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths has math history