Book List

In today's world many people look first to the Internet for information. The advantage of a book, however, is that it it is an extended work, focusing on a particular topic from a particular point of view. As such, books provide a synthesis of ideas and how they relate, more like a dinner of complimentary dishes with matching wines rather than the Internet's smorgasbord of interesting but unrelated factoids.

This is a list of books I have read and found interesting, formative. I have read a lot more than the books on this list (novels, for the most part, are not listed) but these are ones I thought had interesting ideas in them and I would read them again if I had time. Some I read quite a long time ago (40 years in some cases!) and have not revisited; it is possible I would no longer think they were interesting. But at the time they made enough of an impact that I still remember what they were about today.

Physics

Here is my list of best books in physics.

Environment

Scroll to the bottom of this link to see a list of books on the environment.

Economy

I have found the following to be interesting antidotes to the usual traditional books on economics about the invisible hand etc. (which I have also read):

• Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets by John McMillan.
• Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment by P. Dasgupta.
• John Kenneth Glabraith by Richard Parker.
• The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig.
• Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen.
• Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by by Kevin Phillips.
• The Environmental Endgame by Robert L. Nadeau.
• The rise and fall of the GDP by John Gertner.
• The State of the USA web site (an effort to replace GDP as the sole indicator of progress).
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

Philosophy

I've read a whole lot of philosophy including the six volume History of Philosophy by W. T. Jones, the 15 volume History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston and original works by and books about most major philosophers; Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Hume, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Sartre, Wittenstein, Heidiger, Descart, Spinoza, Liebnitz, Berkeley, Kierkeguaard, James, Russell, etc. The following I found interesting as either summaries or concise presentations of major ideas:

• Philosophy: History and Problems by Samuel Enoch Stumpf and James Fieser (6th ed).
• The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant.
• The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand.
• Pragmatism: A Reader by Louis Menand.
• Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science edited by E. D. Klemke, Robert Hollinger, David Wyss Rudge, and A. David Kline.

Religion

In addition to reading many of the great works of religion (the Upanashads, the Mahabharata, the Bible, the Koran, the Tao de Ching) and many other books that explain religion (e.g. James' The Varieties of Religious Experience) I have found the following useful:

• The World's Religions by Huston Smith.
• A sourcebook in Indian Philosophy by S. Radhakrishnan and C. A. Moore.
• A sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy by W. T. Chan.
• Zen Buddisim by D. T. Suzuki.
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

History/Culture/Psychology

These books changed my ideas about the world but don't fit into any of the other categories. A lot more come to mind (books by Joseph Campbell, Jung, Freud, Chomsky for example have been interesting) but these stand out more in my memory as having had a bigger impact (I can still remember themes and even factoids in some cases).

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
• On Being Certain; Beliving you are right, even when you're not by Robert Burton.
• The Invisible Gorilla; How our Intuitions Decieve Us by C. Chabris and D. Simons.
• Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann.
• The Language Instinct by S. Pinker.
• Near a Thousand Tables; A History of Food by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan.
• Something New Under the Sun, An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World by J. R. McNeill.
• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy.
• In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens by Alice Walker.
• Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report (Merip Reader) Joel Beinin, Joe Stork, editors.
• The Columbia History of the World edited by John A. Garraty and Peter Gay.
• Women's Ways Of Knowing by Mary Belenky, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, Jill Tarule.
• What to Do Till the Messiah Comes by Bernard and Gunther.

Novels

I've read countless novels, so many I can't remember. The following are novels that I particularly liked for one reason or another; they just have stuck with me. A few I read in college so quite possibly I wouldn't like them anymore but at the time I found them to have invigorating perspectives. The first one I read in English and in Spanish.

• Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel García-Márquez.
• The History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago.
• Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
• Report to Greco by Nikos Kazantzakis.
• Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda.
• Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck.