This list compiled by Shawn Olson.
Below is a list of some of the best books I've read in my life... which has now reached several hundred. Also view Banned Books, Children's Nature & Ecology Books, Harry Potter Alibris Store.
The Demon-Haunted World is, in my opinion, one of the best books that was ever written. You won't find in it the answers to why we are here or sappy poems... but you will find a solid framework for viewing our world intelligently.
With a passion for wondering about life and the world, Carl Sagan was special in that he was able to inspire his readers with pressing questions without being pretensious. Sagan knew he didn't know everything... but he was able to explain why we should not spend too much of our time succumbing to the vast sea of the unverifiable claims of superstition and pseudo-science.
Back To Top > >The Blank Slate practically blind-sided me. I was very snug in my world of self-control most of my life... always feeling that everything I did was of my own choice. That feeling led me to many assumptions that often caused problems when trying to raise step-kids--why don't they like the things my family always liked?
Struggling with molding step kids, I began to subconsciously notice that kids are not quite as malleable as I had always assumed. It took Pinker's insights for my feelings to articulate into consciousness.
I have more information about this book at Reviewing the Slate.
Back To Top > >Climbing Mount Improbable is probably one of the most enlightening book a person could pick up in our day and age if you want to really understand what the theory of evolution is all about. It's not a book that tries to change your faith--it's about explaining the mechanics of natural selection that create the varied world around us.
To me it's important to know about evolution because it so effectively explains why our world is the way it is. No other explanation effectively answers the riddle of life and death, struggle and love. Religions have given us demons and devils and struggling angels... but evolution gives us real answers.
What Dawkins does in this book is lay out a course of how seemingly impossible organs in complex systems can evolve. He dissolves the common misconceptions uneducated people have about evolution... and the half-hearted Christian Scientist arguments that purport to disprove evolution.
I doubt that this book will convince you to change your faith, but I do believe that it will help you understand what evolution really means. This is a good thing... since it's my belief that most people who deny evolution really don't know much about it.
Back To Top > >John Dewey is one of my favorite writers. He's not my favorite in style, but he was one of the most intelligent men to have lived in the past few hundred years. An educator and philosoper, he was an acitve and visible icon in America through the first half of the last century.
The great value of How We Think is that it explains the general process of human thinking. It compares deductive reasoning with inductive reasoning. The two forms of reasoning are essential to all humans, but few have ever taken the time to know what they are and the limitations each affords in life.
Both deductive and inductive reasoning are important, and they are both opposite approaches for humans to draw conclusions. Deductive reasoning starts with a theory to push us to look for facts, while inductive reasoning starts with observations and pushes us to form a theory.
I enourage anyone who likes to think about thinking to pick up this book.
Back To Top > >While I have come to feel that some of the major tenets that made Stephen Jay Gould famous may not be the most enduring aspects of his contributions to science, I do feel that Gould was a highly intelligent man. Both articulate and broad, he was able to draw analogies from several domains and apply them to his essays on science.
Full House is my favorite book penned by Gould because it deals largely with human culture. Using baseball as a key example, Gould smartly explained why athletes are getting better every generation. Gould tries to offer a shed of hope that the future can progress in positive directions.
Back To Top > >This book will haunt you. It chronicles the Holocaust largely from the perspective of the average perpetrator. Goldhagen argues that there was nothing peculiar about the average German during the Nazi regime.
One of the most poignant things that stuck out in my mind was early in the book when Goldhagen produced scathing letters from an officier to his superiors because he would not carry out orders that were "morally" degrading--and wrote home to tell his wife about it. This same officer had no qualms about hunting down, torturing and murdering Jews.
You ought to read this book. It makes you ask some questions about your own world.
Back To Top > >Before global warming there was nuclear weapons to haunt us. They are still there, but after the Cold War it seems that the general population and media finds them less threatening.
All I can say is that after reading about the origins of nuclear weapons, and the intrigue that surrounded it via Russian espionage inside Los Alamos... I often wonder if mankind will actually live through the nuclear age.
Back To Top > >I love science-fiction, but really don't delve too deep into it. I do, however, really enjoy the works of Arthur C. Clarke. I don't presume to be an expert on sci-fi, and there are doubtless many great science-fiction writers I've yet to uncover.
Very rarely do I re-read a book, especially fiction. This is one of the few that has brought me back to its pages more than once.
I don't want to give it away... but Rendezvouz with Rama is a story that will make you stop and wonder... what if I could venture through the galaxy...
Clarke is the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was also turned into a Holywood classic. I did enjoy 2001 but the Rama series gets my vote as the most inspiring of Clarke's books.
Back To Top > >Rama II continues in the universe of Rendezvouz with Rama. The series continues even after the sequel... and the entire collection of books is a must in my list of recommended reading.
Back To Top > >I have to admit that for several years I was a fantasy-freak. I read many fantasy novels... until they started to repeat themselves. Below are my favorite two fantasy authors and their main books.
Magician: Apprentice introduces us to the ancient world of Midkemia where feuding kingdoms must defend themselves against both an army of invaders from another world... not to mention a bigger and more sinister threat. You'll meet Pug, who becomes the most powerful wizard of all time... not to mention an entire caravan of endearing characters.
Feist's books stick out in my mind because they seem to stray from the standard mold of fantasy novels; Feist stated in a recent release of Magician that he broke many conventional rules of writing because he just wanted to tell a good story.
Magician: Apprentice is book one of the Riftwar Sage, which is only the first of many sagas Feist chronicles. I'm sure you'll get hooked on them if you like fantasy.
Back To Top > >Anyone who likes fantasy has read The Lord of the Rings. But just in case you're new to the arena, I've listed it here for you to consider... Often considered the books that fathered the entire genre of fantasy, the Lord of the Rings is a spectacular tale of good versus bad.
Aside from the struggles, the most enduring thing about Tolkein's work is that while you read his books, you actually feel like he's writing about a real place. Tolkein really loved the world of Middle-Earth, which he created to give a history to a language he had created (Tolkein was a linguist).
Back To Top > >For an artists, I've read precious little in terms of art history or art biographies. But I enjoy flipping through the hundreds of images created by savant M.C. Escher. His tesselations and illogical lithographs are simply mind boggling--especially from an artist who did his graphical handiwork long before the age of computer graphics.
Back To Top > >I rarely agree with critics on the value of writers. Shakespeare is the obvious exception. I think that Shakespeare probably was among the best writers to have lived in all of human history. I'm sure that everything he wrote has been handled effectively and poetically by other writers before and since... but I wonder if we'll ever have a repeat of someone as dramatically wise as William Shakespeare.
Back To Top > >Principle-Centered Leadership was a pivotal book in my life as I read it. As a teenager, I was beginning to focus on writing... and I was also interested in becoming a businessman. Covey caught my eye. It just so happens that I was suspended for reading this book in English class.
There is so much positive material to take from this book I don't know where to begin. The main focus, really, is about disciplining yourself to live by principles that work and discarding strategies that don't work.
Back To Top > >This list compiled by Shawn Olson.