Books

Recommended Non-Fiction Books

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Ending Aging by Aubrey de Grey & Michael Rae (see Aubrey speak at TED)
The Billionaire Who Wasn’t by Conor O’Clery
The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
The Sigularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil (see the author speak at MIT)
Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman
What Do You Care What Other People Think by Richard P. Feynman
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge
Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides
The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
Mémoires by Hector Berlioz
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
American Ceasar: Douglas MacArthur by William Manchester
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
American Prometheus: J. Robert Oppenheimer by Bird and Sherwin (See also: PBS Oppenheimer documentary)
Fooled by randomness : the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes
Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air by David JC MacKay
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo

Recommended Fiction Books

The Glamour by Christopher Priest
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Lanark by Alasdair Gray
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
The Magus by John Fowles
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
The Collector by John Fowles
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
ADA by Vladimir Nabokov
The World According to Garp by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

What I’m Currently Reading

Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination 1939-1945 by Saul Frïedlander
Molecular Biology of the Cell (5th edition) by Alberts, etc
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

My ‘To Read’ Pile

Adaptation and Natural Selection by George C. Williams
Rational Choice in an Uncertain World by Reid Hastie & Robyn M. Dawes
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases edited by Daniel Kahneman
Mapping the Mind by Rita Carter
Synaptic Self by Joseph Ledoux
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
Principles of Anatomy and Physiology (12th edition) by Gerard J. Tortora
The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS) by Robert A. Wilson
Diaspora by Greg Egan

[This page was last updated on: March 8th, 2010. Books are listed in no specific order. If you have questions about some of the books above, or suggestions that you think I might like, drop me a note via my contact page.]