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Links die, even on the best tended webpage! If you find "errors",
please let me know and I'll try to fix them. Thanks!
If you like pictures more than text, there are cover images of many of
these books
on Dusty's
Pinterest Page (but I don't keep that page up-to-date).
Here is a list of books with a science and/or maths interest, which I
am happy to recommend. I own and have read them all. I haven't put
any book on the list I didn't enjoy for one reason or another, in
spite of what weaknesses they might or might not have. They are all
written for "the intelligent layman", and so don't assume much
technical background. Some of them "dumb down" a little in places,
but most are pretty reliable technically, given the constraints of
writing for a "general audience". Some of these books are "flawed",
some are truly inspiring, some are both(!); I think they are all
interesting in one way or another, and I don't think you'd waste your
time with any of them. They are all well written (I think).
Check out some reviews on-line if you want more opinions (the
links provide some reviews - I don't necessarily agree with all the
reviews, but they should help you get an idea of what each book is about).
Check out the books (eg from a library) to make your own
decision. Treat this list as a "starter" - if you like a book on it,
look for others like it, maybe by the same author, or on the same
topic. Google and Amazon are a help; so is a visit to your
neighborhood library or bookstore.
The categories are not clearly defined - some books belong to several
and some to none. Don't take the categories too seriously. The books are not
in any particular order.
By the way: if you are interested in "literary" books (aren't they
all "literary"?), Yann Martel sent 101 books to Stephen
Harper (then Canadian Prime Minister) over several years, and
the
collection became a marvellous reading list, annotated by his
excellent letters to the Prime Minister. I've not read everything on
the list, but enough to be confident in recommending it to anyone.
- Maths
- x+y:
A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender - Cheng
- Cakes,
Custard and Category Theory - Cheng
- The
Art of Logic in an Illogical World - Cheng
- Beyond
Infinity - An expedition to the outer limits of the mathematical universe - Cheng
- How
to bake Pi - Cheng
(Eugenia has become my favourite "pop-maths" author.
These books of hers are currently my favorite "maths for non-mathematicians" books!)
- The
Mathematical Experience - Davis & Hersh (But this is a classic!)
-
Proofs & Refutations - Lakatos (This and the preceeding by Davis & Hersh
express my own philosophical view of what Maths is)
- Gödel,
Escher, Bach - Hofstadter
- Gödel's
Theorem - Franzen
(Also
this review
And this)
- How
Mathematicians Think - Byers
- The
Mathematician's Brain - Ruelle
- The
Archimedes Codex - Netz & Noel
- Pi in the Sky - Barrow
(Also check this out this review)
- Is God a mathematician? - Livio
- Mathematics
and the Unexpected - Ekeland
- Journey
Through Genius - Dunham
- I
Think, Therefore I Laugh - Paulos
- Prime
Obsession - Derbyshire
- The
Poincaré Conjecture - O'Shea
- The Pea and the Sun - Wapner
- A
History of π - Beckmann
- The
Calculus Wars - Bardi
- Div,
Grad, Curl, and all that - Schey
- A
Course of Pure Mathematics - Hardy
- What
is Mathematics? - Courant and Robbins
-
- Personal note: there were two books that got me "hooked" on maths
& logic -
One is accessible to a cegep student:
Theory
of Sets - Kamke
The other perhaps should wait till you've taken a real logic course:
Undecidable
Theories - Tarski et al
Curiously,
I ended up specializing in
something else entirely ...
- Flatland
This one deserves a section to itself; not only is Flatland an
entertaining book about multidimensional maths, but it's also a clever
social satire - a point often missed by its copiers and sequels.
- Flatland -
Abbott
A recent
scholarly edition
Also:
Links to the
full text (free) and some videos on 4D
Next: some of the better "sequels"
- The
Planiverse - Dewdney
- Flatterland - Stewart
- Sphereland -
Burger
- History & Philosophy
- Logicomix:
An Epic Search for Truth - Doxiadis et al.
(Another
review)
(Yet Another review
and the cover
story)
- The
Discoverers - Boorstin
- Revolution
in Science - Cohen
- On
the Shoulders of Giants - Merton
- The
Age of Wonder - Holmes
- Wittgenstein's
Poker - Edmonds & Eidinow
- Emblems
of Mind: The Inner Life of Music and Mathematics - Rothstein (Also:
this review.)
- Intellectual
Impostures - Sokal & Bricmont
- On Bullshit - Frankfurt
- Crimes
against logic - Whyte (aka Bad Thoughts)
- Science
in History - Bernal
- The
Unnatural Nature of Science - Wolpert
- Other Science
- The
Origin of Species & The Descent of Man - Darwin
- A
Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
- How
Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony - Duffin
(Review)
(The maths)
- The Cello Suites - Siblin
(here just because I liked it)
- This
is Your Brain on Music and
The
World in Six Songs - Levitin
- How the Mind Works - Pinker
-
Other Minds - Godfrey-Smith
- Are
we Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are - de Waal
- The
Idiot Brain - Burnett
- Cosmos
- Sagan
- And anything you can find by Stephen Jay Gould (especially his
essays;
here's
a collection to start with).
- Biography
- Logical
Dilemmas - Dawson (A more technical review)
- Alfred
Tarski - Feferman & Feferman
- From
Trotsky to Gödel - Feferman
- Alan Turing, the Enigma -
Hodges
- Turing's
Cathedral - Dyson (Review)
-
Incompleteness - Goldstein (Also: this review)
- A
Mathematician's Apology - Hardy
- The
Man Who Loved Only Numbers - Hoffman
(There is
also a related documentary)
(BTW, my Erdös number = 3.)
- A
Convergence of Lives - Koblitz
- Galileo:
When the World Stood Still - Naess
- The
Strangest Man - Farmelo
- Never
at Rest - Westfall
- Einstein:
the Life and Times - Clark
- Subtle
is the Lord - Pais
- Longitude
- Sobel
- Galileo's
Daughter - Sobel
- The
Difference Engine ... Babbage and the ... First Computer - Swade
[ Youtube
Youtube2
Long Youtube ]
- Fiction
- War
& Peace - Tolstoy
(And
this)
- The
World as I Found It - Duffy
- Uncle Petros and
Goldbach's Conjecture - Doxiadis
- A
Game with Sharpened Knives - Belton
- The
Periodic Table - Levi
- Doctor
Copernicus - Banville (First of a trilogy, including Kepler and Newton)
- Newton's
Darkness - Djerassi & Pinner
- The
Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel - Bloch
- Measuring the World - Kehlmann
Another view
My view, in brief
- And anything by Douglas Adams, but especially the
Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy.
Addendum - some recommendations by Daniel Gatien, Joshua
Gordon, and Andy Rajnak
(And thanks to Daniel and Joshua for reminding me of some others I'd
read too, which have made their way into the list above.)
- Maths
- The Broken Dice - Ekeland
- The Best of All Possible Worlds - Ekeland
- Poetry of the Universe - Osserman
- Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis - Rockmore
- Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction - Gowers
- Abel's Proof - Pesic
- Other Logic
- The Closing of the American Mind - Alan Bloom
- Other Science
- Death by Black Hole - Neil deGrasse Tyson
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes
And if we are to mention "Abel's Proof", then we should give "equal
time" to another biography:
- Evariste
Galois - Rigatelli
NOTE:
This isn't a "static" list - it grows, and suggestions for additions
are welcome. You can find my email address on my homepage.
If you like pictures more than text, there are cover images of most of
these books on Dusty's
Pinterest Page
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homepage