ReadingList

Page history last edited by peterga 2 wks ago

Current

 

 

In the queue 

  1. Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief - Rodney Stark
  2. Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality - Jared Diamond
  3. Indivisible By Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins - Nancy L. Segal
  4. A Natural History of the Senses
  5. Vision and Mind: Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception
  6. Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion? (Journal of Consciousness Studies Controversies in Science & the Humanities)
  7. The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right

  8. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human 

  9. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

  10. A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist's Chronicle of His Daughter's Developing Mind

  11. Philanthrocapitalism
  12. What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything - John Brockman
  13. Dereliction of Duty : Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam
  14. The Bible:  A Biography - Karen Armstrong
  15. The Mismeasure of Woman
  16. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature - Steven Pinker
  17. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
  18.  The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution - Sean B. Carroll
  19.  Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology - Daniel Dennett
  20. Guns Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
  21. Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere
  22. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's most Powerful Mercenary Army - Jeremy Scahill
  23. The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War
  24. The Selfish Gene (30th Anniversary Edition)
  25. How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball - Ed. Gregory F. Augustine Pierce
  26. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions - Karen Armstrong
  27. A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government - Garry Wills
  28. Mind, Life, and Universe: Conversations with Great Scientists of our Time - Ed. Lynn Margulis, Eduardo Punset
  29. It Ain't Over Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book - Ed. Steve Goldman
  30. Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think: Reflections by Scientists, Writers, and Philosophers
  31. Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness - Dennett
  32. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success - Rodney Stark
  33. The Rise of Mormonism - Rodney Stark
  34. Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert (no copy in hand yet, recommended in supercilious e-mail by stevei)
  35. Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq - James Fallows
  36. Religion, Deviance, and Social Control - Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge
  37. Tales of the End - A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation
  38. The Once and Future Jesus - Funk et. al.
  39. The Republican War on Science - Chris Mooney
  40. Christianity Without God - Lloyd Geering
  41. Herzog
  42. Curve Ball - Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game
  43. Baseball by the Numbers - How Statistics are Collected, What They Mean, and How They Reveal the Game
  44. A Mathematician at the Ballpark - Odds and Probabilities for Baseball Fans - Ken Ross
  45. The Third Chimpanzee - The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal - Jared Diamond
  46. Monkeyluv - And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals
  47. Religious Movements: Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers - Rodney Stark

 

 

Recently Completed

 

  1. Storm of Steel - Ernst Junger (very good)

  2. Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy  (very good)

  3. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not - Robert A. Burton

  4. The Wine Trials - Robin Goldstein (excellent)

  5. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (okay) 

  6. Devil in the White City - Erik Larson (very good)

  7. The Invention of Air:  A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America - Steven Johnson (good)

  8. The Pluto Files:  The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet - Neil deGrasse Tyson (good)

  9. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) - Tom Vanderbilt (very good)

  10. The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 - Thomas Ricks (excellent)

  11. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America - David Hajdu (good) 

  12. The Tartar Steppe - Dino Buzzati (very good)
  13. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions -- Dan Ariely (excellent)
  14. Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris (okay)
  15. What Americans Really Believe - Rodney Stark (good)
  16. Chance - A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market & Just About Everything Else (very good)
  17. I am a Strange Loop - Douglas Hofstadter (okay)
  18. Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created The Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built and American Kingdom - John Gorenfeld (good)
  19. Worlds of Their Own: A Brief History of Misguided Ideas: Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Energy Scams, and the Velikovsky Affair Robert J. Schadewald (good)
  20. Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture Daniel Radosh (very good)
  21.  Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (okay)
  22. The Drunken Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives - Leonard Mlodinow (excellent)
  23. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance - Barack Obama (very good)
  24. Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire - Matt Taibi (very good)
  25. Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon - Daniel Dennett (very good)
  26. The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki (very good)
  27. Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays - Frederick Crews (excellent)
  28. Blind Side - Michael Lewis (very good)
  29. What Is Intelligence? - James R. Flynn (good)
  30. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (disappointing)
  31. A Tragic Legacy: How A Good VS Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency - Glenn Greenwald (a good summary, but little new info for people paying attention at the time)
  32. A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness:  From Imposter Poodles to Purple Numbers V.S. Ramachandran (very good)
  33. Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans - Garvey and Widmer
  34. Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What it Means to be Human - Ed. Susan Blackmore (excellent)
  35. Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us about Human Behavior - Nancy L. Segal (very good)
  36. Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong - Marc D. Hauser
  37. Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction - David Kuo (very good; should be read by every religious conservative)
  38. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III - Bob Woodward (overrated, considerably inferior to Hubris or Fiasco)
  39. Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War - Michael Isikoff and David Corn (very good)
  40. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq - Thomas E. Ricks (excellent)
  41. A World Without Time - The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein (good)
  42. Foundations of Vision (very good)

 

 

Partially read / Never quite finished

  1. Proust Was a Neuroscientist - Jonah Lehrer
  2. Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management - Peter Ferdinand Drucker, David Garvin, Dorothy Leonard, Susan Straus, John Seely Brown
  3. Pagan Christianity - Frank Viola, George Barna
  4. The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber - Mel Gordon
  5. Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game is Wrong - Ed. Johan Keri
  6. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  7. Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 

  8. Psychobabble and Biobunk: Using Psychology to Think Critically about Issues in the News

 

 

 

Pete's Book Reference

 

 

 

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