The most recommended popular science books

Although I am a classical music fan, 19th-century romanticism isn’t generally my cup of tea. And yet, I couldn’t stop reading Charles Rosen’s book about the romantic composers in 1830-1850.

While Richard Taruskin was an academic scholar with a side gig as a performer, with Charles Rosen, the situation was reversed. His identity as a professional pianist is quite palpable in this book. However, as with Taruskin, I enjoyed how Rosen was able to move back and forth between analyses of musical scores and discussions of the wider European culture in the 19th century.

This book helped me become a huge fan of Schumann’s piano music. What more can one ask from a book on music?

I loved this book because it so effectively punctures the myth that mathematics might be dull or boring while teaching much about numbers, the founding stones of all the other branches of mathematics, and ultimately of all of science itself.

At first sight, numbers can seem deceptively bland–what else could be as plain vanilla as 1, 2, and 3? Yet simple numbers inevitably give rise to a whole menagerie of other, increasingly exotic numbers–most of which are soon shown to collectively behave in unforeseeable, puzzling ways (such as prime numbers do). Irrational numbers are starkly counterintuitive, and Julian Harvil does an extraordinary job of showing how and why.

This is an evolutionary strand of NLP for me. I am interested in how neuroscience applies to my field, and this book was a mind-opener. I had always used the term “gut feeling” or “my heart says…” and now the science backs me up, too!

This book and its concepts really speak to my own experience of the world around me and give me new ways to communicate and relate to people in most situations I encounter. Both authors have their roots in NLP, and both expand the field in which I live. They do it in such a way that makes the progression seamless, understandable… and really powerful!  

James Gleick is one of the best popular science writers we have, and this classic biography of everyone’s favorite physicist was the first to peel back the curtain and give readers a deeper look into the man, his work, and his life. Behind the clowning and the joking was a deep sadness that Feynman carried with him throughout his life. But his contributions to physics, particularly quantum electrodynamics, put him in the legendary category. 

In my work, I try to combine my love for brilliant visuals and my fascination for complex scientific topics. You can easily guess why the National Geographic Magazine has always been one of my favourites. Its first issue appeared in 1888, and from an early stage, NatGeo’s editors have made extensive use of excellent infographics and photography alongside their stories. For this book, National Geographic has teamed up with Taschen to assemble a marvellous collection of the best infographics ever published in the magazine. Attention: This is highly inspiring and – quite literally – a heavyweight.

Is it nature or nurture that makes a person? Well, it depends on the trait. Many things (e.g., number of noses or biological sex) are genetically determined. Other traits like IQ are about 50/50 genes and environment. Still others, like language, are entirely environmental. 

Humans are fascinated by genetic determinism and its contributions to race, gender, feeble-mindedness, disease. Witness the popularity of 23 and Me. Zimmer’s wonderful book gives an even-handed and sometimes brave account of the history of our obsession with heredity and some of the terrible things that have emerged from it: eugenics, forced sterilization, concern about human "mongrels," the concept of racial purity.

I was fascinated by the details he dug up, explaining the life experiences of individual people who fell afoul of government programs to "improve" the human population. 

I am an academic economist, but even more interested in intellectual debates. I discovered this book when I was a PhD student, and it has remained a favorite of mine.

In the 1970s, macroeconomics (not my field) underwent a revolution. The old guard was “Keynesian,” the new Turks were “new classical”. This book is a series of conversations from the early 1980s with the protagonists of this epic period, many future Nobel laureates.

The interviewer, Arjo Klamer, was interested in the rhetoric and culture of economics, and he constructed the interviews in a way that nicely brought out these elements. The interlocutors are brilliant, acerbic, and funny. If you think economics is dry or boring, you won’t think so after seeing how passionate these people are.

This book makes the complex subject of the immune system fun to learn about.

At a time when our immune systems are taxed by the COVID epidemic, many people are confused about the role of our immune response, and this book provides an in-depth description of our body’s defenses in an entertaining and compelling way.

Critically important is that there is an immune system in the brain. When chronic inflammation occurs in the body, it also occurs in the brain, contributing to depression and cognitive deficits. 

It’s fashionable to think doomsday is coming, so fashionable that young people’s mental health is being harmed by relentless negativism in education, politics, the media, and Hollywood. 

Yet all previously predicted doomsdays did not happen! 

Historically, optimists have proven right far more often than pessimists. In this book Ridley makes the case that a revival of intellectual respectability for optimism would be good for society. Pessimists think there is no hope. Optimists believe reforms will succeed and society can improve.

This is actually not one book but a five-volume (!) series of books which contains some of the best writing on classical music I’ve ever come across.

Taruskin, who passed away recently, was a legendary musicologist. In his writings, he managed to combine analytic writing that addresses his colleagues with unbelievably sharp and insightful writing that I, as a classical music fan who is not a pro, enjoy tremendously.

Taruskin loved picking intellectual fights, and this sort of combative energy is gripping. In this series, there are major story arcs like the interplay between “oral” and “literate” traditions or the role of nationalism in 19th-century music. I liked how Tarsukin switches smoothly between a close analysis of a piece and a discussion of how it relates to the wider culture.