Non-fiction book recs
Aug. 20th, 2012 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaI have been contemplating this post for a while, but I finally typed it up while I was up in the mountains (and then forgot about it until now). Here you go: recs of non-fiction books I have enjoyed!
Cloud-lover's Guide, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney
This is one of those books from which I learn lots of new things, and then integrate them until it feels like I've always known them. It's a popular science book about clouds and weather, and it's light, entertaining reading--the science is interspersed with anecdotes and stories--but it's still packed with interesting and useful knowledge. Like, I learned how to recognize various clouds and how they work, and how to predict the weather by having the wind at my back and looking at the direction the clouds move, and the mechanism behind that.
Meat, by Simon Fairlie
Another of those books I've learned things from that it feels afterwards like I've always known. This is the best book I've ever read about the meat issue. It's only about one aspect of it, though: the environmental issues, not about other ethical issues or dietary issues. It does take the clear stance that the world as a whole is eating too much meat to be sustainable, but beyond that it's not black and white at all. For example, it takes the often-heard statement that since animals are a step up in the food chain from plants, you lose 90% of the energy by eating an animal instead of eating the plants in the first place. And then it complicates the hell out of that statement, breaking it down by species, and by where the animal's food comes from, and shows that it's not always relevant. In particular, there's a break-off point below which you don't actually lose anything by keeping animals, because the animals can live off food waste, crop waste, pastureland where you can't grow crops, etc. Of course, we're far above that point today. Anyway, you come out of the book knowing that things are far more complicated than you thought, which is a good thing IMO.
Full House, by Stephen Jay Gould
Really, I could have recced any number of Gould's other books--all his essay collections are worth reading, for example--but this is his last book, and it's very thought-provoking. The whole book is basically about a statistical argument illustrated by various examples. That sounds dry, but it's not. I love Gould's writing style--he writes so well he can make me care about baseball statistics, for God's sake. But what he uses the statistical argument for is to dethrone the human species. It's a very humbling book, but not in a depressing way. I especially like the last chapter, which extols all the ways in which single-celled life is the dominant form of life on Earth.
The Holocene: An Environmental History, by Neil Roberts
This book is about how the Earth got from the end of the last Ice Age to the present day. It can be dry in parts (you can skip the part about dating and research methods if you want to take the scientists on faith) but it's also fascinating. You probably already know some of the ways in which the ice shaped the land, if you live in a part of the world that was glaciated, but this book isn't about geology, it's about the process of how ecosystems responded to the retreating ice. It's also about humans and how they interacted with and influenced the environment, up to the present day.
The Dinosaur Heresies, by Robert T. Bakker
I am reccing this partly out of nostalgia, because I first read it fifteen years ago and I'm sure it's dated (it's from 1986). After all, I think everyone today agrees that some dinosaurs had feathers and were the ancestors of birds, and most people agree that at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded. But it's so full of enthusiasm and energy that I can't help but be charmed. It feels all "me against the establishment!" (which it was, at the time) and he throws out all sorts of cool ideas, some of which are no doubt false, but some of which are now the prevalent view. Also, it has delightful illustrations.
A Sand County Almanac, with essays from Round River, by Aldo Leopold
Oh, how I love this book. I reread it regularly, and I dearly wish it were out of copyright so I could record it as an audiobook. It moves from the concrete, with observations from a farm during the course of a year, to the abstract, with essays on ecology and ethics. It's especially good at using the concrete, specific detail to illustrate more general concepts. And I like that it shows me the American landscape, which is after all rather different from what I'm used to. But I also love the language--I could read it for that alone. Here's a sample: A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges.
The Ever-Changing Sky: A Guide to the Celestial Sphere, by James B. Kaler
Another bit of knowledge that I've absorbed until it feels like I've always known it. It's about celestial mechanics, an old-fashioned aspect of astronomy that isn't very "hot" nowadays--it seems like most popular science books on astronomy are about black holes or supernovas or the Big Bang. To pick some simple examples, after you read this, it will be completely obvious to you why the full moon always rises just as the sun sets, or why there is a longer period of twilight in high latitudes compared to at the equator. There's also a section on calendars and time measurement, which is a far more complex subject than you could guess.
Collapse, by Jared Diamond
This book is a study of various past civilizations that collapsed, and various ones that didn't, and an analysis of the reasons why--with the aim of applying this to modern-day civilization, of course. I don't always agree with Diamond (like the bit in a previous book where he explained drug use with Zahavi's handicap hypothesis--er, what?) but he's such a renaissance kind of author, spanning so many different fields, that he's always interesting. Also, in this book I learned the tidbit that the first Scandinavian settlers on Greenland did not eat fish, despite fish being a staple in Scandinavia. And nobody knows why.
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
I found this interesting because it approaches politics from a different perspective: the authors are epidemiologists, and the book presents their findings of how inequality (measured as income difference) affects people's lives, based on official statistics. Basically, in more equal societies, they find that people have better mental and physical health, there is less violent crime, more social mobility, higher levels of trust, less people in prison, and a longer life expectancy. And this holds across all social classes--that is, the highest income class in a more equal society will be healthier etc than the highest income class in a more unequal society. Conversely, among the affluent countries there is no correlation between average income and social well-being--that is, if a country grows richer, it does not follow that people will be happier (obviously this does not hold for poorer countries where some people don't have enough to eat, etc). Anyway, I believed in greater equality before this, but it's nice with some hard data.
Living My Life, by Emma Goldman
One of my two favorite autobiographies (the other being Peter Kropotkin's, which I recorded for Librivox a while ago). I first read it in an abridged Swedish translation, and I remember being so annoyed when they skipped parts, because I wanted to read it all! Anyway, it's a vivid portrait of her life and of the early anarchist and syndicalist movement in the US. And while Kropotkin says basically nothing about his private life, Emma Goldman talks all over the place about all her various lovers. *g*
Cloud-lover's Guide, by Gavin Pretor-Pinney
This is one of those books from which I learn lots of new things, and then integrate them until it feels like I've always known them. It's a popular science book about clouds and weather, and it's light, entertaining reading--the science is interspersed with anecdotes and stories--but it's still packed with interesting and useful knowledge. Like, I learned how to recognize various clouds and how they work, and how to predict the weather by having the wind at my back and looking at the direction the clouds move, and the mechanism behind that.
Meat, by Simon Fairlie
Another of those books I've learned things from that it feels afterwards like I've always known. This is the best book I've ever read about the meat issue. It's only about one aspect of it, though: the environmental issues, not about other ethical issues or dietary issues. It does take the clear stance that the world as a whole is eating too much meat to be sustainable, but beyond that it's not black and white at all. For example, it takes the often-heard statement that since animals are a step up in the food chain from plants, you lose 90% of the energy by eating an animal instead of eating the plants in the first place. And then it complicates the hell out of that statement, breaking it down by species, and by where the animal's food comes from, and shows that it's not always relevant. In particular, there's a break-off point below which you don't actually lose anything by keeping animals, because the animals can live off food waste, crop waste, pastureland where you can't grow crops, etc. Of course, we're far above that point today. Anyway, you come out of the book knowing that things are far more complicated than you thought, which is a good thing IMO.
Full House, by Stephen Jay Gould
Really, I could have recced any number of Gould's other books--all his essay collections are worth reading, for example--but this is his last book, and it's very thought-provoking. The whole book is basically about a statistical argument illustrated by various examples. That sounds dry, but it's not. I love Gould's writing style--he writes so well he can make me care about baseball statistics, for God's sake. But what he uses the statistical argument for is to dethrone the human species. It's a very humbling book, but not in a depressing way. I especially like the last chapter, which extols all the ways in which single-celled life is the dominant form of life on Earth.
The Holocene: An Environmental History, by Neil Roberts
This book is about how the Earth got from the end of the last Ice Age to the present day. It can be dry in parts (you can skip the part about dating and research methods if you want to take the scientists on faith) but it's also fascinating. You probably already know some of the ways in which the ice shaped the land, if you live in a part of the world that was glaciated, but this book isn't about geology, it's about the process of how ecosystems responded to the retreating ice. It's also about humans and how they interacted with and influenced the environment, up to the present day.
The Dinosaur Heresies, by Robert T. Bakker
I am reccing this partly out of nostalgia, because I first read it fifteen years ago and I'm sure it's dated (it's from 1986). After all, I think everyone today agrees that some dinosaurs had feathers and were the ancestors of birds, and most people agree that at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded. But it's so full of enthusiasm and energy that I can't help but be charmed. It feels all "me against the establishment!" (which it was, at the time) and he throws out all sorts of cool ideas, some of which are no doubt false, but some of which are now the prevalent view. Also, it has delightful illustrations.
A Sand County Almanac, with essays from Round River, by Aldo Leopold
Oh, how I love this book. I reread it regularly, and I dearly wish it were out of copyright so I could record it as an audiobook. It moves from the concrete, with observations from a farm during the course of a year, to the abstract, with essays on ecology and ethics. It's especially good at using the concrete, specific detail to illustrate more general concepts. And I like that it shows me the American landscape, which is after all rather different from what I'm used to. But I also love the language--I could read it for that alone. Here's a sample: A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges.
The Ever-Changing Sky: A Guide to the Celestial Sphere, by James B. Kaler
Another bit of knowledge that I've absorbed until it feels like I've always known it. It's about celestial mechanics, an old-fashioned aspect of astronomy that isn't very "hot" nowadays--it seems like most popular science books on astronomy are about black holes or supernovas or the Big Bang. To pick some simple examples, after you read this, it will be completely obvious to you why the full moon always rises just as the sun sets, or why there is a longer period of twilight in high latitudes compared to at the equator. There's also a section on calendars and time measurement, which is a far more complex subject than you could guess.
Collapse, by Jared Diamond
This book is a study of various past civilizations that collapsed, and various ones that didn't, and an analysis of the reasons why--with the aim of applying this to modern-day civilization, of course. I don't always agree with Diamond (like the bit in a previous book where he explained drug use with Zahavi's handicap hypothesis--er, what?) but he's such a renaissance kind of author, spanning so many different fields, that he's always interesting. Also, in this book I learned the tidbit that the first Scandinavian settlers on Greenland did not eat fish, despite fish being a staple in Scandinavia. And nobody knows why.
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
I found this interesting because it approaches politics from a different perspective: the authors are epidemiologists, and the book presents their findings of how inequality (measured as income difference) affects people's lives, based on official statistics. Basically, in more equal societies, they find that people have better mental and physical health, there is less violent crime, more social mobility, higher levels of trust, less people in prison, and a longer life expectancy. And this holds across all social classes--that is, the highest income class in a more equal society will be healthier etc than the highest income class in a more unequal society. Conversely, among the affluent countries there is no correlation between average income and social well-being--that is, if a country grows richer, it does not follow that people will be happier (obviously this does not hold for poorer countries where some people don't have enough to eat, etc). Anyway, I believed in greater equality before this, but it's nice with some hard data.
Living My Life, by Emma Goldman
One of my two favorite autobiographies (the other being Peter Kropotkin's, which I recorded for Librivox a while ago). I first read it in an abridged Swedish translation, and I remember being so annoyed when they skipped parts, because I wanted to read it all! Anyway, it's a vivid portrait of her life and of the early anarchist and syndicalist movement in the US. And while Kropotkin says basically nothing about his private life, Emma Goldman talks all over the place about all her various lovers. *g*
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Date: 2012-08-19 10:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-20 07:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-20 01:09 am (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2012-08-20 07:51 am (UTC)