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Books |
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Books |
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Which I've probably told you about whether you are interested or not... You are welcome to borrow any. I have many in Kindle format now too.
Tell me about any you guess I would like! steve.haigh (at) yahoo.co.uk. Download an early version of the list in Excel [here] 
Author |
Title |
Summary |
Steve Rating |
Genre |
Paper or audio |
| Ben Goldacre | Bad Science | Nonsense in medicine | 5. Compulsary reading | Science |
Paper |
| Richard Dawkins | The God Delusion | Nonsense in religion | 5. Compulsary reading | Science |
Both |
| Joe Simpson | Touching the void | Mountaineering disaster | 5. Compulsary reading | True Story |
Paper |
| Andy McNab | Bravo Two zero | SAS mission disaster | 5. Compulsary reading | True Story |
Paper |
| Bill Bryson | A short history of nearly everything | Amusing and edcuational | 5. Compulsary reading | Science |
Both |
| Bill Bryson | Notes from a big country | Hilarious short stories | 5. Compulsary reading | True Story |
Both |
| John Gribbin | Almost everybodies guide to science | Science for beginners | 5. Compulsary reading | Science |
Audio |
| Andrew Moore | Bandoliers little book of assessing the medical evidence | How to sort the wheat from the chaff in medical literature | 5. Compulsary reading | Work |
Paper |
| Edzard Ernst & Simon Singh | Trick or Treatment | The evidence behind alternative medicine | 5. Compulsary reading | Science |
Paper |
| Dan Arily | Predictably Irrational | How our decisions are influenced and often not rational | 5. Compulsory reading | Science |
Both |
| Christopher Hitchens | God is not great | Nonsense in religion | 4. Very good | Science |
Both |
| Thomas Childers | World War II - Military & Social History | The full story | 4. Very good | History |
Audio |
| Carl Sagan | The Demon haunted world - Science as a candle in the dark | Seminal work on logical thinking | 4. Very good | Science |
Both |
| Carl Sagan | Pale blue dot | The tinyness of earth and the human race | 4. Very good | Science |
Audio |
| Derren Brown | Tricks of the mind | Review of all his techniques | 4. Very good | Science |
Both |
| George Orwell | Animal Farm | Classic fiction on corrupt leadership | 4. Very good | Fiction |
Audio |
| David Allen | Getting things done | How to be efficient at work | 4. Very good | Work |
Audio |
| Richard Dawkins | The Greatest Show on Earth - The Evidence for Evolution | How we know it's true | 4. Very good | Science |
Audio |
| Richard Feynman | Surely you're joking Mr Feynman | Anecdotes from Feynmans life | 4. Very good | Science |
Both |
| Richard Feynman | What do you care what other people think? | Anecdotes from Feynmans life | 4. Very good | Science |
Both |
| Levitt and Dubner | Freakonomics |
How events are influenced by things you dont expect | 4. Very good | Science |
Audio |
| Sam Harris | The End of Faith | Why belief in things without evidence is not good | 4. Very good | Science |
Both |
| Sam Harris | Letter to a Christian Nation | Follow up to The End of Faith addressing critics | 4. Very good | Science |
Both |
| Stephen Hawking | The Universe in a Nutshell | Summary of the universe for beginners | 4. Very good | Science |
Audio |
| Jeffrey Liker | The Toyota Way | How to be efficient at work (Lean thinking) | 4. Very good | Work |
Audio |
| Tim Harford | The Undercover Economist | All about money | 4. Very good | Science |
Audio |
Tony Hawks |
Round Ireland with a Fridge | Funny account of a crazy hitch-hiking holiday | 4. Very good | True Story |
Both |
| Ian Rowland | The full facts book of cold reading | How psychics fool people | 4. Very good | Science |
Paper |
| John Diamond | Snake Oil | How alternative treatment sharks pray on the gullible | 4. Very good | Science |
Paper |
| Richard Branson | Losing my virginity | His life story | 4. Very good | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Jeremy Clarkson | The World According to Clarkson | Amusing ramblings | 4. Very good | Random |
Paper |
| Martin Gardner | My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles | brain teasers | 4. Very good | Science |
Paper |
| James Randi | Psychic Investigator | Book to accompany TV series | 4. Very good | Science |
Paper |
| Phil Wiffen | Evidence based Pharmacy | How to sort the wheat from the chaff in medical literature | 4. Very good | Work |
Paper |
| Richard Dawkins | A Devils Chaplin | Collection of Dawkins essays | 4. Very good | Science |
Paper |
| Dan Brown | The Da Vinci Code | Entertaining story book | 4. Very good | Fiction |
Paper |
| Chris Ryan | The one that got away | From the Bravo Two Zero SAS disaster mission | 4. Very good | True Story |
Paper |
James Trefil |
The edge of the unknown | Ten questions science hasn't yet answered | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Paper |
| John O'Farrell | An Utterly Impartial History of Britain | Amusing | 3. Worth reading | History |
Audio |
| Sherry Sontag | Blind Man's Bluff | The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage | 3. Worth reading | History |
Audio |
| Carl Sagan | Life in the universe | Discussion about the probabilities | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| David Attenborough | Life on air | His life story | 3. Worth reading | Autobiography |
Audio |
| Edward Larson | Evolution - The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory | Easy overview | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Thomas Macauley | History of England | Easy overview | 3. Worth reading | History |
Audio |
| John Krakauer | Into thin air | The story of the day the most people died on Everest | 3. Worth reading | True Story |
Paper |
| Martin Rees | Just six numbers | The numbers which govern how the universe works | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Richard Dawkins | River out of Eden | Overview of evolution | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Both |
| Richard Dawkins | The Ancestors Tale | A journey backwards through time showing how we evolved | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Both |
| James Gleick | Genius (Feynman) | Feynman's biography | 3. Worth reading | Autobiography |
Both |
| Simon Singh | Fermat's Last Theorem | History of solving the most difficult Mathematical problem ever | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Stephen Fry | The Fry Chronicles | Later years | 3. Worth reading | Autobiography |
Audio |
| Stephen Fry | Moab is my washpot | Earlier years | 3. Worth reading | Autobiography |
Audio |
| Stephen Hawking | A Briefer History of Time | Easier reading version A Brief History of Time | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Joe Simpson | This Game of Ghosts | Many other traumas suffered by Joe Simpson (Touching the Void) | 3. Worth reading | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Walter Alvarez | T-Rex and The Crater of Doom | History of the dinosaurs getting wiped out | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Deborah Cadbury | The Dinosaur Hunters | History of finding dinosaur fossils | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Timothy Ferris | The Red Limit | The search for the edge of the universe | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Timothy Ferris | The Whole Shebang | All about the universe | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Audio |
| Richard Feynman | The pleasure of finding things out | Anecdotes from Feynmans life | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Paper |
| Marcia Angell | The Truth about Drug Companies | And how evil they are | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Paper |
| Michael Shermer | Why people believe in weird things | The crazy things people believe in and why | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Paper |
| Michael Brooks | 13 things that don’t make sense | 12 science mysteries 0. Yet to be solved | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Paper |
| John Wiseman | The SAS survival Handbook | How to survice when your plane crashes on a deserted island | 3. Worth reading | Science |
Paper |
| Michael Palin | Pole to Pole | North to south pole overland adventure | 3. Worth reading | True Story |
Paper |
| Frank Skinner | Autobiography | Comedian | 3. Worth reading | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Daniel Moerman | Medicine, Meaning and the placebo effect | All about the placebo effect | 3. Worth reading | Work |
Paper |
| Andrew Smith | Moon dust | The story of the 12 men who stood on the moon | 3. Worth reading | True Story |
Paper |
| Brian Greene | The fabric of the cosmos |
The physics of the universe. Fairly hard core and causes intellectual vertigo. | 2. OK | Science |
Audio |
| Albert Einstein | Relativity | Text book | 2. OK | Science |
Audio |
| Bertrand Russell | Religion and Science | Cant remember! | 2. OK | Science |
Audio |
| Bill Bryson | A walk in the woods | Slightly amusing Relatively unexciting story of a really long walk | 2. OK | True Story |
Both |
| Bill Bryson | Down under | Slightly amusing Relatively unexciting story of travelling through australia | 2. OK | True Story |
Both |
| Bill Bryson | Notes from a small Island | Slightly amusing Relatively unexciting story of travelling through australia | 2. OK | True Story |
Both |
| Bill Bryson | Shakespere | Slightly amusing and edcuational | 2. OK | History |
Both |
| Bill Bryson | The Thunderbolt kid | Slightly amusing story of his childhood | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Both |
| Carl Sagan | Contact | thoughtful fiction | 2. OK | Fiction |
Audio |
| George Orwell | 1984 | Classic fiction on pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control | 2. OK | Fiction |
Audio |
| John Krakauer | Into the wild | A chap who tries to live off nature but eats something poisonous | 2. OK | True Story |
Audio |
| Richard Dawkins | The Selfish Gene | Seminal work of evolution - hard reading | 2. OK | Science |
Both |
| Stephen Hawking | A Brief History of Time | Hard reading explanation of time | 2. OK | Science |
Both |
| Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius | World War One | Full history | 2. OK | History |
Audio |
| Mark Steele | What's going on? | Amusing ramblings | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Bill Bryson | Neither here nor there | Cant remember! | 2. OK | True Story |
Paper |
| Nassim Taleb | Fooled by randomness | How randomness fools people | 2. OK | Science |
Paper |
| Brian Cox | Why does E=MC2 | Fairly hard reading, but followable | 2. OK | Science |
Paper |
| Robert Persig | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Classic philosophical work on quality and values | 2. OK | Random |
Both |
| Pamela Stephenson | Billy | Comedian | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Bob Monkhouse | Crying with Laughter | TV comedian | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Chris Bonnington | I chose to Climb | Mountaineer | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Chris Moyles | The Gospel according to | Radio 1 DJ | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Jeremy Guscott | At the Centre | Rugby player | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Martin Johnson | Autobiography | Rugby player | 2. OK | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Tim Albert | Write Effectively | How to write well | 2. OK | Work |
Paper |
| Bill Bryson | Mother Tongue | History of the English language | 1. Only if you are keen | History |
Both |
| Richard Dawkins | The Extended Phenotype | Very hard reading, explaining the far reaching effect of genes | 1. Only if you are keen | Science |
Both |
| Stephen Hawking | Black Holes and Baby Universes | Follow up to A Brief History of Time to make your head hurt even more | 1. Only if you are keen | Science |
Audio |
| Carl Foggarty | Foggy | Motorcyclist | 1. Only if you are keen | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Peter McAlese | No mean soldier | Nutcase hardman ex SAS turned mercenary | 1. Only if you are keen | Autobiography |
Paper |
| John Diamond | C - Because cowards get cancer | His fight against Throat cancer | 0. Yet to read | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Neil DeGrasse Tyson | Death by Black hole | 0. Yet to read | Science |
Paper |
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| Nassim Taleb | The black swan | 0. Yet to read | Science |
Both |
|
| Frank Gardner | Far horizons | 0. Yet to read | Autobiography |
Paper |
|
| Dara O'Briain | Tickling the English | 0. Yet to read | Autobiography |
Paper |
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| Stuart Sutherland | Irrationality | 0. Yet to read | Science |
Paper |
|
| Garry Schofeld | Tries the Limit | Rugby player | 0. Yet to read | Autobiography |
Paper |
| Richard Wiseman | 59 seconds | 0. Yet to read | Science |
Audio |
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| Jack Dee | Thanks for nothing | 0. Yet to read | Autobiography |
Paper |