What is this?

On this page I will share recommendations for books that I have found to be particularly entertaining, enlightning and informative.

History of Science

• Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Walker 1995.
  Read about how the Grand Challenge of its time was solved.

• Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love, Penguin, 2000.
  The story of Galileo told through his daughter's letters to him. Don't miss the ending!

• David Bodains, E=mc^2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation, Berkley, 2000.
  A very entertaining book.

• Nick Taylor, LASER: The Inventor, The Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War, Simon and Shuster, 2000.

• Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World, Free Press, 2002.
  The story behind the standardization of the Meter.

• Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem, Anchor Books, 1997.
  Do you often wonder what it's like to think about one problem for a long time?

• Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, Anchor Books, 1999.

• Simon Singh, Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe,, Fourth Estate, 2005.

• Erik Larson, Thunderstruck, , Crown, 2006.

• Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City, , Vintage, 2003.

History

• Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary Perrenial, 1999.
  You will never look at a dictionary the same way again!

• David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry the VIII, Harper Collins, 2003.
  A true story unmatched by any fictional account.

• David Starkey, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, Perennial, 2000.
  The ultimate fight-to-get-a-job story.

• David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, Avon, 1989.
  A must-read for anyone interested in the modern history of the Middle East.

• Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East, Linden Press, 1981.
  If you enjoy this book you will enjoy the subsequent parts that complete Neff's Trilogy. You can find them at on-line used book stores easily.
  

• Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, , Knopf, 2006

• Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Norton, 1999.
  A theory of Macro-History. Now everything makes sense.
  

• David McCullough, 1776 Simon and Schuster, 2005.

Books on Paris and France

Note: I read these books when my family and I spent a month in Paris in Summer 2006. I highly recommend them.

• Colin Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City, Penguin, 2005.

• Alistair Horne, La Belle France: A short History, Vintage, 2004.

• William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (2nd Ed), Oxford, 2002.

Miscellaneous Non-Fiction

• Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Perennial, 2001.

• Jim Defede, The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, Harper Collins, 2002.

• Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The power of thinking without thinking, Little Brown, 2005.

• Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Back Bay Books, 2002.

• Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakanomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything,, Morrow, 2005.

• Thomas Friedman The World is Flat: A brief History of the twenty-first century, Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

• Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A story of race and inheritance, Three Rivers Press, 2004.

• Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on reclaiming the American Dream, Random House, 2006.

Fiction

• Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, The Light of Other Days, Tom Doherty Assoc., 2000.
  The consequences of progress in communication taken to an extreme.

• James Hynes, Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror, Picador, 1997.
  The title tells it all. Make sure to read the three stories in sequence.

• James Hynes, The Lecturer's Tale, Picador, 2001.
  You need to be an academic to enjoy this.

• James Hynes, Kings of Infinite Space , Picador, 2004.
  OK, so I can't have enough of James Hynes' books.

• Arthur C. Clarke (and Gentry Lee) The Rama Series: Rednezvous with Rama, Rama II, The Garden of Rama, and Rama Revealed.