Favorite Non-fictions

[Rayaan]

The crash of 2011 caused this thread to disappear. So, here it is once again.

Here are my favorites:

- The Elegant Universe (Brian Greene)
- The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)
- I am a Strange Loop (Douglas Hofstadter)
- Order Out of Chaos (Illya Prigogine)
- The Evolution of Cooperation (Robert Axelrod)
- Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (Lisa Randall)
- The Mind of God (Paul Davies)
- The HeartMath Solution (Doc Lew Childre and Howard Martin)
- A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis (David M. Friedman)
- Programming the Universe (Seth Lloyd)
- The Secret House: The Extraordinary Science of an Ordinary Day (David Bodanis)

So post your favorite non-fictions here (which includes genres like psychololgy, culture, science, philosophy, history, etc).

[Edwardo Piet]

I've been wanting to get I Am A Strange Loop. It's about consciousness isn't it? And self reference? Could you tell me a bit about it? I'm interested in it.

[Rayaan]

Yes, the main subject of the book is about the relationship between consciousness and self-reference. The author argues that self-reference is the key element for a collection of inanimate matter to become aware of itself, or to perceive itself, and this is what he means by a "strange loop" because such a loop exists inside all of our heads at an abstract level which are based on symbols and self-referential "loops." He believes that these abstract symbols in our head begin to point toward themselves, at a certain time of human development, and they become more and more self-referential and this what allows consciousness to emerge. I also personally find this idea very interesting and a good one, too. More in this article.

According to Hofstadter, self-awareness, the quality of having a "soul," a "self," an "I," is itself the result of a particular kind of self-reference in the "programming" of the human mind. This special self-reference, which he calls the "Strange Loop," is information that references itself, but in such a way as to bring in new information before referencing itself again.

[downbeatplumb]

An utterly impartial history of britain or 2000 years of upper class idiots in charge-John O-farrel
Science of the discworld 1 and 2-these are both science books and science fantasy books so are on the cusp.
A short history of almost everything-Bill Bryson

[HeyItsZeus]

Thank you for using my term

Maybe I should copyright it?

[Rayaan]

You're welcome. Yeah, I heard it from you first so the credit is yours (for the term "crash of 2011").

[Rev. Rye]

Well, since one of my posts got lost, I think I should rework my list:

Biography:
Barney Ross (Douglas Century)
If Chins Could Kill (Bruce Campbell)
Edmund Morris' Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy

Religion:
The Dhammapada
The God Delusion (Dawkins)
The Satanic Bible (Anton LaVey)
The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran)
What the Buddha Taught (Walpola Rahula)
Misquoting Jesus (Bart Ehrman)

True Crime:
Ice Man (Philip Carlo)
Joey the Hitman and Hit 29 (Joey Black)
Yosemite Murders (Denis McDougal)

History:
The Decline of the West (Spengler)
Night (Elie Wiesel)
Hiroshima (John Hersey)
True Believer (Hoffer)

Philosophy:
Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
Utopia (Thomas More)
Pretty much any collection of Schopenhauer now in print
The Bk (Alan Watts)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (Balthasar Gracian)

Poets (Because the Dewey Decimal System counts it as non-fiction):
William Blake
Philip Larkin
Pablo Neruda
In Categories All By Themselves:
Mr. Boston
The Anatomy of Melancholy

[reverendjeremiah]

The Bible

[sacrilicious]

Coming of Age In The Milky Way - Timothy Ferris (Entertaining historical overview of science)
The Way We Think : Conceptual Blending And The Mind's Hidden Complexities -Fauconnier and Turner (Heady as the title is)
Critical Path - Buckminster Fuller (Whether I agree with Bucky or not, it is amazing to read. A huge intellect presented in E-Prime.)

[Meatball]

The Head Trip: i found this in a discount bin and it blew me away. It's basically a guy explaining how different our body and brain work during different "phases", like when we zone out driving to work, or when we hallucinate just before falling asleep.

It's really eye-opening and written in a very interesting accessible way. Highly recommended for people who like science but hate reading dry science books.