Quarantine Nonfiction book recs for someone who likes science and sociology/psychology?
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, by Col. Chris Hadfield (one of my fave books I’ve ever read, so detailed and so interesting. Not by a scientist but so much great reasoning involving scientific principles and being prepared and all that with PLENTY of adventure thrown in)
Crisis in the Red Zone, by Richard Preston (an almost novel-style, completely factual chronological retelling of the 2014 Ebola epidemic and multiple groups of people fighting it)
The Demon in the Freezer, also by him (if you wanna know about anthrax and smallpox and bioweapons, this is your book)
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Khaneman
Do No Harm, by Henry Marsh
Counting Backwards, by Henry Jay Pryzbylo, MD
FICTION: Extraordinary Means, by Robin Schneider (I know it’s fiction, but it’s a hypothetical “what will it look like if Tuberculosis becomes totally drug resistant in our lifetime, how does modern society handle that”)
An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison
Flow (don’t remember who it’s by)
Rise of the Rocket Girls, by Nathalia Holt
For the Love of Physics, by Walter Lewin et. al. (Walter is a gross gross man who did a lot of iffy stuff with students if you know what I mean but this is singlehandedly the most beautiful description of falling in love with physics and learning and teaching and how magical it all is I have found so just get a copy used so he doesn’t get money and enjoy yourself)
The Island of Knowledge, by Marcelo Gleiser
A Mind for Numbers, by Barbara Oakley (I think everyone who goes to high school or college should be given this book. if you gotta take math or science courses you deserve to learn what this book has to say)
The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg
Grit, by Angela Duckworth
The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell (actually just. any of his books. all his books. very interesting)
Applied Minds, by Guru Madhavan
The Like Switch, by Jack Schafer, PhD (dude. this is written by an ex-FBI dude, SO INTERESTING, parts of it can be a little awkward if you’re not in his same demographic, but like. this is so worth the read if you like psychology at ALL, it’s rad)
Situations Matter, by Sam Sommers
Have Dog, Will Travel, by Stephen Kuusisto (not exactly sciency but it’s an amazing exploration of the experience of disability, how different each disabled person is, how society treats the disabled, and how human we all are, plus how rad service dogs are in general, which is just a sociological gold mine honestly)
Not hard science exactly but Words on the Move by John McWhorter is SO NEAT if you want to fall in love with the English language and learn a lot about how our language trains us to think and why we think and say the things we do and how linguistics plays into our perceptions and thoughts and word choice and all that. it’s a love letter to English but it’s a lot more than that too
And this might be a bit too on the nose for right now, but if you’re up for it:
Very, Very, Very Dreadful, by Albert Marrin (some history of plagues throughout humanity’s history, how we figured out vaccines and that viruses and bacteria exist, and a LOT about the influenza pandemic of 1918. good read)
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