“Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective thought.” Ursula K. Le Guin

I love books, and I love book recommendations, so here we go! This list is ever-evolving and is a combination of books I’ve read and found personally important (majority) and those I have in the queue but am very excited about (~5%).

There’s no order, and I have also included scientific publications, which I am again always adding to.

Other lists/publishers/bookstores I recommend perusing:

  • NOEMA Magazine

  • Patagonia Books

  • Thriftbooks(!)

  • City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco CA

  • Strand Bookstore, NYC

  • Half Price Books Flagship, Dallas TX

  • LibreTexts (free, online, and high-quality textbooks)

  • If you happen to be in Richardson TX, the Richardson Public Library!

Books:

  • Space Crone, by Ursula K. Le Guin

  • Letters to a Young Scientist, by E.O. Wilson

  • A Beautiful Question, by Frank Wilczek

  • An Immense Journey, by Loren Eiseley

  • The Children of Time Trilogy, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  • The Rise, by Sarah Elizabeth Lewis

  • A Wild Idea, by Jonathan Franklin

  • Three Californias, by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • Green Earth, by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • The Character of Physical Law, by Richard Feynman

  • Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges

  • Synergetics, by R. Buckminster Fuller

  • Necessary Illusions, by Noam Chomsky

  • Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino

  • The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin

  • Acid for the Children, by Flea

  • Women Talking, by Mirian Toewes

  • Selected Papers on Molecular Biology, by Jacques Monod

  • Chance & Necessity, by Jacques Monod

  • Steering the Craft, by Ursula K. Le Guin

  • No Spare Time, by Ursula K. Le Guin

  • Words Are My Matter, by Ursula K. Le Guin

  • The Idiot, by Elif Batuman

  • To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

  • Two Cities, by Cynthia Zarin

  • The Double Helix, by James D. Watson

  • The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, by George Kubler

  • Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, by Richard Powers

  • Philosophy of Biological Science, by David Hull

  • Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

  • Data-Driven Science and Engineering: Machine Learning, Dynamical Systems and Control (2nd Ed.), by Steve Brunton and Nathan Kutz

  • Conservation Refugees, by Mark Dowie

  • Biodiversity and Climate Change, by Thomas E. Lovejoy

  • Makusipe Komanto Iseru: Sustaining Makushi Way of Life, by the Makushi Research Unit

  • Deviate, by Beau Lotto

  • Brave Genius, by Sean Carroll

  • Endurance, by Alfred Lansing

  • Introduction to Polymers, by R.J. Young

  • The Archipelago of Hope, by Gleb Raygorodetsky

  • Deep Ecology, by Devall Sessions

  • The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker

  • Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equatorial Regions of America During the Years 1799-1804, by Alexander von Humboldt and Aime Bonpland

  • Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin

  • The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, by Richard W. Hamming

  • The Princeton Companion to Mathematics

  • The Longest Way, by Christoph Rehage

  • A Silent Fire, by Shilpa Ravella

  • The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics

  • The Feynman Lectures on Physics

  • Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson

  • Worlds Without End: Exoplanets, Habitability, and the Future of Humanity, by Chris Impey

  • Babel, by R.F. Kuang

  • Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

  • Constructing a Nervous System, by Margo Jefferson

  • Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter

  • The Math You Need, by Thomas Mack

  • Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Climber, by Steve Roper

  • Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts

  • Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, by Kevin Kelly

  • Bright Dead Things, by Ada Limon

  • Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, by Alan Lightman

  • Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology, by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili

  • Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach, by Donald A. McQuarrie and John D. Simon

  • Captain Cousteau’s Underwater Treasury, by Jaques-Yves Cousteau

  • Understanding Physics, by Isaac Asimov

  • The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson

  • Endurance, by Scott Kelly

  • The Overstory, by Richard Powers

  • Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

  • Amaze, by Christina Mittermeier

  • Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson

  • Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brien

  • Whole Earth Discipline, by Stewart Brand

  • The Media Lab, by Stewart Brand

  • Patagonia Tools for Grassroots Activists

  • The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe

  • Apollo 13, by Jeffrey Kluger

  • Failure is Not an Option, by Gene Kranz

  • Skunk Works, by Ben Rich

  • Life Lived Wild, by Rick Ridgeway

  • Chasing Space, by Leland Melvin

  • Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer

  • Never Cry Wolf

  • The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf

  • It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, by Lynsey Addario

  • Earth Is My Witness, by Art Wolfe

  • Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, by Richard Feynman

  • The High Sierra: A Love Story, by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • American Prometheus, by Kai Bird

  • Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens, by K.C. Cole

  • Dune, by Frank Hebert

  • Darwin’s Radio, by Greg Bear

  • Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Change, by Brasseur, Orlando and Tyndall

  • MIT KSJ Scientific Journalism Handbook

  • Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang

  • The Giver Quartet, by Lois Lowry

  • The Rock Warrior’s Way, by Arno Ilgner

  • 9 Out of 10 Climbers Make the Same Mistakes, by Dave MacLeod

  • The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkein

  • His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman

  • The Ascent of Rum Doodle

Scientific Publications: