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Reading non-fiction is sweet, because it can take you outside the narrow, narrow field that is your personal experience. Most of what I know is abstract, in the sense that I haven't experienced it myself, but have read about people who have and their thoughts on them. This page lists the non-fiction I've read (not all have reviews, but those that do are links).

The list

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Anton Szandor LaVey

Carl Sagan

Christopher Hitchens

Dwight K. Nelson

Eirik Newth

Eric K. Drexler

G. H. Hardy

Isaac Asimov

John Farndon

Lawrence Lessig

Lynne Truss

Michael Shermer

Niccolò Machiavelli

Paul Graham

Ray Kurzweil

Richard Dawkins

Richard P. Feynman

Ronnie Johanson

Sam Harris

Steven D. Levitt

Reviews

Here are my thoughts on most of the books. Note that just because some have small reviews doesn't necessarily mean I don't recommend them, or recommend them less.

A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins

Contains a bunch of essays, some book reviews, and a few eulogies. Almost all are great, and my favorites are Crystalline Truth and Crystal Balls (which starts by mocking New Age crystal healing and goes on to explain real crystals), Postmodernism Disrobed (which, as the title says, disrobes postmodernism), The 'Information Challenge' (which briefly recounts an occasion where Dawkins was duped into an interview with creationists, and quickly moves on to give an answer to the question he apparently couldn't answer in a video clip later released by the interviewers), Snake Oil (which deals with alternative medicine and explains exactly how they should be tested — with homeopathy as an example — for them to be taken seriously), and Good and Bad Reasons for Believing (which is an open letter to her daughter with advice for good reasons — evidence — and bad reasons — tradition, authority, revalation — for believing things).

If you like anthologies of essays and reviews, you'll like this book.

Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Limericks, and Anecdotes by Isaac Asimov

Unlike Asimov's previous complilation of jokes, Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor, this one isn't divided into categories; rather, it's a long story of one joke flowing neatly into the next one, with banter inbetween. I like this style much better, as evidenced by the copious amount of dog-earing in my paperback edition.

Let me give you some samples.

One psychiatrist met another and greeted him with, "You're fine; how am I?"

A German was giving an impassioned speech at the United Nations and the interpreter was silent.

"What's he saying?" someone whispered to the interpreter.

"I don't know yet," said the interpreter. "I'm waiting for the verb."

An astronomer said, "What's the use!
Our classical knowledge is loose.
There can be nothing stupider
Than to name that world Jupiter,
When we all know it should be called Zeus."

"As for screwing," said Little Miss Muffet,
"I proclaim here and now that I love it.
I defy the authority
Of the Moral Majority.
They can take all their preaching and stuff it."

Asimov On Numbers by Isaac Asimov

This is a collection of essays by Asimov on numbers and mathematics. It discusses how we got the concept of zero (from India via the Arabs), exponents, factorials, aleph numbers (there are actually different kinds of infinities), pi, imaginary numbers, huge numbers (like googol, but that doesn't even scratch the surface), the metric system (yum), and a host of other stuff. It also has an essay on animals and their sizes, which was somewhat interesting, but I found the last part (numbers and the Earth) pretty dull. Overall, however, a thoroughly recommended read.

Engines of Creation by Eric K. Drexler (link)

This 1986 Drexler book is a seminal work on molecular nanotechnology. It's very well-written and very well-paced, and charts some of the possibilities and dangers with upcoming technologies such as nano-sized robots and true artificial intelligence. Despite being extremely future-optimistic (which it has every right to be, of course), it's also extremely rational; it gives examples of disagreements and somewhat tries to refute these.

The book describes how tiny robots might build a light-weight and sturdy rocket engine in a vat, how a person might be frozen and then thawed several years later (cryonics), and how tiny robots might act as a tight-fitting and light spacesuit. These are very excellent descriptions, and it's very hard not to imagine these things with awe.

The book is very quotable, too. Check out this one, for instance, which criticizes Jeremy Rifkin's Entropy: A New World View, a controversial book about entropy and how it relates to human activities:

"The entropy threat is an example of blatant nonsense, yet its inventors and promoters aren't laughed off the public stage. Imagine a thousand, a million similar distortions - some subtle, some brazen, but all warping the public's understanding of the world. Now imagine a group of democratic nations suffering from an infestation of such memes while attempting to cope with an era of accelerating technological revolution. We have a real problem."

Or how about this one (describing a limit of molecular technology):

"Trying to change a nucleus by poking at it with a molecule is even more futile than trying to flatten a steel ball bearing by waving a ball of cotton candy at it. Molecular technology can sort and rearrange atoms, but it cannot reach into a nucleus to change an atom's type."

Go read this book now.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt

This is a book about applying statistics to unconventional problems and see where that leads you. For instance, the book argues that Roe v. Wade was a more contributing factor to the recent drop in crime rates in the US than any other. The explanation? The people who are most inclined to become criminals (children of poor single-parent blacks) simply aren't there when, had they been born, they would have begun their criminal careers.

Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig

In my opinion, a must-read for anyone interested in freedom, culture, and copyright. Parts of the book are unfortunately very dull and not very well-structured (and also written in Lawyerese), but the subject matter is more important (besides, the parts that aren't dull are exceedingly good). Most of it is about copyright — what it meant originally, what it means now, what it regulated originally, what it regulates now — and about how new technology should force us to rewrite old laws so that common sense prevails.

Fremtiden by Eirik Newth

Like Asimov's Counting the Eons, this is an excellent book about the future of the world, but unlike Counting the Eons, the meat of Fremtiden limits itself to only a few millennia into the future; the beginning and ultimate fate of the Universe are discussed, but with far less detail than Counting the Eons and with far more emphasis put on the future of the human species and how it can survive (or become extinct). Especially eerie, I think, is the chapter discussing space lifts to geostationary space stations 36 000 kilometers above the Earth's surface. Reading about that gave me the same fuzzy feelings as seeing the space walk between the spaceships Alexei Leonov and the Discovery over Jupiter in 2010: The Year We Made Contact did. I mean, just imagine that! The book unfortunately contains a lot of typos, but I actually forgive him for that; the book is too interesting to dismiss on that ground.

The title of the book is Norwegian and means "The Future". (The Norwegian definite article, "-en", is concatenated at the end of the noun, by the way. Had this been an indefinite noun, it would have read "Fremtid".)

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

A blunt and unrelenting attack on religion. God is Not Great is extremely well written and the author touches on way too many subjects to mention, drawing from an insane amount of literature (I'm humbled and awed at how well read Hitchens seems to be, but I admit that this might just be an effect of my not being well read).

The book can't really be described in fewer words than the book itself. Go read it.

Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham

This book is a collection of essays from Paul Graham, most of which can be found on his web site (with the exceptions of Good Bad Attitude, Mind the Gap, Programming Languages Explained, and The Dream Language). The essays deal with the hacker culture, startups, and how to make good things (which, for being such a nebulous topic, Paul manages to explain very well).

I. Asimov: A Memoir by Isaac Asimov

This is Asimov's third and last autobiography, started in early 1990 after a complicated operation, and finished in May 1990 (Asimov died in 1992). I haven't read his two previous autobiographies, which are called In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt, but their titles, Asimov tells in this book, are from a poem by asimov himself:

"In memory yet green, in joy still felt
The scenes of life rise sharply into view.
We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt,
And while all else is old, the world is new."

From this, Asimov wanted to call this third volume The Scenes of Life, but sadly that title didn't survive editorial tampering.

This is a more or less chronological account of Asimov's life, arranged in 166 smallish chapters, each dealing with a different subject or person (Asimov had a lot of well-known friends), and everything is thoroughly entertaining. If you pick up this book, I promise you, you'll have a hard time putting it down.

Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor: 640 Jokes, Anecdotes, and Limericks, Complete with Notes on How to Tell Them by Isaac Asimov

As advertised on the front cover, the book contains 640 jokes, anecdotes, and limericks, complete with notes on how to tell them. The jokes are sorted into eleven chapters (Anticlimax, Shaggy Dog, Paradox, Put-down, Word Play, Tables Turned, Jewish, Ethnic, Religion, Marriage, and Bawdy), more or less successfully (apparently it's hard to classify jokes). Most of the jokes are pretty good, and some stand out. Here's a little selection:

Science has a language of its own which sometimes puzzles laymen. The word "obvious" is a case in point.

Thus a professor of physics, deriving some profound point of theory for the class, scribbled an equation on the board and said, "From this, it is obvious that we can proceed to write the following relationship —" and he scribbled a second equation on the board.

Then he paused. He stared hard at the two equations and said, "Wait a while. I may be wrong —"

He sat down, seized a pad and started to write furiously. He paused for thought, crossed out what he had written, and began over. In this fashion, half an hour passed while the class held its breath and sat in absolute silence.

Finally, the professor rose with an air of satisfaction and said, "Yes, I was right in the first place. It is obvious that the second equation follows from the first."

Two gentlemen, both hard of hearing and strangers to each other, were about to ride the London Underground. One of them, peering at the station they were entering, said, "Pardon me, sir, but is this Wembley?"

"No," said the other, "Thursday."

"No, thank you," said the first, "I've already had my little drink."

The Latin professor arrived home in a state of utter confusion, and much the worse for wear. His jacket was torn, his trousers muddy, his hat a battered ruin, his eyeglasses bent askew.

His wife ran to him, startled. "Septimus," she cried, "whatever has happened to you?"

"Why, my dear," said the professor, seating himself carefully, "I scarcely know. I was passing the corner of Second and Main when, without provocation of any sort on my part, I was suddenly assaulted by two hoodla."

The curator of one zoo was shipping several animals to another zoo, and wrote an accompanying letter which said in part, "Included are the two mongeese you asked for."

The curator paused. "Mongeese" looked funny.

He tore up the letter and tried again, saying, "Included are the two mongooses you asked for."

That looked funny, too.

After long thought, the curator began a third time and now completed it without trouble. He wrote in part, "Included is the mongoose which you requested. Included is also the other mongoose which you also requested."

Tell me why the stars do shine;
Tell me why the ivy twines;
Tell me why the skies are blue;
And I will tell you why I love you.

Nuclear fusion makes the stars to shine;
Tropisms make the ivy twine;
Rayleigh scattering makes skies so blue;
Testicular hormones is why I love you.

I highly recommend the book.

Kjetterbibelen: Ugudelige Spissformuleringer by Ronnie Johanson

This is just one long book of quotations from the history of the criticism of religion, from Aristotle to Asimov to Ingersoll to Dawkins. It's an OK read, but most of the quotes are boring. The ones that stand out, however, are awesome. Here's a small sample:

"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence."

Doug McLeod

"If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. Try science."

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

"... millions long for immortality who do not know what do do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Susan Ertz

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

This book is a criticism of religion. Specifically, it criticizes the inherently stupid things being done by humans in the name of the particular branch of religion that they happen to have been brought up with (like opposing abortion, stem-cell research, and emracing the idea of martyrdom). It's written as an open letter to a Christian, so it didn't particularly speak to me, but I imagine a Christian might have a mind-opening experience if he read it.

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

Pale Blue Dot is about the Earth, humans, our place in the Cosmos, and the Solar System and our exploration of it. The title comes from the image with the same name taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. It tries to convey a sense of how small and fragile the Earth really is (if you want to get a real sense of it, I recommend Celestia), how the Universe really isn't made for us (sulfuric acid on Venus, for instance, or the black vacuum that covers most of the Universe), and how we've traditionally viewed the Universe. A large chunk of the book goes into explaining the exploration of our solar system and the findings we've made. It also advocates that we use the other planets as warnings for what may happen to our own if we spoil it (after all, so far this is the only place we've got).

A thoroughly good read. Sagan is an excellent writer.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman

I think I can honestly say that this book is excellent all the way through. At no point was I bored. In fact, I grinned to myself at least three times and almost cried once (honest).

The book is a fascinating look into the mind of one of the 20th century's top physicist, the eccentric free spirit Richard Feynman. It's a mostly chronological account of the interesting moments of his life, from his childhood when he fixed radios, to his mischief at MIT, to Princeton, to Los Alamos (where he worked on the bomb and cracked safes for fun), to Cornell, to Brazil, to Japan. The stories are engagingly told as anecdotes, which is partly why it's such an interesting read (and partly because the stories are inherently interesting).

Read this book!

The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil

An engagingly-written book on the technological singulariy. The first part explains the Law of Accelerating Returns, discusses the idea of an intelligence (us) creating a greater intelligence (computers), and how a machine would deal with ambiguities of language (there are at least four ways of interpreting the sentence “time flies like an arrow”, laid out in the book). The second part deals with preparing the present, and discusses different ways of building brains (and uploading already-built brains to another substrate). The third part is a journey through the twenty-first century, with stops for snapshots at 2009, 2019, 2029, and 2099. At the end of each chapter is an imaginary talk with an imaginary reader, Molly, which helps explain things (it's written very informally and is entertaining).

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

The Blind Watchmaker demolishes the argument from design, which was first advanced by the theologian William Paley. In short, it goes like this: If you're walking somewhere and you find a rock, you don't require an explanation for why it's there. But if you find a watch, you'll assume that the watch had a maker. Organisms are complex things, like a watch, so they, too, should require a maker (this is what the title alludes to). The book introduces biomorphs, creatures in a computer program that can evolve a multitude of shapes based on nine different “genes” (variables) which control how the form grows. Even with only nine genes, the number of forms that can be generated are huge, and the reader is invited to imagine walking through the (nine-dimensional!) space of possible shapes.

The book has a whole chapter devoted to how evolution not only removes misfits, but adds complexity (a common myth is that evolution can only subtract, not add), which is very good.

A very good introduction to evolution.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

The Demon-Haunted World deals with human imagination, science, and scepticism, in a nutshell. In reality it's so much more: It's a defense of scepticism, an advertisement for science, a crash course in wonder, and an explanation of science and what it's all about. My favorite chapters, I think, are The Dragon in My Garage and The Fine Art of Baloney Detection (the latter being an independent essay, linked to).

In his TV series Cosmos, Sagan describes Democritus in these words: "Beyond camp fires in the sky, beyond the milk of Hera, beyond the backbone of night, the mind of Democritus soared." I'd like to add Sagan's name to that as well.

Read this book!

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion unapologetically criticizes religion (as the title implies, belief in gods is a delusion, on the same level as believing you're Napoleon). First off, he tries to avoid confusion with the way Einstein and Hawking have used religious terms to express their appreciation of contemplating the universe, by invoking what he calls Einsteinian religion (neither Einstein nor Hawking are theists, by the way). In that respect, Dawkins tells us that he's a deeply religious non-believer, but dislikes using the word, instead preferring to reserve it for traditional religion. (I wholeheartedly agree. There's no point in needlessly muddling the meanings of words.)

'Proofs' for God's existence are given the spotlight and thoroughly debunked (most of them don't really make sense anyway, so there isn't much to debunk). Various reasons for not believing in a deity are presented. Morals without supernatural supervision are explained (yes, it really is possible to be good without God). An explanation of the due hostility towards religion is given. The book then turns to children, and the psychological abuse that children who have their parents' religion forced upon them suffer. Finally, the book vigilantly defends the atheist position and argues that the gaps religion fills can be much better filled by other things.

As always Dawkins is an excellent writer, and I thoroughly recommend the book, but preferably to theists. I'm an atheist, so the book was already preaching to the choir, although it did teach me many new interesting things, such as the concept of non-overlapping magisteria.

The Great Scientists by John Farndon

A pretty good book about scientists from Euclid, Archimedes, and Ptolemy to Faraday, Darwin, and Hawking, and the science they invented or practiced. It's somewhat engagingly written, but it's more a text book about scientists than a history of science (which isn't bad, of course). I picked it up on a whim, so it could have been much worse.

The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation by Isaac Asimov

Goes through the human body, from head to torso, muscles to blood, skin to genitalia, explaining in good detail how it all works. As always, it's written in clear prose, and is easily accessible. If you have a moderate interest in human anatomy, this is the book for you.

The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing by Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins isn't strictly the author. This is an anthology book of post-1900 science writings (essays, anecdotes, poetry) written by working scientists, as opposed to written by non-scientists, and it is supremely excellent. Dawkins has collected them, sorted them, and written introductions to each of them, which put them in context. I've transcribed a few of these and put them on my Essays page ("On Being the Right Size", "One Self", an extract from Man in the Universe, "Seven Wonders", and an extract from The Periodic Table); you could read those if you want a short taste of what the book is about. I strongly recommend this book.

The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer by Christopher Hitchens

A huge colletion of writings by atheists about religion, faith, non-religion, reason, science, and logic, with biographical information on each author. Some of them are pretty dated, but they're interesting nonetheless.

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

The Prince is the book which made the term "Machiavellian" enter language as meaning someone willing to ignore morality in favor of keeping power. The book is divided into many chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of keeping a prince in power.

As I'm not a prince nor a real student of history, it didn't really speak to me, but it was an interesting read if only for the historical perspective.

The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov

Explains atoms and isotopes, planets and satellites, novas and supernovas. It also contains a title essay, which is available online. In it, he explains that there is a continuum from right to wrong, and that it's possible to be righter and wronger. For instance, if you think the Earth is flat you are wronger than if you think the Earth is a sphere. You're still wrong, because the Earth is more like an oblate spheroid, but even that is wrong. And so on.

The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey

The Satanic Bible details the basic tenets of Satanism, and some of LaVey's own philosophy about it. A lot of the book discusses the practical aspects of Satanism, such as relationships, sex, indulgence, and the Black Mass. A disclaimer: I'm not a satanist. I do agree with most of the secular tenets of Satanism, however (such as the doctrine of indulgence, not compulsion and the concept of psychic vampires), but I reject, of course, the stuff about magic and the occult.

The Satanic Rituals by Anton Szandor LaVey

This is a companion to The Satanic Bible, and it explains in detail how to perform satanic rituals such as the Black Mass, Das Tierdrama, and The Call to Cthulhu (no, really). I found it mostly boring because I'm not into rituals in the first place. The book is well-written, though, and worth reading if only for the sole purpose of having read it (admittedly that's my own reason).

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

A pretty comprehensive guide to evolution, and the second book that introduced the gene-centric view of evolution (namely, that genes use bodies — survival machines — to pass themselves on, rather than organisms using genes to pass their traits on). The main goal of the book is to explain altruistic behavior and to dispell the myth that just because genes are selfish, we must (or should) be selfish, and I think it succeeds. The book also introduced the concept of memes (supposed to rhyme with genes), which are units of culture (like a catchy tune or a piece of trivia or a certain way of walking) that are capable of being copied from mind to mind.

Dawkins is an awesome writer, and though this is his first book, it's thoroughly excellent.

Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins

This book is a celebration of science, and an explanation of its beauty, and it succeeds brilliantly.

Dawkins discusses the probability of your birth (it turns out to be very low), the notion that knowing things about the universe dimishes its beauty (like Feynman before him), sound waves, DNA fingerprinting, astrology (always witty to condemn), genes, brains, and, finally, memes.

An awesome book.

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer

Deals with Holocaust denial, UFO sightings, and how to evaluate things skeptically. It's a very good book about skepticism, but I recommend Carl Sagan over Shermer.

Words from the Myths by Isaac Asimov

The book explains Greek mythology and its relationship to the English language in the form of its words ('chaos', 'cosmos', 'gigantic', 'atlas', 'ocean', 'Europe', 'cereal', 'phobia', 'demon', 'martial', 'vulcano', 'jovial', 'music', 'hygiene', 'siren', 'hubris', 'nemesis'). Asimov describes a lot of Greek mythology in-depth, but primarily for the purpose of explaining the origins and meanings of those words (and many others). He covers the titans, the Olympians, monsters, heroes and the siege of Troy.

As always Asimov explains things simply clearly. It was a marvelously transparent and neat read. And it's not too long, either (about 100 pages).