If you liked
Books like On the Origin of Species
Loved On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from popular science, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.
10 books · ranked
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1
A Brief History of Time
Black holes, the Big Bang and the shape of the cosmos for the general reader; the bestseller that made physics fashionable.
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2
Cosmos
A poetic tour of the universe and our place in it; science writing with a sense of wonder.
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3
A Short History of Nearly Everything
How we figured out the universe, the Earth and ourselves; vast, funny and wonderfully clear.
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4
Braiding Sweetgrass
A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation weaves together Indigenous plant knowledge, scientific botany and memoir to argue that plants are not passive objects but beings with gifts to offer, and that reciprocity — not extraction — is the proper relationship between humans and the living world. One of the most-read works of nature writing in recent years.
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5
The Tipping Point
Gladwell asks why some ideas, products and behaviours spread like viruses while others die quietly. His answer involves three types of people (Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen), the stickiness of messages, and the importance of context. The Tipping Point introduced a vocabulary — tipping point, connectors, mavens — that became part of how we discuss social change.
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6
Civilization
Preface to complete edition.--Civilisation: its cause and cure.--Modern science: a criticism.--The science of the future: a forecast.--Defence of criminals: a criticism of morality.--Exfoliation: Lama
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7
The Intermediate Sex
1908 work by Edward Carpenter expressing his views on homosexuality. Carpenter argues that "uranism", as he terms homosexuality, was on the increase, marking a new age of sexual liberation.
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8
Black oxen
A novel about a middle-aged woman rejuvenated by a glandular operation to youthful external beauty and her romance with a younger playwright in New York and based on author's own experience of glandul
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9
Homo Ludens
A unique philosophical perspective regarding the topic of play and it's impact and necessity in human culture.
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10
The Selfish Gene
Evolution reframed from the gene's point of view; a clear, controversial classic of biology.