If you liked
Books like Civilization
Loved Civilization by Edward Carpenter? 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
On the Origin of Species
Darwin presents his evidence for natural selection — the mechanism by which species evolve through variation and survival of the fittest — drawn from his voyage on the Beagle and years of observation. The most consequential scientific book of the 19th century, it permanently changed how humans understand their place in nature.
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2
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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3
Cosmos
A poetic tour of the universe and our place in it; science writing with a sense of wonder.
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4
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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5
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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6
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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7
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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8
Homo Ludens
A unique philosophical perspective regarding the topic of play and it's impact and necessity in human culture.
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9
One, two, three ... infinity
This wonderful book is an introduction to the relationship between mathematics and the physical world. It explains elements of quantum theory, relativity, and purer mathematics, in a way apprenendible
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10
Authority and the Individual
From Ancient Greek philosophy to the French Revolution to the modern welfare state, in Authority & the Individual Bertrand Russell tackles the perennial questions about the balance between authority &