My all-time favourite non-fiction!
Discover my all-time favorite non-fiction books! Explore this curated list of must-read titles that inspire, educate, and captivate. Perfect for book lovers seeking top recommendations.
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Turbulent Mirror
by John Briggs
Until recently, such phenomena as the volatility of weather systems, the fluctuation of the shock market, or the random firing of neurons in the brain were considered too "noisy" and complex to be probed by science. But now, with the aid of high-speed computers, scientists have been able to penetrate a reality that is changing the way we perceive the universe. Their findings -- the basis for chaos theory -- represent one of the most exciting scientific pursuits of our time. No better introduction to this find could be found than John Briggs and F. David Peat's Turbulent Mirror. Together, they explore the many faces of chaos and reveal how its law direct most of the processes of everyday life and how it appears that everything in the universe is interconnected -- discovering an "emerging science of wholeness." Turbulent Mirror introduces us to the scientists involved in study this endlessly strange field; to the theories that are turning our perception of the world on its head; and to the discoveries in mathematics, biology, and physics that are heralding a revolution more profound than the one responsible for producing the atomic bomb. With practical applications ranging from the control of traffic flow and the development of artifical intelligence to the treatment of heart attacks and schizophrenia, chaos promises to be an increasingly rewarding area of inquiry -- of interest to everyone.
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The Mathematical Tourist
by Ivars Peterson
In the first edition of The Mathematical Tourist, renowned science journalist Ivars Peterson took readers on an unforgettable tour through the sometimes bizarre, but always fascinating, landscape of modern mathematics. Now the journey continues in a new, updated edition that includes all the latest information on mathematical proofs, fractals, prime numbers, and chaos, as well as new material on * the relationship between mathematical knots and DNA * how computers based on quantum logic can significantly speed up the factoring of large composite numbers * the relationship between four-dimensional geometry and physical theories of the nature of matter * the application of cellular automata models to social questions and the peregrinations of virtual ants * a novel mathematical model of quasicrystals based on decagon-shaped tiles Blazing a trail through rows of austere symbols and dense lines of formulae, Peterson explores the central ideas behind the work of professional mathematicians-- how and where their pieces of the mathematical puzzle fit in, the sources of their ideas, their fountains of inspiration, and the images that carry them from one discovery to another.
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A Choice of Catastrophes
by Isaac Asimov
Scientist, author, and Earth-dweller, explores the many potential natural and man-made catastrophes that could change life as we know it, or erase us from the face of the Earth. Natural properties and laws might change at any time, rendering life on this planet--or anywhere in the universe--impossible. But the disasters that are most imminent are in our power to control--technology, nuclear warfare, pollution... Natural forces far more powerful than man might destroy us. Or they may have nothing to do with bringing about the end. Book jacket.
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Flatland
by Edwin Abbott Abbott
A humorous examination with serious overtones of the concepts of space, time, and dimension.
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The Ragged Mountain Portable Wilderness Anthology
by Jan Adkins
The Ragged Mountain Portable Wilderness Anthology is designed to ride in the pack, to accompany adventurers with the encouragement of other adventurers, to harmonize the contemplation of wild places with the echoes of other wild places. The voices range from ancient to contemporary, but most are North American, & the places of which they speak as strangely familiar as the geography of the soul. The mediations of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Service, James Fenimore Cooper, Joseph Conrad, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, John James Audubon, Jack London, Theodore Roosevelt, & many other voices from North American frontiers are here. Native American voices plead for the preservation of what the Europeans called the New World. And some of the best contemporary scribes of the natural world inform our senses & challenge us to look beneath the surfaces of stream, mountain, forest, & desert for deeper meanings.
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The Last Place on Earth
by Roland Huntford
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable history that captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed men who were charged with carrying them out. THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is the first of Huntford's masterly trilogy of polar biographies. It is also the only work on the subject in the English language based on the original Norwegian sources, to which Huntford returned to revise and update this edition.
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Chaos
by James Gleick
James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the twentieth century's third revolution. 8 pages of photos.
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Going Inside
by Alan S. Kesselheim
Tired of the frantic activity of society, and, more troubling, growing tired of each other (and their inability to have a child), Alan Kesselheim and Marypat Zitzer decide to take unusual steps to avert a crisis in their marriage. They escape on a year-long canoeing expedition. They begin paddling at Grand Cache, Alberta, on the Smoky River. Following old fur-trade routes, they travel northeast, to the far end of Lake Athabaska. Their first summer's paddling done, they dig in for a long, lonely winter in a tiny cabin in a deserted fishing camp. It is here that Marypat discovers, against all expectations, that she is pregnant. When the thaw comes, they resolve to press on into the Northwest Territories, north of the tree line and beyond the reach of medical help, to try to reach Baker Lake - although, assuming all goes well, Marypat will be heavily pregnant by the time they reach their destination... The heart of "Going Inside is not the adventure of white-water rapids or the ferocious storms and numbing cold, but rather Alan Kesselheim's deep joy at the beauty and healing power of the natural world - discovering fresh wolf tracks, looking an otter in the face, observing the ever-changing character of a river each day, seeing the slow stirring of the natural world as the hard grip of a northern winter begins to ease. In this environment, what seemed important back in civilization becomes trivial, and the natural cycle, so easily ignored when insulated by modern living, becomes profound. With rare grace Kesselheim enfolds his reader in this world and portrays the universal drama of two people learning how to get along.
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The Wild Frontier
by Pierre Berton
Canada’s wild frontier—a land unsettled and unknown, a land of appalling obstacles and haunting beauty—comes to life through seven remarkable individuals, including John Jewitt, the young British seaman who became a slave to the Nootka Indians; Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, the eccentric missionary; Sam Steele, the most famous of all Mounted Policemen; and Isaac Jorges, the 17th-century priest who courted martyrdom. Many of the stories of these figures read like the wildest of fiction: Cariboo Cameron, who, after striking it rich in B.C., pickled his wife’s body in alcohol and gave her three funerals; Mina Hubbard, the young widow who trekked across the unexplored heart of Labrador as an act of revenge; and Almighty Voice, the renegade Cree, who was the key figure in the last battle between white men and Aboriginals in North America. Spanning more than two centuries and four thousand miles, this book demonstrates how our frontier resembles no other and how for better and for worse it has shaped our distinctive sense of Canada.
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The Singing Wilderness
by Sigurd F. Olson
to do with the calling of loons, with northern lights, and the great silences of land lying northwest of Lake Superior. It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life which is close to the past. I have heard the singing in many places, but I seem to hear it best in the wilderness lake country of the Quetico-Superior, where travel is still by pack and canoe over the ancient trails of the Indians and voyageurs." Thus the author sets the theme and tone of this enthralling book of discovery about one of the few great primitive areas in our country which have withstood the pressures of civilization. Acute natural perceptivity and a profound knowledge of the relationships to be found in nature combine here in vivid evocations of the sights, the sounds, the vast stillnesses, and the events of the wilderness as the seasons succeed each other. But Mr. Olson is not content merely to "describe; he probes for meanings that will lead the reader to a different and more revealing way of looking at the out-of-doors and to a deeper sense of its eternal values. In each of the thirty-four chapters of The Singing Wilderness he has sought to capture an essential quality of our magnificent lake and forest heritage. He shows us what can be read from the rocks of the great Canadian Shield; he offers a delightful essay on the virtues of pine knots as fuel; he writes of the ways of a canoe, of flashing trout in the pools of the Isabella, of tamarack bogs, caribou moss, the flight of wild geese, timber wolves, and the birds of the ski trails. And much more, with something to satisfy every taste for wilderness experience. Superbly illustrated with 38black-and-white drawings by Francis Lee Jaques, The Singing Wilderness is a book that no lover of nature will want to be without. To anyone who contemplates a vacation in the lake country of northern Minnesota and adjoining Canada, it is the perfect vade mecum.
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The Code Book
by Simon Singh
In his first book since the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy. Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world's most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it. It will also make you wonder how private that e-mail you just sent really is.
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Krakatoa
by Simon Winchester
Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, examines the legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all -- in view of today's new political climate -- the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims, one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere. Krakatoa gives us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event.
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The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey
A presentation of a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems.