54 books like Feynman Series

Blew my world apart. 

Without one single formula, Feynman takes you to the heart of quantum theory. The foundations of everything you thought you knew about light get ripped out and replaced by new foundations that cover every success of the 19th-century theory yet offer new vistas. I will probably read this tiny book every year for the rest of my life; each time I get new insights into physics (and the presentation of physics).

After reading it, you will understand the stationary-phase principle better than most Physics PhD students without one formula.

This is the play I reread most.

Pinter runs an affair backward, from the cold ending to the first touch, and I find the last scene almost too painful to read because I already know everything those two people don't. Almost nothing is said directly, and everything is understood.

It taught me more about what two people do with silence than any novel I know, and it is short enough to read in an evening and think about for a year.

As an anthropology graduate student, I’d uncovered the story of Henrietta Schmerler’s murder by investigating an oblique reference to a student of Ruth Benedict’s who was murdered by the Apache.

No professor ever talked about the dangers of fieldwork and the risks of getting romantically involved with the people being studied. I toyed with this taboo while doing my fieldwork, like a moth to a flame, and fortunately survived.

I was thrilled when her nephew published the book detailing the complexities and nuances of her murder. I was troubled by the reflexive self-protection reaction of her sponsoring anthropology department—filled with professors who were famous pioneers in anthropology.

Henrietta’s story is complicated, and the retelling is honest and forthright—it was a model that I tried to honor in recounting my romantic experiences during fieldwork.

I've read a lot of anthropology and had my own experience in the Field.

I was impressed that Mead had the courage to share these letters that were intimate and which resonated with me as very real experiences. I appreciate how vividly she captures the blend of intellectual curiosity, persistence, and personal growth that comes from living in another culture.

The book reinforced that science is not only about data—it is also about the people, experiences, and relationships that shape our understanding of the world and bring nuance to science. Mead’s letters paved the road for me to share my letters and the courage to show my vulnerability and naiveté.

I read Scenes from a Marriage as a chamber novel, not a screenplay, and I think it is one.

Two people who know each other too well to lie to each other, and who do it anyway, across six conversations. I love how Bergman lets them be cruel and tender in the same breath, and how I could never decide whose side I was on.

Every time I read it, I find a different person in the wrong.

I understand better by sketching things on paper. I couldn’t get abstract ideas first go, I had to draw them out. Someone on the Internet recommended that I get ahold of this book, and I’m glad I did.

It’s an encyclopedia of facts, but all explained using relative magnitudes. So instead of telling me a giraffe is this tall, I get to see it relative to a horse. I love that way of teaching.

This book gave me an appreciation for how diverse learning and learning strategies are. By his account at least, Nikola Tesla was able to imagine—or dream of, I don’t recall—the design of an entire working machine, down to its tiniest details, and then wake up the next morning and build it. And it would work.

His approach was very different from Edison’s, whom he criticized as diligent but slow and inefficient. This made me appreciate both approaches to problem-solving.

I picked up this book to learn about improvisation and the theatre, but like all memorable books, it taught me about spontaneity and how freeing ourselves from the constraint of wanting to seem smart or original actually allows us to be more creative.

I loved its focus on playfulness and experimentation, as well as being a child at heart. Many of its lessons are relevant outside the theatre.

Any list of books about science must have something about Darwin. The book to read is The Origin. But that’s obvious. I don’t need to go into it. So here is a Darwin book that is less obvious.

Most scientists will never have heard of it; it’s literary history, not science. I learned of it by accident, in a talk given by an economic historian. This is a fascinating book by a literary historian from which I learned much about Darwin. Gillian Beer recognizes that Darwin was a great writer. She traces similarities between his rhetorical style and the strategies of some other iconic Victorian writers, such as George Eliot (Middlemarch) and Samuel Butler (The way of all flesh).

She also discusses scientific writers of the era such as George Lewis and Herbert Spencer. There are many revealing long quotations. I learned much from the… show more.

Experimental Medicine is a classic, a clear and simple account of physiological research, well-illustrated with comprehensible examples (no molecular biology needed).

It is well worth reading if only because so many of the principles that French physician Claude Bernard pioneered have been largely forgotten. Most important is his demand for certainty: “Science permits no exceptions,” an injunction now more often forgotten than obeyed. Bernard would have been appalled by, for example, a famous choice experiment in which 60% of a large group of subjects choose a less-profitable option.

The experimenters concluded that individual humans (not just groups) show risk aversion, ignoring the 40% who did not. In a similar situation, Bernard would always seek the conditions that yield a 100% result. He gives an example where he was able to resolve uncertainty concerning the sensitivity of spinal roots.

We’re still waiting for any serious effort to achieve a Bernardian… show more.