Books like A Burglar's Guide to the City — picked by fans

I loved the way Nexus looks at human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us and our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. Will we lose that power to AI? I believe Harari adds an important historical perspective to complement Kurzweil’s view of the future.

I found Harari’s account about the role of Facebook’s AI in the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar to be fascinating. 

Is it American History? Counterculture? Something else? To be sure what it is is a very engaging, detailed chronicle of the California Institute at Big Sur and its residents and visitors.

The book provides coverage of a profound and influential interlude of American culture in which drugs, folk-rock, psychology, transhumanism, and other philosophies intermixed with one another.

As a psychologist, I was interested in hearing about Aldous Huxley and Abraham Maslow’s visits; more generally, who knew that Joan Baez and Hunter S. Thompson both lived on the property before the institute was established! 

My gosh, this was an interesting book.

It provides a historical perspective on our rapidly evolving technological world by looking at how technology influenced humanity’s era of evolutionary adaptation. Among the accounts are how fire promoted brain growth (by permitting humans to extract more calories from their food), and the almost certain early development of baby slings, that made it possible for human communities to migrate long distances.

Such reflections seem particularly useful today as we face working with AI—and as we wonder how it will affect us.

Looking for a literary alternative to some of my doctoral work in psychology, I signed up for a specialty exam with Professor Robert Plank.

As part of the experience, I read his work, “The emotional significance of imaginary beings,” which was accessible and delightful. A beautifully written and somewhat dreamy review of imaginary beings from Shakespeare’s characters in The Tempest to alien abduction stories circulating in the 1950s and 60s, and including analyses of various science fiction movies, it built a vivid and poetic sense of why we seek such creatures. 

Shortly after its publication, the work was panned by psychoanalysts, who may have been disappointed in the work's focus on people’s everyday hopes, fears, and dreams; the reviewers might have preferred more in-depth analyses following then-current psychoanalytic theory. But the book is an insightful and accessible tour through many literary and film masterpieces (Forbidden Planet among them), as… show more.

This marvelous little book was first published in 1939 – and it is still bang up to date in its critique of conventional education. (As a society we seem to have learned far too little in the ensuing 80 years). Peddiwell tells the story of the first pre-historic educators who taught young people useful life skills like how to grab fish, or how to use fire to scare away saber-tooth tigers. Over the years the climate changed, but the elders refused to allow the curriculum to change with it. The saber-tooth tigers died out, but scaring them still had to be taught in schools because that knowledge had become a ‘cultural treasure’ even though it was now useless. It is very funny, and bang on the money, in showing just how stupid supposedly clever people can be. (Peddiwell and his story were both made up by a real professor called… show more.

Gideon Sterer is my co-author and it is a pleasure to work with him! He is a fellow upstate New York native, and has been an active member of the community with his lovely children’s books.

This book provides children with a fun, aesthetically pleasing story about sharing. Great for children who love animals! 

This book is a collection of the author’s memoirs, set in a fictional village in England’s leafy countryside. Each story stands alone and yet they build a picture of a time and place that is now lost.

There is humour and tragedy in these stories. A disastrous dinner party ends up with the guests having to go to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. An elderly lady who cares more for her animals than she does for herself is discovered to be starving. The mysterious ‘hedging and ditching man’ evades identification although there is a suggestion that this disreputable-looking old tramp is in fact the local squire. A happenstance meeting at the scene of an accident results in a fledgling music group being started up in the village.

All these anecdotes are narrated from the confused, curious, only partly-understanding point of view of a young boy. There is nostalgia… show more.

Much of what I learned about real friendship I learned from Star Trek. From the many episodes of the original series I saw in syndication to the heartbreaking ending of Wrath of Kahn, the principle of “I am, and forever will be, your friend,” has influenced many of my friendships over the years. 

This book explores those friendships we have seen on screen, from Kirk and Spock, to Picard and Data, from Janeway and Seven of Nine to Bashir and Garak. Told through the eyes of fans, this is a great gift to yourself or your best friend if you want to make them jealous.

I love Tim Burton’s movies. His book of poems and short stories is just as good as his movies (don’t let the poems aspect put you off). I’m not a fan of poetry, but this collection of twisted tales is great (especially if you read them in your head in Christopher Lee’s voice).

As a bonus, the book is packed with Tim’s off-beat artwork (which matches the characters perfectly). I love the strange and unusual. To quote Lydia (from Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice), “I myself am strange and unusual.”

I met Bill Bryson once, and we subsequently exchanged a few letters.

‘Knowing him’ gave an extra dimension to his writing and humour, because he’s acerbic with the pen and yet so gentle and shy as a person.

When we met, he was giving a talk on the importance of hedgerows in our ‘Green and Pleasant Land’, and he has always inspired me to appreciate the privilege of being British (He is American).

Sometimes it can be hard to remember..! One thing is for sure: British humour is unique, and I will never fail to appreciate that. Neither Here Nor There was the first Bryson I read, but you could pick any of his travel works.

He’s got such a wonderful style and humour, you can’t really go wrong.