100 Books Like Eifelheim

This is the best novel I’ve read about bubonic plague.

Student historian Kivrin travels back in time to England of the Middle Ages—unknowingly at the start of the Black Death. The cause of Black Death was the plague bacteria, unknown to people of that time.

What makes the book memorable is its depiction of everyday life, where children who get lost in the forest must find their way home by the tolling of the village church bell. Ultimately, the bell tolls for all the plague’s victims.

The vivid characterization makes me experience people of a time so distant their minds feel alien to us, yet still deeply human.

It's difficult to discuss what might make Baru unlikable without delving into spoilers, but that's fine because you must see this book through to appreciate it fully.

Baru, an accountant, finds herself caught in the jaws of empire when her homeland is colonized and one of her fathers is killed. Cold and calculating, Baru desperately claws her way to power in an attempt to fight empire from within, and along the way, must reckon with how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for her goals. I can’t emphasize how bleak this book is, and part of that comes from watching Baru eat herself alive and be awful to other people.

When zombies meet the political thriller energy of 24 or Designated Survivor, I’m always going to be in. So it blows my mind that I’m late to the party when it comes to Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy.

This means that I have to confess that I’m not quite finished reading Feed. I know, I know. Rather bold of me to go ahead and include it in a recommendation list, huh? But when you know, you know.

This book has far too many things I love not to include it. It’s got a survivable, post-zombie world. A scary-believable viral premise. Two reporters who are determined to break the story of a lifetime, no matter the risk. And a deadly, twisting political conspiracy. I mean, this is so much story candy all wrapped up in an undead bow. 

A slice-of-life epidemiological fantasy novel set in the small town of Balam, as it deals with a mysterious illness accompanied by strange insectoid monsters intent on stealing the corpses of the victims. One of the weirder books on the list, with a setting heavily inspired by the Final Fantasy game series and lower stakes than most of the others – but still well worth a read.

I wrote my books to reveal how a government’s lies about the present and past corrupts not only public life, but reaches deep into the psyches of individuals.

The correspondence between the physicist Heisenberg, working in secret on the atomic bomb (notoriously unsuccessfully), and his wife safe in Bavaria provides an intimate glimpse of how deeply the Nazi regime penetrated family life and challenged the natural love of one’s homeland.

Heisenberg and his wife were very much in love, devoted to each other and their children. They had a true and equal partnership. Readers can enjoy the sweet irony of knowing how the war turned out, something the participants could not know.

Instead, they were occupied with worries about food, money, the children’s health, sadly aware that things could never go back to how they were.   

Is it any wonder that Einstein’s wife, Maric, and he drifted apart as the years passed when we learn the story behind the story? His wife was a brilliant physicist in her own right. In fact, the theory of relativity may have been inspired by her profound intellect. It is my impression that in a relationship, one is more outgoing than the other. Relationships where partnerships co-exist and each person’s skills and intellect are validated and appreciated may be outside the norm. Maric’s story encourages me to affirm my own gifts.

As it turns out, the Germans never got close to building an atomic bomb—largely because of some major mistakes at the outset (one of them made by their top nuclear chemist because of a crisis in his love life). Powers, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, created some controversy because of his portrayal of the man who didn’t build the German bomb. That controversy continues. 

I once had to physically separate the author from his critics and threaten to remove disruptive protesters from the audience when I moderated a session on the history of the German bomb at the Smithsonian.  

Fleeing the Nazi Anschluss, Austrian quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (famous for the wave equation and his eponymous cat) took refuge at Trinity College in Dublin. To thank his hosts, Schrödinger delivered a series of ground-breaking lectures in 1943, later published as What is Life? Schrödinger’s thought-provoking queries, originating from quantum mechanics, paved the way for the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. After the war, in subsequent lectures published as Mind and Matter, Schrödinger tackled a deeper subject: the nature of consciousness.

Together, these classics are unparalleled in what they imply about life and its most remarkable attribute: sentience.

Troubling aspects of Schrödinger’s personal life make it tempting to exclude this work. Ultimately, it's crucial to separate the profound message from the messenger, who was deeply flawed.

Ever since I was a small boy obsessed with the stars, I’d read about how Newton deciphered the secrets of the universe. Yet he himself remained a cipher. So when I was given Christianson’s book as a present, I was enchanted. I place this book in the top three or four best all-time biographies I’ve ever read (and I’ve read plenty!).

Others—I recycle; this one—never. Christianson presents a vivid picture of the life, work, and relationships of this most brilliant of men. Some science biographies suffer from awkward writing, but for me, Christianson has seamlessly woven the complexities of Newton’s life and science together in rich, colorful prose. And what an interesting life it was! You will find other Newton biographies; I treasure this one.

Yes, yes, history is an unbroken river of themes, but it’s also a chain of pivotal dramatic episodes. Dolnick gives us one such moment. In 17th century Europe, within two generations, a collection of brilliant oddballs invented science. They’re people, so they’re doing the sorts of things people do, elbowing and shoving one another to find the ultimate truth before the other guy. I appreciate that in the course of reading such a wonderfully enjoyable story, I somehow learn a great deal about the truth they were seeking, the underlying mathematical order of the universe in which they believed.