Here are 100 books that Freedom's Laboratory fans have personally recommended if you like
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As someone more drawn to writing and literature during my college years, I was fascinated to discover that science has a history. I had once thought of science as objective—distinct from liberal arts and social science disciplines in that it consisted of facts that could be proved. I came to understand that it’s just another field of human endeavor filled with flaws like any other. Sometimes, scientists cheat, lie, favor certain facts over others, or knowingly publish false results. It can become a cultural and political battleground—and to refer to something as “pseudoscience” is like calling a work of art you don’t like “pseudo-art” or a piece of music you don’t enjoy “pseudo-music.”
Haldane was not only one of the three founders of the field of biostatistics but was notorious for his support of Lysenko as well. In fact, the story of Haldane’s supposed advocacy of Lysenkoism is much richer and more complicated than it would seem—in the end, it was more a feature of his instinct for contrarianism, inclination to doubt what others assumed to be common sense, and faith that “the universe is not only queererer than we suppose but queerer than we can suppose.”
Haldane is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of science, and his role in the Lysenko controversy is just one of the many interesting stories the author describes in seamlessly poetic prose.
J. B. S. Haldane's life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama-from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As someone more drawn to writing and literature during my college years, I was fascinated to discover that science has a history. I had once thought of science as objective—distinct from liberal arts and social science disciplines in that it consisted of facts that could be proved. I came to understand that it’s just another field of human endeavor filled with flaws like any other. Sometimes, scientists cheat, lie, favor certain facts over others, or knowingly publish false results. It can become a cultural and political battleground—and to refer to something as “pseudoscience” is like calling a work of art you don’t like “pseudo-art” or a piece of music you don’t enjoy “pseudo-music.”
Less than a decade after Lysenko’s downfall, Zhores Medvedev published The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko, one of the first and most fascinating accounts of the controversy published during the Cold War.
For this and other acts of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, Medvedev was declared insane and forced into a mental hospital where the challenge of keeping one’s sanity around people telling you you are crazy became his daily existence. Chilling.
Zhores Medvedev, a Soviet biochemist and outspoken critic of the Soviet bureaucracy, who was railroaded into a mental hospital, and his brother, historian Roy Medvedev, who rallied the Soviet scientific and intellectual community in protest, together tell the story of "repression by psychiatry" in Russia today.
As someone more drawn to writing and literature during my college years, I was fascinated to discover that science has a history. I had once thought of science as objective—distinct from liberal arts and social science disciplines in that it consisted of facts that could be proved. I came to understand that it’s just another field of human endeavor filled with flaws like any other. Sometimes, scientists cheat, lie, favor certain facts over others, or knowingly publish false results. It can become a cultural and political battleground—and to refer to something as “pseudoscience” is like calling a work of art you don’t like “pseudo-art” or a piece of music you don’t enjoy “pseudo-music.”
Well before Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Fleck coined the term “thought collective” to explain how conformity and “group think” produce “truth” in a given social and political milieu.
In Fleck's account, what Kuhn would later term “paradigm shifts” were the result of the gradual change in agreement on what scientists consider to be true rather than some eureka moment where fact is suddenly revealed.
Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory-including his own-is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource."
"To many scientists just as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I used to think that most nonhuman animals do not have minds in any rich sense of that word. After publishing a book about some influential philosophers who articulate and defend that view, I was pushed by a very good friend to get curious about what nonhuman creatures do. That led to years of reading, reflecting, teaching college courses, and eventually admitting that I had been profoundly wrong. My change of mind culminated in the publication of a book that explores the idea that plants have minds. The books on this list helped me tremendously along the way, and my students have also learned much from them.
This book made me think even fruitflies might have minds. Before reading this, I didn’t have a good grip on how we could even start to connect whole-body behaviors with specific genes. I was drawn in by the elegance of the early experiments with fruit flies. I remained mesmerized by the fact that when these investigations began in the early twentieth century, scientists were not sure what a gene was or even whether they were really real.
To understand how genes relate to traits of whole fruit flies, such as eye color and wing shape, scientists had to figure out what genes were simultaneously. This is the kind of book I want to memorize in a way that makes the book somehow part of me, stitched into the fibers of my body, shaping how I think and perceive.
The story of Nobel Prize–winning discoveries regarding the molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s circadian rhythm.
How much of our fate is decided before we are born? Which of our characteristics is inscribed in our DNA? Weiner brings us into Benzer's Fly Rooms at the California Institute of Technology, where Benzer, and his asssociates are in the process of finding answers, often astonishing ones, to these questions. Part biography, part thrilling scientific detective story, Time, Love, Memory forcefully demonstrates how Benzer's studies are changing our world view--and even our lives.
Jonathan Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Beak of…
Twenty years ago I nearly married a French woman and emigrated. I prepared vigorously to become an honorary Frenchman, cramming French history, language, and culture. Ultimately, I neither married nor emigrated, but the passion for that cultural acquisition project never left me, meaning many years of trips, reading, and language study. For the last decade, I've supplemented that interest by looking for historically significant French texts to translate (primarily contemporaneous texts about the World Wars and the interwar period). I have degrees in history and international affairs, plus professional experience in military affairs (including the Office of Secretary of Defense) and editing magazines (for Time, Inc.).
The fall of France is essential historical context for the refugee crisis, and this book is "history with a flair." Focused on Paris—through which millions of refugees were routed and from which two million embarked—Lottman weaves micro-histories (think Eduardo Galeano), culled from an encyclopedic range of accounts, into a panoramic, propulsive day-by-day narrative that prominently features the refugee crisis. A compelling read.
Against all odds, women journalists have built a robust tradition of telling the truth and getting to the heart of the story no matter the obstacles. In a world where the Fourth Estate is ever more crucial, the history of female reporters is all the more relevant as a source of information and inspiration for the next generation of correspondents. As a woman’s historian and passionate supporter of freedom of the press I’m always on the lookout for great histories of these intrepid reporters whose lives also happen to make for great reads.
As a kid, I wanted to be Lauren Bacall when I grew up. I watched To Have and Have Not almost weekly, emulating her sultry moves as “Slim” and wishing that I too could one day undermine the Nazis in a little black dress.
I don’t regret my choice of teenage role model, but I do wish I had known about Lee Miller back then, who would have offered a real-life example of a femme fatale fighting for good with her talents. However, rather than grit and charm, Miller used her camera to expose the true cost of fascism.
Carolyn Burke's biography takes us on an extraordinary journey through Miller’s life—from her days as a model to her work as a war correspondent. Miller had an uncanny ability to connect with the subjects of her photographs, creating a bridge between their world and ours.
Lee Miller's life embodied all the contradictions and complications of the twentieth century: a model and photographer, muse and reporter, sexual adventurer and domestic goddess, she was also America's first female war correspondent. Carolyn Burke, a biographer and art critic, here reveals how the muse who inspired Man Ray, Cocteau, and Picasso could be the same person who unflinchingly photographed the horrors of Buchenwald and Dachau. Burke captures all the verve and energy of Miller's life, from her early childhood trauma to her stint as a Vogue model and art-world ingenue, from her harrowing years as a war correspondent to…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Twenty years ago I nearly married a French woman and emigrated. I prepared vigorously to become an honorary Frenchman, cramming French history, language, and culture. Ultimately, I neither married nor emigrated, but the passion for that cultural acquisition project never left me, meaning many years of trips, reading, and language study. For the last decade, I've supplemented that interest by looking for historically significant French texts to translate (primarily contemporaneous texts about the World Wars and the interwar period). I have degrees in history and international affairs, plus professional experience in military affairs (including the Office of Secretary of Defense) and editing magazines (for Time, Inc.).
A more specialized account focused on the role of women, who made up the vast majority of refugees, in petitioning government for civilian protection and assistance before and after the crisis, and their unique experiences on the road. Dombrowski Risser finds that women initiated an expansion of universal human rights in wartime to include refugees' rights. Her insightful and masterfully informed analysis of primary source materials—women's letters to government officials—brings them to life, adding illuminating, and heartrending, substance and texture.
'We request an immediate favour of you, to build a shelter for us women and small children, because we have absolutely no place to take refuge and we are terrified!' This French mother's petition sent to her mayor on the eve of Germany's 1940 invasion of France reveals civilians' security concerns unleashed by the Blitzkrieg fighting tactics of World War II. Unprepared for air warfare's assault on civilian psyches, French planners were among the first in history to respond to civilian security challenges posed by aerial bombardment. France under Fire offers a social, political and military examination of the origins…
Twenty years ago I nearly married a French woman and emigrated. I prepared vigorously to become an honorary Frenchman, cramming French history, language, and culture. Ultimately, I neither married nor emigrated, but the passion for that cultural acquisition project never left me, meaning many years of trips, reading, and language study. For the last decade, I've supplemented that interest by looking for historically significant French texts to translate (primarily contemporaneous texts about the World Wars and the interwar period). I have degrees in history and international affairs, plus professional experience in military affairs (including the Office of Secretary of Defense) and editing magazines (for Time, Inc.).
Also for historical context, this is a more traditionally constructed history—though also a masterful synthesis of sources—and among those that view the refugee crisis as having a role in France's defeat. Clear, concise and comprehensive; if you read one book about the fall of France, read this.
On 16 May 1940 an emergency meeting of the French High Command was called at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. The German army had broken through the French lines on the River Meuse at Sedan and elsewhere, only five days after launching their attack. Churchill, who had been telephoned by Prime Minister Reynaud the previous evening to be told that the French were beaten, rushed to Paris to meet the French leaders. The mood in the meeting was one of panic and despair; there was talk of evacuating Paris. Churchill asked Gamelin, the French Commander in Chief, 'Where is the…
I became fascinated by history when, as a child, I visited the Coliseum in Rome; my father told me, “This is where they fed the Christians to the lions.” That awakened my curiosity for people of the past, and I went on to earn an undergraduate degree and a PhD in history at the Universities of Michigan and Hamburg respectively. My interest in the crusades was ignited by the enormous disconnect between popular perceptions and historical reality, and I have published two nonfiction books on the Crusader States, as well as seven novels set in the era of the crusades. The Knights Templar were an important component of my research.
What I found so exciting about this book is that it focuses on the vast majority of Templars who were not fighting men at all. Furthermore, it depicts the Templar's monastic and communal life. This is an aspect of Templar life that many novelists appear never to have heard about.
I particularly enjoyed the detailed look at recruiting and demographics, and as a novelist, Nicholson’s discussion of career paths was helpful. Yet it was the degree of integration in local communities that was perhaps most surprising to me. I wish that no one would write a novel featuring Templars without first grasping the essence of this book: that the vast majority of Templars lived out their lives like humble monks working on farms and praying far from the ‘glamour’ attached to their fighting brethren in the Holy Land.
The Knights Templar did not write about themselves, or keep diaries, so you would be forgiven for thinking there would not be much to know about their everyday lives. However, the records of the Templars' estates tell us how they lived—from the buildings they lived in and their furnishings, to the books and ornaments in their chapels, and their clothes and crockery. These early fourteenth-century records tell us about the men and women who worked for the Templars on their lands and in their houses, their tenants, and the people who owed them money. We can see what animals they…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I have lived and worked in around 10 countries and studied international relations for more than 10 years. What fascinates me is how easy it is to have a misconceived view of the world. Today’s media largely plays a role in such misperception of others. The best cure against polarized, ready-to-think arguments made by others is simply to travel. The list I crafted for you will for sure make you travel. Travel through time and space; travel through history, philosophy, and civilisations. You won’t see the world the same way after reading these books.
The world today feels like it's spinning off its axis. Practices many believed were buried in the past are making a forceful return: wars of annexation, the redrawing of borders through violent conflict, and a resurgence of tariffs. At the same time, public discourse is becoming increasingly polarized, narrowing into black-and-white thinking.
While this may seem like something new, history tells a different story. In many ways, today’s events mirror the turbulence of the 19th century. I am convinced that major powers like the United States, Russia, and China—alongside influential regional players such as Iran and Turkey—are engaged in a deliberate effort to roll back the liberal legacy of the 19th century. If we want to understand the world in 2025, we have to understand the 19th century.
This magisterial new history elucidates a momentous transformation process that changed the world: the struggle to create, for the first time, a modern Atlantic order in the long twentieth century (1860-2020). Placing it in a broader historical and global context, Patrick O. Cohrs reinterprets the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as the original attempt to supersede the Eurocentric 'world order' of the age of imperialism and found a more legitimate peace system - a system that could not yet be global but had to be essentially transatlantic. Yet he also sheds new light on why, despite remarkable learning-processes, it proved…
