Books like The Future of Humankind

Many authors will know the question of where to start the story. I think that this is particularly true in any discussion of Israel-Palestine.

Sometimes Israelis like to start it 3000 years ago in a mythical Biblical state, sometimes in an equally chimerical version of Israel’s acceptance of what the UN agreed to in 1947 – and sometimes, with the perennial bias of news, it is started as though history began last week. 

Israel’s ability to control the narrative has long characterised the conflict. To declare unchallenged that: “The Balfour Declaration gave Israel a legal right to Palestine:” or “In 1948, Israel was attacked by all surrounding Arab armies:” or “In 1967, we were only defending ourselves.” 

So, it is in an effort to correct this, to tell the Palestinian story, that Ramzy Baroud’s book is written. At times angry, more often poignant and disturbing, it is a tale about… show more.

I like books that challenge you to rethink your assumptions.

And Shlomo Sand certainly does that here, with a patient and precise account that reveals the complexity and plurality of Zionist thought while challenging the notion that there is a single strand of Zionist belief. At the same time, Sand explores Arab thinking from the end of the nineteenth century right up to today, explaining attitudes to early Jewish migration, the origins of the PLO and the recent politics of things like the Oslo Accords. 

What is most powerful, however, is the way that the book ends by saying that if, today, there is still no answer to the question of the future of Israel, it is still up to each of us who are concerned for the children of the region to continue pressing, even if against hope, for respect for those so much-denied, so much-trampled principles of equality… show more.

I didn’t know much about Syria before picking up this book.

But reading it, I discovered that Syria is a place where international politics, ideology, colonial legacy, religion, economics, and ordinary human survival all collide at once, which makes it both incredibly important and incredibly difficult to understand, let alone sum up simply. Hence, this book demands quite a commitment from the reader.

Nonetheless, at the end of it, I was left with a better understanding of how today’s Syria is the result of the interplay between many global processes. Time and time again, he says, we see how developments in Syria are never determined by purely domestic factors but are instead shaped by the powerful forces they have no control over. You have to feel for this long-suffering nation!

I recommend this book as a bit of a gear change. Or, put another way, a different perspective on knowledge.

It’s not about Israel-Palestine, but it surely says something about how we shape the issue today. What do I mean? Well, consider, as the book challenges us early on: 

“When we say someone is smart—and especially in normal, everyday conversation—we often mean they are witty, funny, sharp, clever, entertaining, political, cagey, crafty, shrewd, sly, wary, wily, devious, sneaky, circumspect, cunning, tricky, biting, stinging, confident, popular, or a blast. These “smart”-associated terms have social implications...about how smartly we control and conduct ourselves among all the complex cooperative and competitive interactions with family, friends, enemies, and strangers. Our everyday use of “intelligent” usually concerns social intelligence.”

And that’s why, today, Mark and Tim think, social media has a surprisingly big role in how knowledge is really constructed even in the sciences.  

“You… show more.

I am a firm believer that the more information you assimilate, the more you know and the better writer you can be. I found this book refreshing and informative, with detailed insights into what we know about the universe, the Earth, through the evolution of humankind, and our social history up to more modern times.

No matter what your preferred genre is or what worlds you create, Big History is a foundation on which you can build any story, including Sci-fi, like my book.

In this philosophical page-turner, Jim Holt seems to grab every major scientist and thinker he can find by the collar to make them face down arguably the most fundamental question of all: why there is something instead of nothing.

Whether talking to string theorists or experts on German existentialism, Holt keeps the tone as light as the questions are profound. In an added treat, the reader gets a real sense of the people behind some of the most creative minds on the planet. 

This book covers a dizzying array of human thought: Greene’s trademark is physics, of course – but in this wildly ambitious work, the Columbia University physicist also dives into evolution, the origins of human culture, the origins of art and music and religion – even the puzzle of consciousness and the paradox of free will. He tackles the deepest of questions – including the problem of finding “meaning” in a universe governed only by the laws of physics. Be prepared to go slow. Your brain will get a workout – but it will be worth every minute of your time.

I am recommending Alfred North Whitehead's magnum opus because, in common with a number of other philosophers, I have come to the conclusion that Whitehead is the most important philosophical cosmologist of the last four hundred years.

For the most part, American philosophy works with the assumption that the universe is meaningless. This conclusion follows from taking Newtonian science as the ultimate truth of the large-scale universe. But this depressing view of things needs to be rejected now that we have discovered quantum physics, relativity, and complexity science, all of which go beyond the view of Newtonian mechanics.

Whitehead, deeply versed in mathematical sciences, gathered up all of these new insights and presented a radically different cosmology, one rooted not in mechanical metaphors but in a keen appreciation of an ever-flowing creativity. The great benefit of studying Whitehead is the power he provides for uprooting the subconscious commitments to Newtonian… show more.

Gingerich discusses both the reception of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, as well as his own extensive research on Copernicus’ book, De Revolutionibus.

Over the course of several decades, Gingerich studied hundreds of copies of the first and second editions of Copernicus’ famous book in an effort to constructive a comprehensive census of the existing copies. These books can now sell for millions of dollars.

Gingerich was motivated in part by earlier studies of the annotations in various copies of the first edition of De Revolutionibus. Some of these contain many detailed annotations, indicating that the book was often studied with great care, contrary to a popular view that the book was seldom read. Further, he was able to reconstruct social networks by noting which copies contained the exact same annotations as other copies.

Gingerich makes the reader feel the excitement of archival research, as his book reads like a… show more.

This often startling book provides a tour d'horizon of unsettled questions in modern physical science and, most importantly, of the intriguing directions the answers could take. It should inspire many in the rising generations of students to take the baton from their elders and seek a career in science at the edges of human understanding. A book I so wish had already been around when I began studying physics.

Tom Siegfried is a distinguished science journalist.