Books like The Man Who Flattened the Earth — picked by fans

Alexander von Humboldt’s name is synonymous with scientific discovery today–the Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and countless species named for him. Humboldt revolutionized our modern understanding of the natural sciences–geology, biology, meteorology, and much else–with his epic five-year voyage that set off in 1799 and brought him through the Amazon, the Caribbean, and North and South America. 

Like Malaspina before him, Humboldt studied not only the flora and fauna of these regions but also their peoples and the political turmoil that was building towards revolution. He met with the leaders of the time–Thomas Jefferson and Simón Bolívar among them–and opened their eyes to the richness of their lands. Unlike Malaspina, Humboldt’s works were published to wide acclaim and established the idea that all nature, including human nature, is interconnected. 

This slim volume, first published in 1995, possibly jump-started the current genre of science narratives–I was certainly well aware of it when World on Fire was published in 2005. The tale begins in 1707 when the English fleet crashed into the Scilly Isles twenty miles southwest of England; two thousand men drowned, all because navigators had misgauged longitude.

The desperate quest for a solution becomes a well-funded race to make sure this never happens again. Sobel chronicles how it was solved by a simple clockmaker, and the obstacles thrown in his path by the more respected members of the era’s scientific establishment. It helps to read Kuhn’s work first, or in tandem: for all the accolades heaped upon success, both works make clear the hard road and lonely life traveled by the outsider.

In the late 18th century, European scientists claimed that “the sciences were never at war,” using as an example the international Transit of Venus voyages that took place during the height of the Seven Years’ War.

Even though the two opposing sides–France and Britain–were engaged in one of the bloodiest conflicts of that century, scientists from those two nations, as well as many allied nations on both sides, traveled vast distances across the globe (including Tahiti, South Africa, and Siberia) to witness the two Transits of Venus, 1761 and 1769.

Facing not just war but also fierce cold, disease, and the perils of ocean navigation (see Longitude above), the astronomers combined their observations to give mankind its first glimpse of the enormous scale of our solar system.      

By the end of the 18th century, the Spanish had an “empire upon which the sun never sets” long before the British claimed that title. Spain funded more scientific voyages than any other nation to explore and document its empire, the most famous of which was led by Alessandro Malaspina, the Italian-born naval officer who served the Spanish crown.

With two specially-built corvettes, the expedition departed Spain in 1789 to explore Pacific territories as far-flung as Alaska and New Zealand, chronicling and documenting the natural environments, flora and fauna, peoples, cultures, and even political upheavals that enveloped the region. It was also the first long-distance voyage to successfully combat scurvy.

Malaspina’s eye-opening reports were unfortunately hidden from view in the wake of Spain’s own political upheavals, and not fully appreciated until almost two centuries later.     

I have adored my next pick for its long narrative threads ever since I read it in my youth. It is the first book of a trilogy, but its ideas about human dignity and honor transcended the first book and pulled me into reading the second and third.

This was written by Robert A. Heinlein, one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. It is a delightful story of a boy and his off world pet. It describes the adventures that the two go through, and in the end, is one a pet or are they simply caring friends? I have read most of Heinlein's novels, but this one hit a cord with me. Perhaps, it does so, because it reminds me of my boyhood with my dog or that it shows the love humans have for their animals. Whatever the reason that it stays with me, it showed that you don't need a complex story to capture someone's imagination and emotions.

The late Roy Porter wanted to show that England did not lag behind Scotland in promoting Enlightenment, and assembled a huge quantity of material to show not just the theoretical but also the practical effects of Enlightenment. Ranging widely, he dwells on practical projects like the building of roads and canals, on the beginnings of industry (e.g. Wedgwood’s pottery factory at Etruria), and on reform of the criminal law. A distinguished historian of science, he says much about medical experiments, scientific research, and the increasingly humane treatment of mental disorders.

This is an incredibly interesting, well-written, and informative book that lays out the case for the amazing success of liberal democracies based on the Enlightenment values of liberty, universal humanism, and individualism.

I consider this book an essential reading for everyone who has been brainwashed by the current pessimistic and catastrophizing ideologies attacking this most successful of all human civilization.

Pinker is an outstanding writer, and the empirical evidence he marshals for the success and values of the Enlightenment in promoting human flourishing is utterly persuasive.

The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) is one of those characters that you loathe, but cannot help but find fascinating. By all standards, this deviant aristocrat was a gentleman in name only. Yet his remarkable life (32 years of it spent in prison) and amoral philosophizing provide the grist for a great biography under the pen of Gray. Readers will find many of de Sade’s horrific exploits here, yet this book also explores his relationship with the two most important women in his life: his beloved wife, who indulged him for decades, and his hated mother-in-law, whom he envisioned flaying alive before throwing her “into a vat of vinegar.” To a large degree, Marquis’s life and philosophy were an intentionally extreme version of the Enlightenment’s emancipation of the individual. A great window into the dark side of the Enlightenment.

While Bárbaros is a classic in borderland studies, it is not stuffy and boring at all.

The stories and details in the book give life to what happened a long time ago in distant lands. Weber shows readers how dynamic and fluid Spanish borderlands in the Americas really were. I particularly find it fascinating how the book reveals people’s flexibility in the face of seemingly rigid colonial categories.