Books like The Pentagon of Power — picked by fans

Written forty years ago at the dawn of the personal computer age and well before the internet and the rise of social media, Postman’s book is a gripping read, a 20th-century warning for 21st-century readers about the dark consequences of the replacement of print media by visual forms of entertainment masquerading as information, a transformation that has had a devastating impact upon the ability of a citizenry to make informed decisions. 

In his relatively brief account, Postman described the way in which visual media overshadowed print in the 20th century. In that process, the “information” transmitted on a flickering screen became shaped by the need for brevity and, above all, the values of entertainment designed to “sell” products that cater to the emotional needs of the paying audience. While the printed words could be read and re-read for a more complex understanding of deeper meanings, electronic images were fleeting and,… show more.

I first read this book while living in Venice in the winter of 1985. Morris writes of a sea voyage along the ancient trade route and to the maritime colonies of her beloved lagoon city and, in the process, reveals much about the aggression and rapacity required by its merchant rulers to build one of humanity’s most beautiful and audacious creations.

Her book, along with Mumford’s, was formative for my understanding of the dependence of imperial cities upon an expansive hinterland and the role of warfare in its acquisition. In Venice’s case, its ship-building Arsenale made possible the splendid palaces that line the Grand Canal and the immense pile of loot that is the Basilica San Marco.

This book opened my eyes to the often cataclysmic consequences of European exploration and colonization of islands and continents beyond itself, a shockwave of transformations and extinctions that have impoverished the human and biological diversity of the Earth continuing to the present.

Crosby—a pioneer of environmental history—often writes with wry humor about a very serious topic. His chapter on the invasion of the eastern Atlantic islands and its aftermath ("The Fortunate Isles") is especially good. 

I originally intended to write a chapter in my book about how the birth of San Francisco (and other imperial cities) sent out a shock wave of deforestation, but I only touched lightly upon it in my chapter on mining.

Greg King has filled that need in his magisterial book about how ruthlessly and quickly the city’s magnates converted one of the Earth’s most magnificent forests and remarkable ecosystems into stumps as well as cash, credit, and dynastic fortunes on the city’s markets so that today only four percent of California’s old-growth redwoods remain.

Depressing as his narrative might otherwise be, King also reveals how the epic fight to save what remains has—like the campaign to stop whaling—changed popular perceptions of our living colleagues so that what once seemed a heroic enterprise now appears to many an epic crime. 

Over the last two centuries, human per capita energy usage has grown 800 percent, while the population has also grown to the same degree. Life has changed profoundly due to our adoption of fossil fuels—but puzzlingly few people are curious to understand energy’s role in society and history. Smil fills the void to overflowing with this detailed account of how people have harvested energy from their environments, and how doing so has changed the ways they live.

So much of the public conversation around AI focuses on the extremes: "It's Going to Take Our Jobs And We'll Never Be Able To Work Ever Again!" or "It's Going To Create a Utopia And We'll Never Have To Work Ever Again!"

To be honest, I don't put a lot of credence into either of these perspectives. What I adore about this book is that it puts the technology in perspective in a concrete and laugh-out-loud funny way. Through detailed examples, it provides a glimpse into how the technology works, how it can be applied to real problems, and where it falls jaw-droppingly short. 

My other fiction offer is an amazing graphic novel that cleverly characterises scientist super powers. These take the form of three unashamedly nerdy girls who find themselves drawn into the activities of a mysterious secret society founded by Marie Curie – “a clandestine society where brilliant women could pursue the furthest reaches of their intellect”. Via wonderful graphics, we are taken on a roller-coaster ride through history and science, through the revelatory power of individual sciencey skills and the even greater power of team-working. All enhanced by accessible explanations of the science concepts embedded in the story - such a great way to learn about mathematical patterns or magnetic fields in fusion reactors or brain interface technology. Have fun!

I think I’m on my third or fourth copy of this book, because I keep giving it away! This is an absolutely stunning, gorgeously illustrated book about the spacesuits worn by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong during the moon landing. The bid to design the suits was won by the Playtex Corporation—the lingerie company!—over a bunch of industrial materials suppliers, because Playtex knew how to design for the body in ways the other firms didn’t. The book is organized into twenty-one chapters, in homage to the twenty-one layers of the spacesuit, and it’s a thing of beauty. It weaves together the history of aeronautics, the politics of the Space Race, technology design, and mid-century fashion so seamlessly, and makes you think about each of these topics differently.

The late French philosopher Bruno Latour was infamous for his iconoclastic work in the history and sociology of science and technology.

If you read only one of his books, I’d say go for We Have Never Been Modern because it cuts to the heart of things by disrupting the conventional understanding of modernity as a clear separation between nature and culture. Latour argues that even as “moderns” have been rhetorically invested in this particular bifurcation of the world, nature-culture hybrids are continually proliferating.

So if you’ve ever asked yourself, why are cities not considered natural landscapes? Or why are animals always presumed to be without culture? Or what does it even mean to be modern? Then this is the book for you.

Bell, one of the greatest sociologists of the twentieth century, argues that having the right culture is essential for capitalism (or any other economic or political system) to flourish – and I certainly agree. But he goes further: he worries that over time the economic gains that capitalism delivers end up undermining the cultural conditions that allow capitalism to flourish in the first place. His book is about the role of culture more broadly, not religion in particular, but religion certainly fits within the overall argument.