Here are 24 books that Thomas Browne fans have personally recommended if you like
Thomas Browne.
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I often think of the ways my life could have gone differently. Career-changing emails that were only narrowly rescued from spam folders, for example. In many parallel timelines, I doubt Iâm still doing what I do todayâwhich makes me cherish my good fortune to still be doing it. What I do is study the ways people have come to understand everything can go otherwise and that the future is, therefore, an open question and undecided matter. Of course, for ages, many have instead assumed that events can only go one way. But the following books persuasively insist history isnât dictated by destiny, but is governed by chance and (sometimes) choice.
My dad read sections of this book aloud to me when I was far too young to grasp anything inside. It is, after all, a book on Darwinism written by a paleontologist who specialized in macroevolutionary patterns. Such polysyllabic words were inscrutable to me. But, back then, I could look at the cover. The copy we had depicted a beautiful scene showing some of the earliest animals to appear on Earth. They are alien creaturesâsurprisingly unfamiliarâunlike anything alive today.
This left an impression on me: life was different in the past, shockingly different, which became an insight I extended to my study as a historian of ideas researching how human worldviews have also changed drastically over time.
It was fitting that when I returned to the book as a young adultânow old enough to understand itâit immediately became one of my all-time favorites. So, too, did Gould himself, who remainsâŚ
High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived-a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesâall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueâŚ
I often think of the ways my life could have gone differently. Career-changing emails that were only narrowly rescued from spam folders, for example. In many parallel timelines, I doubt Iâm still doing what I do todayâwhich makes me cherish my good fortune to still be doing it. What I do is study the ways people have come to understand everything can go otherwise and that the future is, therefore, an open question and undecided matter. Of course, for ages, many have instead assumed that events can only go one way. But the following books persuasively insist history isnât dictated by destiny, but is governed by chance and (sometimes) choice.
Hacking writes in pellucid prose. Reading this bookâin an old, dusty library many years agoâis what convinced me, for better or worse, that uncovering the history of ideas was something not only that could be viably done but could be done rigorously.
Hackingâs book tells the story of the emergence of one of the areas of mathematics that arguably shapes our world today more than any other: probability. It governs financial markets as much as military decisions, carving up the edges of our world.
Rewinding to the beginning of the modern age, Hacking tells the story of how an Italian gambler from the 1500sâone Gerolamo Cardanoâhaphazardly discovered the science of measuring chances and the art of taking them, unwittingly creating the fields of actuary and insurance that shape the foundation of our modern world.
It is riveting stuff: donât let the mathematical topic put you off. Though this book isâŚ
Historical records show that there was no real concept of probability in Europe before the mid-seventeenth century, although the use of dice and other randomizing objects was commonplace. Ian Hacking presents a philosophical critique of early ideas about probability, induction, and statistical inference and the growth of this new family of ideas in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Hacking invokes a wide intellectual framework involving the growth of science, economics, and the theology of the period. He argues that the transformations that made it possible for probability concepts to emerge have constrained all subsequent development of probability theory andâŚ
I often think of the ways my life could have gone differently. Career-changing emails that were only narrowly rescued from spam folders, for example. In many parallel timelines, I doubt Iâm still doing what I do todayâwhich makes me cherish my good fortune to still be doing it. What I do is study the ways people have come to understand everything can go otherwise and that the future is, therefore, an open question and undecided matter. Of course, for ages, many have instead assumed that events can only go one way. But the following books persuasively insist history isnât dictated by destiny, but is governed by chance and (sometimes) choice.
The modern age lumbers on like a wounded mammoth, but are its wounds fatal?
This is the question Hans Blumenberg asks in this magisterial, cathedralic book. The project and promise of modernity, Blumenberg points out, consists of the attempted rejection of all arbitrary forms of authority. That is, all powers that cannot justify themselves through human argument and agreement, whether this be derived from the arbitrariness of oneâs birthplace or background, unquestioning adherence to tradition, or to natureâs blind and bloody precedent.
Abraded to its minimalist core, it is this kernel of the modern projectâthe birth of which Blumenberg traces to the late Middle Agesâthat we can thank for later advances ranging from civil rights to womenâs liberation. But, in the wake of the atrocities that split the previous century in half, the legitimacy of modernity came into question. Technoscience, the handmaiden of modernity, seemed a plausible culprit for gasâŚ
In this major work, Blumenberg takes issue with Karl LĂświth's well-known thesis that the idea of progress is a secularized version of Christian eschatology, which promises a dramatic intervention that will consummate the history of the world from outside. Instead, Blumenberg argues, the idea of progress always implies a process at work within history, operating through an internal logic that ultimately expresses human choices and is legitimized by human self-assertion, by man's responsibility for his own fate.
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,âŚ
I often think of the ways my life could have gone differently. Career-changing emails that were only narrowly rescued from spam folders, for example. In many parallel timelines, I doubt Iâm still doing what I do todayâwhich makes me cherish my good fortune to still be doing it. What I do is study the ways people have come to understand everything can go otherwise and that the future is, therefore, an open question and undecided matter. Of course, for ages, many have instead assumed that events can only go one way. But the following books persuasively insist history isnât dictated by destiny, but is governed by chance and (sometimes) choice.
One of my favorite living writers is Rachell Powell. She writes on animal ethics, genetic engineering, and invertebrate intelligence, among other topics.
Powellâs brilliant 2020 book can be seen as a spiritual sequel to Gouldâs aforementioned 1989 Wonderful Life. Hence, it makes sense to include both on the list. Powell takes Gouldâs experiment on âreplaying the tapeâ and updates it, given modern knowledge, while also establishing its relevance for the cutting-edge scientific field of astrobiology.
Astrobiology is the study of what we should look for when we look for signs of life beyond Earth. Itâs a burgeoning field at the frontier of human knowledge, poised to provide revelatory knowledge about our own fate and future, regardless of whether the results of the search for extraterrestrial life are positive or negative.Â
Assessing the role of chance in governing the course of biological evolutionâwhether here or elsewhere in the universeâis, asâŚ
Can we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere?
In this book, Russell Powell investigates whether we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere. Weaving together disparate philosophical and empirical threads, Powell offers the first detailed analysis of the interplay between contingency and convergence in macroevolution, as it relates to both complex life in general and cognitively complex life in particular. If the evolution of mind is not a historical accident, theâŚ
The Hew Cullan stories are historical crime fiction set at the university of St Andrews, Scotland, in the late sixteenth century. I was a student at St Andrews in the 1980s and now live nearby in the East Neuk of Fife, where the imprint of the town and its surrounding landscapes have remained unchanged since medieval times. What interests me most in writing of the past is how people thought and felt, lived and died and dreamt, and I have chosen books which capture that sense of the inner life, of a moment that belongs to a single time and place, and make it true and permanent.
I first read They Were Defeated over thirty years ago, and recently reread to see if it had the power to move me still today. It does. Set in 1641, in Devonshire and Cambridge at the very brink of the Civil War, it reads like a love letter to a lost world, where the poets and Platonists are illuminated in already fading light, beautifully and tenderly observed. Rose Macaulay wrote that she had done her best "to make no person in this work use in conversation any word, phrase or idiom" not used at the time. "Ghosts of words," she calls them, after Thomas Browne. An astonishing feat in the pre-digital age. Yet the language of her ghosts is clear and true and natural. And the still moment, at the very heart of her heart-breaking story, transcends the factions that surround it and stays fixed for all time. This isâŚ
THEY WERE DEFEATED begins in 1640 at a harvest festival - but religious persecution is in the air, and the idyllic rural scene is soon darkened by the threat of a witch hunt...Rose Macaulay interweaves the lives of Robert Herrick and other contemporary poets with those of a small group of fictional characters. Their lives, and in particular the life of her heroine Julian, are set vividly before us against a period which was one of the most dramatic and unsetttled in English history. Skilfully intertwining tragedy, comedy and beauty, THEY WERE DEFEATED was Rose Macaulay's only historical novel, andâŚ
As an essayist, literary critic, and professor of literature, books are what John Milton calls my âpretious life-blood.â As a writer, teacher, and editor, I spend my days trying to make meaning out of reading. This is the idea behind my most recent book, On Purpose: itâs easy to make vague claims about the edifying powers of âgreat writing,â but what does this actually mean? How can literature help us live? My five recommendations all help us reflect on the power of books to help us think for ourselves, as I hope do my own books, including The Midlife Mind (2020) and Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2018).
Written at the height of the English Civil War, this is perhaps the single most important manifesto for free speech in the English language. But itâs also surprisingly good fun, composed in a vivid, memorable style that brings abstract concepts to life.
Advocating what he terms âpromiscuous reading,â Milton encourages us to think for ourselves and resist intellectual authoritarianism. I love his argument for the importance of reading in cultivating independent thought: "A good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmâd and treasurâd up on purpose to a life beyond life."Â As a writer and literary critic, this life-blood is precious to me, too.
John Milton was celebrated and denounced in his own time both as a poet and as a polemicist. Today he is remembered first and foremost for his poetry, but his great epic Paradise Lost was published very late in his life, in 1667, and in his own time most readers more readily recognised Milton as a writer of prose. This superbly annotated new book is an authoritative edition of Milton's major prose works, including Of Education, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the Divorce tracts, as well as the famous 1644 polemical tract on the opposing licensing and censorship,âŚ
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlifeâmostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket miceânear her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marksâŚ
My first mentor was Arthur C Clarke, the science fiction megastar. Iâve always been drawn to epic fantasy, science fiction, and techno-thrillers. Stories that push the boundaries of reality. While Iâve been a professional author for over thirty years in multiple genres, I keep returning to speculative fiction, much of which is published under my pen name âThomas Lockeâ. I serve as Writer In Residence at the University of Oxford. In writing Island of Time, my aim was to apply a classical heroic structure to neartime fantasy. Use the naturally occurring elements of light and dark, good and evil, and magnify them by adding magic to this world.
Should an angsty teen girl (or her mom) be relieved when sheâs taken under the wing of an eccentric art dealer?
After all, not many people make seventeen-year-old Cera Marlowe feel understood. Sheâs too into poetry and art and suffers from seizures⌠The mystery in Mortal Sight is of a much more personal nature than the other books on this list. While this urban fantasy tale is young adult, the blend of modern-day with ancient mythology drew me in and I was reminded of my own childhood. I enjoyed the concept of a girl with a mysterious past and a dangerous destiny awakening to her true identity â all accompanied by lines of Milton in her head that help her to navigate her strange new world.
Seventeen-year-old Cera Marlowe wants a normal life; one where she and her mom can stop skipping town every time a disturbing vision strikes. But when a girl she knows is murdered by a monster she can't explain, Cera's world turns upside down.
Suddenly thrown into an ancient supernatural battle, Cera discovers she's not alone in her gifting and vows to use her visions to save lives. But why does John Milton's poem Paradise Lost keep interrupting her thoughts?
In a race against time and a war against unearthly creatures, will decoding messages embedded inâŚ
I have spent my life both in the classroom (as a university professor) and out of it as a passionate, committed reader, for whom books are as necessary as food and drink. My interest in poetry dates back to junior high school, when I was learning foreign languages (first French and Latin, and then, later, Italian, German, and ancient Greek) and realized that language is humankindâs most astonishing invention. Iâve been at it ever since. It used to be thought that a writerâs life was of little consequence to an understanding of his or her work. We now think otherwise. Thank goodness.
This is where it all started. The beginning of modern criticism.
Samuel Johnson was the first and greatest English literary critic, whose life and work were memorably recorded by his friend James Boswell.
Johnson himself, an exemplary, even obsessive, man of letters, wrote these 52 short biographies of figures, many still canonized today (John Milton, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, William Congreve, but no women, alas) and he shows with sympathy and good sense how an understanding of a writerâs life helps us to understand his work as well.
Johnson was luminous. His prose is dazzling. He was a prodigious writer and thinker.
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
Mike Vasich has a lifelong obsession with stories about gods, superheroes, and giant monsters, and he has been inflicting them on 7th and 8th graders for the better part of 20 years. He wrote his first book, Loki, so he could cram them all into one book and make them beat up on each other. He enjoys (fictional) mayhem, sowing disrespect for revered institutions, and taking naps.Â
The title is taken from the John Milton poem, Paradise Lost: âBetter to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n,â and tells the story of the War in Heaven before the Creation from the point of view of the bad guys. So basically, we get the Devilsâ (not a typo, by the way) point of view, and, like in Milton (arguably), they are the heroes of the story. Instead of the classic two-dimensional villains who exist solely to oppose the hero, Brust flushes them out so well that you canât help but root for them. Nor can you understand why anybody would like this God dude or his weird âsonâ, Jesus. The devils in question are Satan and Lucifer, curiously split into two characters for this story, which provides further opportunities for plot and character development.
Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels (Dragon) and his swashbuckling tales of Khaavren (THE PHOENIX GUARDS and FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER) have earned him an enthusiastic audience worldwide. But TO REIGN IN HELL, his famous novel that does for the epic of Satan's rebellion what Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light did for Hindu myth, has been out of print for years - causing used copies to trade for improbable sums. Now, at last, TO REIGN IN HELL returns to print in a paperback edition, with an introduction by Roger Zelazny.
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circularâŚ
My choice of books reflects a lifelong passion for literature and the natural world. Iâve always enjoyed travelling, to cities or more remote locations, learning as much as I can about the people that live there, and my first published article was about a hotel in Mali, photographed by my sister. Ten years later we published our first book, The Foraged Home. With Living Wild we wanted to look more deeply at how people lived, not just where, focussing not only on day-to-day life and their work, but their relationship with the surrounding landscape, asking big questions about our place in the world.
At once a voice arose among / The bleak twigs overhead / In a full-hearted evensong / Of joy illimited; / An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, / In blast-beruffled plume, / Had chosen thus to fling his soul / Upon the growing gloom . . .
Hardyâs nature poems deal in darkness and light (but mostly darkness), the changes wrought not only by seasons, but by human activity and our relationship with the natural world.
In The Darkling Thrush, the poet listens to the âecstatic soundâ of the bird, âsome blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware.â A troubled ending, but, given WWI was just around the corner, a reminder how fragile it all is.
A selection of the writer's greatest nature poetry, selected by Tom Paulin, published in a beautiful new edition by Faber.
At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom . . .
