Here are 100 books that We Are Electric fans have personally recommended if you like
We Are Electric.
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When I was young, I used to ask every new person I met if they believed in magic. No caveats, no explanation of what I meant by that. Their response – generally either an unequivocal no, a tentative what does that mean, or a delighted yes, cemented the direction of our relationship.
One of my favorite quotes is Yeats’ statement that “the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” This conviction fuels my writing and my life. Whatever genre I write is informed first by magic, and there is no higher form of magic than the natural world and the science that explores it.
First of all, how could anyone not love a book with an author’s name like that?
This book was on display mere inches from me while I was signing books at an exceptionally enchanting indie bookstore called Sudden Fiction in Castle Rock, Colorado. I couldn’t wait for the signing to be over so I could get a copy for myself. And it did not disappoint, the contents being as beguiling as the cover.
Sheldrake describes not only the incredible and seemingly irrepressible capacity fungi have for survival and thrival (yep, I made that word up), but also encourages us to practice the same spells. I may have to become a mycologist in my next iteration – it’s good to remake oneself every few months, I think.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.
“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I have been intrigued by the stranger, lesser-known parts of the natural world for as long as I can remember and have been continuing to explore those themes in my own work. I love that humans haven’t learned all there is to know about the natural forces that have ruled this planet for longer than we’ve been here. I enjoy books that peel back a layer into these mysteries by writers who have an appreciation for their existence, their ingenuity, and their importance. I have dedicated much of my career to synthesizing big topics into accessible, engaging, and fun information that creates curiosity and a desire to understand the world around us.
I found this bookto be a fascinating journey into realms of the world below the surface I had never thought about or even known existed. Cave diving is my worst nightmare, so one particular section stands out about the wild, terrifying, and utterly unrelatable passion of cave divers and the perils one faces when stuck very, very underground.
The mixture of purely natural environments and human-created ones, such as underground tunnels and cities, all held my attention as pieces of information I had read very little about in the past, all collected into one unifying theme. Having such a broad but specific topic all in one read was a fun, dynamic journey.
In Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time-from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come-Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.
Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our…
I've spent over 15 years as an organizational coach, watching businesses struggle with challenges nature has solved and been fine-tuning over billions of years. This frustration led me to a six-month biomimicry programme where I researched and studied how natural systems actually organize themselves. As a circular economy professional and organization in action of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, I've seen how businesses attempting sustainability transitions often fail not from lack of technical knowledge but from organisational structures that impede evolution. These books have been my companion on my journey from recognizing the problem to discovering nature's proven solutions, and ultimately writing my own book to share those research insights with others facing similar challenges.
As a circular economy professional from Cambridge university, I pursue to cross that bridge between life sciences and organizational theory.
Capra and Luisi provide exactly that. Their synthesis of systems thinking, complexity theory, and living systems research gives us the conceptual foundation for understanding why organizations function best when mimicking natural characteristics.
I was especially moved by their argument that the mechanistic worldview dominating business for centuries is not just outdated but actively harmful. They show how living systems operate through networks of relationships rather than hierarchies, through emergence rather than control, through continuous adaptation rather than static structures.
Every time I work with an organization struggling with rigid hierarchies or siloed thinking, I draw on frameworks from this book. Their chapter on cognition and consciousness in living systems shifted how I think about organizational learning.
This is dense material, but they write with such clarity that complex concepts become…
Over the past thirty years, a new systemic conception of life has emerged at the forefront of science. New emphasis has been given to complexity, networks, and patterns of organisation, leading to a novel kind of 'systemic' thinking. This volume integrates the ideas, models, and theories underlying the systems view of life into a single coherent framework. Taking a broad sweep through history and across scientific disciplines, the authors examine the appearance of key concepts such as autopoiesis, dissipative structures, social networks, and a systemic understanding of evolution. The implications of the systems view of life for health care, management,…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
I have always been interested in the overview, the joined-up, the patterns, trends, and directions rather than the details of things. As a biologist, this led me to study animal behaviour rather than molecules. Great things come from the cross-overs between disciplines. Bridges are there to be made between islands of knowledge. Both my books (Wild Health and Another Self) are books that bridge a huge divide between knowledge acquired from reductionist research and that gained by experience. We humans use both.
I loved the way Guy Claxton joined the dots between so many separate scientific disciplines.
He is (I believe) a professor of linguistics, yet he dove into human biology with clarity and gusto, presenting an accessible description of an extremely complex concept—that intelligence incorporates our whole body, not just our brain.
An enthralling exploration that upends the prevailing view of consciousness and demonstrates how intelligence is literally embedded in the palms of our hands
If you think that intelligence emanates from the mind and that reasoning necessitates the suppression of emotion, you'd better think again-or rather not "think" at all. In his provocative new book, Guy Claxton draws on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to reveal how our bodies-long dismissed as mere conveyances-actually constitute the core of our intelligent life. From the endocrinal means by which our organs communicate to the instantaneous decision-making prompted by external phenomena, our bodies…
I’m a science and technology journalist who has reported on neurotech and bioelectricity for over 15 years, for publications includingNew Scientist, IEEE Spectrum and Quartz. After a formative experience in a DARPA brain-stimulation experiment, I began to dig into the history and science of bioelectricity, trying to understand both the science at the level of membrane biophysics, and the history and psychology of how biology lost custody of electricity. My resulting book is an effort to create a repository of the real, rigorous studies that have advanced our understanding of this fascinating science at an accelerating rate in the past 20 to 40 years - and what the new science means about the future.
This book tells the story of how bioelectricity was finally accepted in modern neuroscience, how it interacts with biochemical elements of the nervous signal, and how its manipulation led to great medica and scientific advances in the late 20th century.
The author knew several of the leading figures who made these discoveries and provides personal anecdotes about them, as well as illuminating episodes from the history of neuroscience.
What happens during a heart attack? Can someone really die of fright? What is death, anyway? How does electroshock treatment affect the brain? What is consciousness? The answers to these questions lie in the electrical signals constantly traveling through our bodies, driving our thoughts, our movements, and even the beating of our hearts.
The history of how scientists discovered the role of electricity in the human body is a colorful one, filled with extraordinary personalities, fierce debates, and brilliant experiments. Moreover, present-day research on electricity and ion channels has created one of the most exciting fields in science, shedding…
I’m a science and technology journalist who has reported on neurotech and bioelectricity for over 15 years, for publications includingNew Scientist, IEEE Spectrum and Quartz. After a formative experience in a DARPA brain-stimulation experiment, I began to dig into the history and science of bioelectricity, trying to understand both the science at the level of membrane biophysics, and the history and psychology of how biology lost custody of electricity. My resulting book is an effort to create a repository of the real, rigorous studies that have advanced our understanding of this fascinating science at an accelerating rate in the past 20 to 40 years - and what the new science means about the future.
Luigi Galvani found the first evidence that the signals between the brain and the body are electric at the end of the 18th century in Italy.
But his discovery was almost immediately overshadowed by the much more immediately useful invention of the battery. After this, the very idea of bioelectricity fell into disrepute along with Galvani’s reputation.
Neurophysiologist Marco Piccolino and historian of science Marco Bresadola dig into the original controversy over animal electricity and detail how this schism would shape the next 200 years of neuroscience and electrophysiology.
The authors draw on deep-cut archival source material to conclusively restore the unfairly tarnished reputation of Galvani.
This is not a book for people with a mild interest, but will nourish those with an obsessive interest in every detail around the controversy.
"... and still we could never suppose that fortune were to be so friendly to us, such as to allow us to be perhaps the first in handling, as it were, the electricity concealed in nerves, in extracting it from nerves, and, in some way, in putting it under everyone's eyes."
With these words, Luigi Galvani announced to the world in 1791 his discovery that nervous conduction and muscle excitation are electrical phenomena. The result of more than years of intense experimental work, Galvani's milestone achievement concluded a thousand-year scientific search, in a field long dominated by the antiquated beliefs…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
I’m a science and technology journalist who has reported on neurotech and bioelectricity for over 15 years, for publications includingNew Scientist, IEEE Spectrum and Quartz. After a formative experience in a DARPA brain-stimulation experiment, I began to dig into the history and science of bioelectricity, trying to understand both the science at the level of membrane biophysics, and the history and psychology of how biology lost custody of electricity. My resulting book is an effort to create a repository of the real, rigorous studies that have advanced our understanding of this fascinating science at an accelerating rate in the past 20 to 40 years - and what the new science means about the future.
Gruesome experiments extended Luigi Galvani’s early work with frog cadavers into human ones.
Victorian-era scientists shocked the bodies of executed prisoners, or sold improbably electrical cures, all in the hopes of finding the answers to questions about the boundary between life and death.
Iwan Rhys Morus chooses four case studies that explain how science got to grips with electricity and its effects on the human body, and what the intersection implied about both.
The book provides lasting insights into why electric medicine is still widely associated with pseudoscience today.
For the Victorians, electricity was the science of spectacle and of wonder. It provided them with new ways of probing the nature of reality and understanding themselves. Luigi Galvani's discovery of 'animal electricity' at the end of the eighteenth century opened up a whole new world of possibilities, in which electricity could cure sickness, restore sexual potency and even raise the dead. In Shocking Bodies, Iwan Rhys Morus explores how the Victorians thought about electricity, and how they tried to use its intimate and corporeal force to answer fundamental questions about life and death. Some even believed that electricity was…
Biology is the study of life, and I cannot think of anything more important. It’s like being interested in what’s happening to the ball when you are playing the ball game. I was very fortunate to have grown up in close contact with nature and it led me down this path. I love discovering intricate mechanisms not by thoughts but with data. Those discoveries almost always turn out to be surprising and more than what had, or could be, imagined and assumed.
I received this book from my father as a Christmas present at age 16, in 1956. The author is a Professor of Zoology who made one of the most stunning discoveries of biology of the last century: honeybees communicate direction and distance of a food source they had found to their hive-mates, within the darkness of their hive.
The code involves the movements of their bodies in a "dance," that gives directions with respect to the position of the sun, but at the same time that position shifts with time, the bees without seeing it take into account its movement in the sky, to within about 15 minutes. His experimental proofs deciphering the bees' "dances" are simple and direct, as was his writing of them. The book was and still is an inspiration, a revelation of nature's beauty that no one had seen before.
Over half a century of brilliant scientific detective work, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Karl von Frisch learned how the world, looks, smells, and tastes to a bee. More significantly, he discovered their dance language and their ability to use the sun as a compass. Intended to serve as an accessible introduction to one of the most fascinating areas of biology, Bees (first published in 1950 and revised in 1971), reported the startling results of his ingenious and revolutionary experiments with honeybees.
In his revisions, von Frisch updated his discussion about the phylogenetic origin of the language of bees and also…
I never wanted to be the person who says, “Why me?” when bad things happen. Nor did I want to fall into the common traps of feeling like I must have done something to deserve it, or that I must endure it with gritted teeth. So I sought out the books and guidance that make up the counterculture of the self-help world. Finally, rather than being told to “Pick myself up” again and again, these books and authors gave me what I needed most in times of challenge and difficulty: rest, solace, and return. Only from that space could I fully re-engage with my work in this world.
Joanna sadly left this world in 2025, but her work will stay with me forever.
This was the book that helped me move past my panic attacks about the future of humanity. How should we be when we accept the fact that the world is falling apart? How does one act, prioritize, and engage? How do you do it, without falling apart yourself?
Not an easy book to read, because it clearly lays out the trouble we’re in as human beings on this planet—no tiptoeing around. And yet, that’s exactly what gave me comfort. I needed to recognize, name, and honor the fears I felt within, instead of continuing to try to bat them away.
This book meets our moment with truth and clarity.
The challenges we face can be difficult even to think about. Climate change, war, political polarization, economic upheaval, and the dying back of nature together create a planetary emergency of overwhelming proportions. This revised, tenth anniversary edition of Active Hope shows us how to strengthen our capacity to face these crises so that we can respond with unexpected resilience and creative power. Drawing on decades of teaching an empowerment approach known as the Work That Reconnects, the authors guide us through a transformational process informed by mythic journeys, modern psychology, spirituality, and holistic science. This process equips us with tools…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
The discovery of the structure of DNA, the genetic material was one of the biggest milestones in science–but few people realise that a crucial unsung hero in this story was the humble wool fibre. But the Covid pandemic has changed all that and as a result we’ve all become acutely away of both the impact of science on our lives and our need to be more informed about it. Having long ago hung up my white coat and swapped the lab for the library to be a historian of science, I think we need a more honest, authentic understanding of scientific progress rather than the over-simplified accounts so often found in textbooks.
As the Western Roman Empire crumbled in the early 5th century, science and learning were extinguished for a thousand years…or, perhaps not. As Ehsan Masood shows in this highly enjoyable book to accompany a BBC series, Islamic scholars did much more than simply blow on the cinders of ancient Greek learning to keep them burning from the 8th to the 16th century. Names such as ibn-Sina, Jabir ibn-Hayyan, and Al-Khwarizmi may not be quite so well known to Western European ears as Copernicus, Galileo, and Descartes, but Masood shows that they were actively involved in medicine, chemistry and mathematics during this time. So go with Masood on a journey through the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, and beyond to be persuaded that the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ were perhaps not quite so dark as we’ve been led to believe.
Long before the European Enlightenment, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in Spain advanced our knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine and philosophy.
From Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed algebra in 9th century Baghdad to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, the camshaft and the reciprocating piston.
Ehsan Masood tells the amazing story of one of history's most misunderstood yet rich and fertile periods in science, via the scholars, research, and science of the Islamic empires of the middle ages.
