What to give that favorite person on your list who has it all? Ideas are always my go-to.
Shoulders of Giants
And then there are the shoulders of giants we’re all lucky enough to stand upon, if we choose. Here are some of my all-time favorite go-to gift-worthy books, by category. Please feel free to add your own personal recs in the comments!
My top 10 books that bear repeat re-reading
The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization (I’ve re-read this half a dozen times)
Principles of Population Genetics (all you need in a pop-gen reference)
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (cognitive anthropology primer as well)
From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
The Reformation (all you need)
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (my man, Gregory Clark)
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Dawkins’ narrative best)
The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language (essential Pinker)
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (David REICH, ladies and gentlemen!)
10 books that changed my views
Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management (because let’s be real: smart can be evil)
The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain
The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy (a good introduction to philosophy for people who find it too dry)
Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society
War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires (indispensable Turchin at his best)
The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World
Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not
The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (from a legal perspective)
Books by some of my illustrious podcast guests
The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (Marie Favereau)
T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us (Carole Hooven)
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Charles C. Mann)
​​Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX (Eric Berger)
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Steven Pinker)
The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice (Freddie DeBoer)
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley (Antonio Garcia Martinez)
Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War (Myra MacDonald)
How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (Jared Rubin)
Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences (Alex Mesoudi)
The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility (Gregory Clark)
Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation (Gabriel Rossman)
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (Matt Ridley)
Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality (Cathy Young)
The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life (Ramesh Ponnuru)
Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 (Alina Chan and Matt Ridley again)
The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are (Libby Copeland)
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (David Anthony)
Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World (Shadi Hamid)
She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity (Carl Zimmer)
The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World (Patrick Wyman)
Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race (Thomas Chatterton Williams)
The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet (Ramez Naam)
Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story (John Hawks)
Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class (Charles Murray)
My current sub ran until Dec 19th and I had no idea how to resubscribe since it’s already automatic so I went ahead and bumped up to the highest sub level which did seem to make it renew right away.
How do you find time to read all these? You have more children than I do (1)
Some of these are even physical books not just audible