All I want for Christmas is a few good reads

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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

1. The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization (I’ve re-read this half a dozen times)

2. Principles of Population Genetics (all you need in a pop-gen reference)

3. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (cognitive anthropology primer as well)

4. From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life

5. The Reformation (all you need)

6. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (my man, Gregory Clark)

7. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Dawkins’ narrative best)

8. The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language (essential Pinker)

9. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (David REICH, ladies and gentlemen!)

10. The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian

10 books that changed my views

1. Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present

2. When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management (because let’s be real: smart can be evil)

3. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain

4. The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics

5. The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy (a good introduction to philosophy for people who find it too dry)

6. Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society

7. War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires (indispensable Turchin at his best)

8. The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World

9. Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not

10. The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (from a legal perspective)

Books by some of my illustrious podcast guests

1. The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (Marie Favereau)

2. T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us (Carole Hooven)

3. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Charles C. Mann)

4. ​​Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX (Eric Berger)

5. No One Will Miss Her: A Novel (Kat Rosenfield)

6. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Steven Pinker)

7. The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice (Freddie DeBoer)

8. Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley (Antonio Garcia Martinez)

9. Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War (Myra MacDonald)

10. How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (Jared Rubin)

11. Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences (Alex Mesoudi)

12. Species: A History of the Idea (John S. Wilkins)

13. The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility (Gregory Clark)

14. Lone Survivors (Chris Stringer)

15. Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation (Gabriel Rossman)

16. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (Matt Ridley)

17. Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality (Cathy Young)

18. How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog (Chad Orzel)

19. The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life (Ramesh Ponnuru)

20. Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 (Alina Chan and Matt Ridley again)

21. The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science (Armand Leroi)

22. The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are (Libby Copeland)

23. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (David Anthony)

24. Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World (Shadi Hamid)

25. The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Glenn Loury)

26. She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity (Carl Zimmer)

27. The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World (Patrick Wyman)

28. Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race (Thomas Chatterton Williams)

29. The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet (Ramez Naam)

30. Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story (John Hawks)

31. The Origins of the Irish (J. P. Mallory)

32. 1177 B.C. - The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline)

33. Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class (Charles Murray)

My top 10 books on ancient Rome and China

1. The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire

2. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

3. The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265-146 BC (the description of Cannae!)

4. Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion (dry, but dense)

5. The Last Pagans of Rome

6. Early China: A Social and Cultural History

7. The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han

8. China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty

9. The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China

10. Imperial China, 900–1800