Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in Science & Math (past 6 months)

All Time Past 6 Months

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition

Marc Reisner

4.7 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Calculus: Early Transcendentals

James Stewart , Daniel K. Clegg, et al.

4.2 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots

James Suzman

4.7 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Calculus

James Stewart

4.4 on Amazon

3 HN comments

The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition

Peter Wohlleben and Jane Billinghurst

4.9 on Amazon

3 HN comments

A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)

Barbara Oakley PhD

4.6 on Amazon

3 HN comments

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

David Deutsch, Walter Dixon, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Carl Jung, James Cameron Stewart, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky

4.7 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Steven Pinker, Arthur Morey, et al.

4.5 on Amazon

3 HN comments

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

4.7 on Amazon

3 HN comments

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

3 HN comments

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward, et al.

4.5 on Amazon

2 HN comments

R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data

Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Simple Techniques to Instantly Overcome Depression, Relieve Anxiety, and Rewire Your Brain

Olivia Telford

4.5 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Prev Page 2/7 Next

Sorted by relevance

hiyasanaonMar 25, 2021

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky, it is a book that explains a lot of human behavior (it's soo complicated) and as I went reading a lot of "clicks" happened in my mind of why some people do what they do.

jacobrussellonJuly 12, 2021

Take no. 6 for example: Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford with nearly 300 publications [0] and has been teaching biology and neurology for years. I'm curious, why do you think this book is pop-pseudoscience? Have you read it? Are there certain things you disagree with or think aren't based on research or reproducibility?

[0] https://profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sapolsky?tab=publicatio...

kashyapconJune 23, 2021

On Stoicism: I suggest to avoid poor remixes (e.g. Ryan Holiday) and pop-Stoicim videos like the plague and seriously engage with the originals for at least two years (yes). See my other comment here[1] for suggestions on robust English translations.

Also, Marcus Aurelius is overtaken by macho guys and business people. Why not? It's nice to associate yourself with a Roman emperor (hence the book titles like "How to think like a Roman emperor" -- avoid this). How about associating with a crippled ex Greek slave, Epictetus, who had a profound influence on Marcus? Doesn't have the same ring to it.

Further, many people don't know that Marcus was a deeply melancholic man. I don't recommend at all to start with his work. I'm saying this after I've read a few translations and a scholarly treatise on his work. (If you wonder where to start, might want to have a gander at this[1].)

And here's the cherry on top from science: the celebrated neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky in Behave (and Joshua Greene in Moral Tribes) talk about experimental evidence on how "virtue ethics (Stoicism is an example of it) is on to something", in a cheerful sense.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990579

Hacker News Books