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Selected Essays

10 best books like Selected Essays (T.S. Eliot): Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, On Growth and Form, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, The American Language, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980

Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World
AuthorNick Lane
ISBN0198607830
In Oxygen, Nick Lane takes the reader on an enthralling journey as he unravels the unexpected ways in which oxygen spurred the evolution of life and death. He shows how oxygen underpins the origin of biological complexity, the birth of photosynthesis, the sudden evolution of animals, the need for two...
The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
AuthorWilliam H. McNeill
ISBN0226561445
The Rise of the West, winner of the National Book Award for history in 1964, is famous for its ambitious scope and intellectual rigor. In it, McNeill challenges the Spengler-Toynbee view that a number of separate civilizations pursued essentially independent careers, and argues instead that human...
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
AuthorJared Diamond
ISBN0060845503
Another great book from Jared Diamond. I found this to be just as engaging as Guns, Germs, and Steel, and also an easier read. I find that his books have so much information that it is helpful for me to outline them as I go. Here are my favorite bullet points from The Third Chimpanzee. Not at all a comprehensive...
On Growth and Form
AuthorD'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
This book is a meticulous work that's both thought provoking and inspiring in its scope. There are plenty of profound, even poetic, insights scattered throughout a density of seemingly sterile precision. An especially interesting holism can be found in the chapter titled 'On the Theory of Transformations,...
Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth
AuthorRichard Fortey
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"Extraordinary. . . . Anyone with the slightest interest in biology should read this book."--The New York Times Book Review

"A marvelous museum of the past four billion years on earth--capacious, jammed with treasures, full of learning...
Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution
AuthorLynn Margulis
ISBN0520210646
Microcosmos brings together the remarkable discoveries of microbiology of the past two decades and the pioneering research of Dr. Margulis to create a vivid new picture of the world that is crucial to our understanding of the future of the planet. Addressed to general readers, the book provides a beautifully...
The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition
AuthorM.H. Abrams
ISBN0195014715
It's the first time I've had this reaction when reading an 'academic' book: awe and envy. I usually have 2 stock reactions: 1. interesting, but the author's argument was screwed in A and B manner and 2. how did this guy even get his phd?! in a cereal box!?

M.H. Abrams is too good to be anywhere near...
The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945
AuthorGeorge H. Nash
            First published in 1976, and revised in 1996, George H. Nash’s celebrated history of the postwar conservative intellectual movement has become the unquestioned standard in the field. This new edition, published in commemoration of the volume’s thirtieth anniversary,...
The American Language
AuthorH.L. Mencken
ISBN0394400755
The American Language, first published in 1919, is H. L. Mencken's book about the English language as spoken in the United States. Mencken was inspired by "the argot of the colored waiters" in Washington, as well as one of his favorite authors, Mark Twain, and his experiences on the streets of Baltimore....
The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 1895-1980
AuthorJonathan D. Spence
ISBN0140062793
 “A milestone in Western studies of China.” (John K. Fairbank)
 
In this masterful, highly original approach to modern Chinese history, Jonathan D. Spence shows us the Chinese revolution through the eyes of its most articulate participants—the writers, historians, philosophers,...
The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder
AuthorDavid Quammen
ISBN0743200322
In 1981 David Quammen began what might be every freelance writer's dream: a monthly column for Outside magazine in which he was given free rein to write about anything that interested him in the natural world. His column was called "Natural Acts," and for the next fifteen years he delighted Outside's...
Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species
AuthorSean B. Carroll
An award-winning biologist takes us on the dramatic expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet.

 

Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vague and vastly off the mark, and much of the knowledge of our own species’...
The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business
AuthorNelson Lichtenstein
ISBN0805079661
The definitive account of how a small Ozarks company upended the world of business and what that change means

Wal-Mart, the world's largest company, roared out of the rural South to change the way business is done. Deploying computer-age technology, Reagan-era politics, and Protestant...
The Ants
AuthorBert Hölldobler
ISBN3540520929
This landmark work, the distillation of a lifetime of research by the world's leading myrmecologists, is a thoroughgoing survey of one of the largest and most diverse groups of animals on the planet. Hölldobler and Wilson review in exhaustive detail virtually all topics in the anatomy, physiology,...
Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution
AuthorRichard Fortey
ISBN0375706216
With Trilobite, Richard Fortey, paleontologist and author of the acclaimed Life, offers a marvelously written, smart and compelling, accessible and witty scientific narrative of the most ubiquitous of fossil creatures.

Trilobites were shelled animals that lived in the oceans over five...
Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power
AuthorPhilip G. Dwyer
In this second volume of Philip Dwyer’s authoritative biography on one of history’s most enthralling leaders, Napoleon, now 30, takes his position as head of the French state after the 1799 coup. Dwyer explores the young leader’s reign, complete with mistakes, wrong turns, and pitfalls, and...
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