Suggested Reading for Sixth Formers - Non Fiction
Top 10 Suggested Reading for Sixth Formers - Non Fiction
: The Ascent of Man, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, The God Delusion, The Grand Design, It's All Greek to Me
| Author | Jacob Bronowski |
| ISBN | 0316109339 |
Lauded by critics & devoured by readers, this companion to the BBC series traces the development of science as an expression of the special gifts that characterize humans & make us preeminent animals. Bronowski's exciting, illustrated investigation offers a perspective not just on science,...
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
| Author | Carl Sagan |
| ISBN | 0345409469 |
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific...
Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
| Author | Ross King |
| ISBN | 0142000159 |
Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance man bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder. Not a master mason or carpenter, Filippo Brunelleschi was a goldsmith and clock maker. Over twenty-eight years, he would dedicate himself to solving puzzles...
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
| Author | Jared Diamond |
| ISBN | 0143036556 |
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?
In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond...
Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life
| Author | Alison Weir |
| ISBN | 0345434870 |
In this beautifully written biography, Alison Weir paints a vibrant portrait of a truly exceptional woman and provides new insights into her intimate world.
Renowned in her time for being the most beautiful woman in Europe, the wife of two kings and mother of three, Eleanor of Aquitaine was...
The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics
| Author | Roger Penrose |
| ISBN | 0192861980 |
For decades, proponents of artificial intelligence have argued that computers will soon be doing everything that a human mind can do. Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do?
...
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
| Author | Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
| ISBN | 0812975219 |
Yeah, you see. I’ve just checked and most of the other reviews of this book do pretty much what I thought they would do. They complain about the tone. This guy is never going to win an award for modesty and he probably thinks you are stupid and have wasted your life. And it gets worse – like that quote from...
| Author | Richard Dawkins |
| ISBN | 0618680004 |
A preeminent scientist - and the world's most prominent atheist - asserts the irrationality of belief in God, and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old...
| Author | Stephen Hawking |
| ISBN | 0553805371 |
THE FIRST MAJOR WORK IN NEARLY A DECADE BY ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT THINKERS—A MARVELOUSLY CONCISE BOOK WITH NEW ANSWERS TO THE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF LIFE
When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the nature of reality? Why are...
| Author | Charlotte Higgins |
| ISBN | 1906021430 |
Why is ancient Greece important? Because, quite simply, if we want to understand the modern Western world, we need to look back to the Greeks. Consider the way we think about ethics, about the nature of beauty and truth, about our place in the universe, about our mortality. All this we have learned from...
A Little History of the World
| Author | E.H. Gombrich |
| ISBN | 0300108834 |
In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was...
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
| Author | Dava Sobel |
| ISBN | 0802714625 |
Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon...
| Author | John Humphrys |
| ISBN | 0340836598 |
Today programme presenter's Top Ten bestselling cry for better English in paperback for summer. From empty cliche to meaningless jargon, dangling participle to sentences without verbs, the English language is reeling. It is under attack from all sides. Politicians dupe us with deliberately evasive...
| Author | Colin Thubron |
| ISBN | 0060926562 |
A land of enormous proportions, countless secrets, and incredible history, Central Asia--the heart of the great Mongol empire of Tamerlane, site of the legendary Silk Route and scene of Stalin's cruelest deportations--is a remote and fascinating region. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and...
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
| Author | Oliver Sacks |
| ISBN | 0684853949 |
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who...
The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
| Author | Bill Bryson |
| ISBN | 0380715430 |
With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson—the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent—brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your...
Now All Roads Lead To France
| Author | Matthew Hollis |
| ISBN | 0571245986 |
Edward Thomas was perhaps the most beguiling and influential of First World War poets. Now All Roads Lead to France is an account of his final five years, centred on his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost and Thomas's fatal decision to fight in the war.
The book also evokes an astonishingly...
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
One of the most influential works of this century, this is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan, and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide: the question of living or not living in an absurd universe devoid of order or meaning....
Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia
| Author | Orlando Figes |
| ISBN | 0312421958 |
History on a grand scale-an enchanting masterpiece that explores the making of one of the world's most vibrant civilizations
A People's Tragedy, wrote Eric Hobsbawm, did "more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know." Now, in Natasha's Dance, internationally...
| Author | Artemis Cooper |
| ISBN | 0719554497 |
Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, and above all he is widely acclaimed as the greatest travel writer of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water; he was a self-educated...
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924
It is history on an epic yet human scale. Vast in scope, exhaustive in original research, written with passion, narrative skill, and human sympathy, A People's Tragedy is a profound account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation. Many consider the Russian Revolution to be the most significant...
| Author | Richard Dawkins |
| ISBN | 0199291152 |
The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition—with a new Introduction by the Author
Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene....
The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs
| Author | Tyler Hamilton |
| ISBN | 0345530411 |
The Secret Race is a definitive look at the world of professional cycling—and the doping issue surrounding this sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong—by former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle.Over the course of two years, Coyle...
This text is the 16th revised and updated edition of this introduction to art, from the earliest cave paintings to experimental art. Eight new artists from the modern period have been introduced. They are: Corot, Kollwitz, Nolde, de Chirico, Brancussi, Magritte, Nicolson and Morandi. A sequence...
The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention
| Author | Guy Deutscher |
| ISBN | 0805080120 |
Blending the spirit of Eats, Shoots & Leaves with the science of The Language Instinct, an original inquiry into the development of that most essential-and mysterious-of human creations: Language
Language is mankind's greatest invention-except, of course, that it was never invented."...
| Author | A.N. Wilson |
| ISBN | 0393325431 |
The nineteenth century saw greater changes than any previous era: in the ways nations and societies were organized, in scientific knowledge, and in nonreligious intellectual development. The crucial players in this drama were the British, who invented both capitalism and imperialism and were...
Hailed as "exhilarating and suggestive" (Spectator), "thought-provoking and entertaining" (David Lodge, Sunday Times), and "incisive and inspirational" (Guardian), What Good are the Arts? offers a delightfully skeptical look at the nature of art. John Carey--one of Britain's most respected...
