Adams, Douglas
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Pan, 1979
Essential reading for anyone who doesn't yet know "the answer to the world,
the universe and everything".
Adams, Richard
Watership Down
Puffin, 1973
A major inspiration to me in revealing the limits to our perception of large
numbers, through the eyes of an appealing colony of rabbits.
Blanchard, K and Johnson, S
The One Minute Manager
Berkeley Books,
1982
One minute is about the amount of time I have for modern management
techniques - but provided you keep them in balance there are lots of
good ideas here.
BMA
Living with Risk The British Medical Association Guide
John
Wiley, 1987
A well illustrated guide to putting the relative risks of modern life into rational
perspective.
Capra, Fritjof
The Tao of Physics
Flamingo 1976
The classic account of the extraordinary parallels between contemporary
physics and traditional Eastern Mysticism. Typically, I read the sequel, The
Turning Point Flamingo, 1983 first.
Dawkins, Richard
The Blind Watchmaker
Another highly accessible book by a prominent scientist. Intended to be a
definitive answer to those who question Darwinian evolution it incorporates
some of the most beautiful descriptions ever written of the incredible
refinement of biological systems.
de Bono, Edward
Lateral Thinking
Penguin 1970
De Bono's ideas only seem obvious when you know them. The richness
and variety of his insights into the generation of new ideas is itself
indicative of their efficacy. I always find his books stimulating. e.g.
Teaching Thinking Pelican, 1978, The Happiness Purpose Pelican, 1979, Six
Thinking Hats Viking 1985 and Water Logic Pelican, 1994
Eliot, George
Middlemarch
Penguin Classics (originally 1871)
I read Middlemarch relatively recently but before the television
dramatisation and was fascinated to find that George Eliot had been
thinking about the impact of technology on human values more than a
century ago. What's more she knew the answers.
Ellul, Jacques
The Technological Society
Vintage 1964 (Originally La
Technique ou l'enjou du sicle 1954)
Jacques Ellul was a professor in the Faculty of Law at Bordeaux University
who had been a leader of the French Resistance. His book describes what he
saw as the tragedy of a civilisation in which traditional human values were
being relentlessly usurped by the alien forces of technique. He may have
been too gloomy and overstated his case, but I'm not sure.
Evans, Christopher
The Mighty Micro
Victor Gollancz, London 1979
I include this out of nostalgia because it was the book which more than any
other introduced the British public to the computer revolution, just in time for
the Sinclair ZX80, a real computer for 99!
Feynman, Richard P
Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! Adventures
of a Curious Character
Bantam, 1986
Nobel prize-winning theoretical physicist, bongo drummer, painter of nudes,
adventurer, teacher, storyteller - a true generalist and one of the great
personalities of theoretical physics describes an astonishingly varied selection
of incidents from his personal and scientific life with boyish glee.
Gleick, James
Chaos
Heineman 1988
There is much more to chaos theory than pretty patterns and butterflies wings
affecting the weather on Mars; it is fundamental to the emerging
understanding of the relations between causes and effects. Good material if
you believe that the world cant be modelled in simple formulae.
Gould, Steven Jay
Wonderful Life - The Burgess Shale and the Nature of
History
Hutchinson Radius 1990
A fascinating account of recent fossil discoveries that confounded all
expectations and showed that there was a vastly greater diversity of life
forms when animals first began to emerge than there is today, most of the
prototypes having been eliminated by natural selection. Gould goes on to
a typically far-reaching discussion of how new things in general develop.
His books of essays are also excellent.
Gribben, John
In Search of Schrodinger's Cat
Corgi, 1984
A brilliantly lucid account of quantum physics by a scientist and professional
writer. Purely as a historical account of the emergence of a fantastic new idea
it makes for thrilling reading. As an account of how the scientific community
now view the world we live in it is more stimulating and astonishing than any
fiction.
Hawking, Stephen
A Brief History of Time
Bantam
It is sometimes thought smart to say that this is the best seller nobody finishes.
Nobody, however, quite manages to shrug off the symbolism of someone who
can't speak explaining such profundities so clearly. Black Holes and Baby
Universes and other essays Bantam, 1993 is also a fascinating read.
Levi, Primo
The Periodic Table
Abacus, London 1986
A work of superb artistry by a chemist who survived Auschwitz. Levi gives us
deft little glimpses of his world in astonishingly contrasted chapters each
taking a different chemical element as its theme. A major inspiration.
Magee, Brian
Popper
Fontana, London, 1973
Not just a concise and lucid account of the work of a man whom Sir Peter
Medawer, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, described as,
incomparably the greatest philosopher of science that has ever been, but an
illustration of how a skilful writer can make knowledge accessible to people
who havent the time or energy to plough through the original texts.
Mill, John Stuart
On Liberty
Penguin Classics (Originally 1859)
The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any
member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others... The classic account of the importance of individual liberty.
Morrell, David
The Art of General Practice
Livingstone, 1965
Of the descriptions of general practice I have come across, this is the one I
most consistently identify with.
Munthe, Axel
The Story of San Michele
An extraordinarily poetic autobiography by an outstanding doctor and
man, which enjoyed great popularity earlier this century. The autonomy
society allowed to such practitioners in the past obviously stimulated some
to greatness, whilst it undeniably allowed others to sink.
Parkinson, C Northcote
Parkinson's Law or The Pursuit of Happiness
John Murray, 1958
Funny and readable. Parkinsons law is now part of our language but we
haven't learned a thing.
Penrose, Roger
The Emperor's New Mind - concerning computers, minds, and
the laws of physics
Vintage, 1990
Roger Penroses classic argument, using impeccable science, that there are
elements of mystery in the workings of the human mind which distinguish it
fundamentally from any machine we can conceive of constructing. Reading it I
was conscious that I had reached the same conclusion from an entirely
different approach.
Philip Rhodes
The Value of Medicine
George Allen and Unwin, 1976
A scholarly, thoughtful and unusually objective account by a doctor of the
purpose of medicine in the modern world. Professor Rhodes was Dean of St
Thomass Hospital and later of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of
Adelaide. He was the first to encourage my efforts towards this book when he
later became Postgraduate Dean at Southampton Medical School.
Pirsig, Robert M
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
An indescribable exploration of the interface between art and technology.
My copy has got green high-lighter on almost every page - would
whoever I lent it to please let me have it back! I also enjoyed Lila - an
inquiry into morals, Pirsigs eagerly awaited second book which appeared in
1991.
Skrabanek, Petr and McCormick, James
Follies and Fallacies in Medicine
Tarragon Press, 1990
A brilliant, sustained and funny assault on fashionable but unscientific
preoccupations in medicine. Rare common sense.
Stoppard, Tom
Hapgood
Faber and Faber, 1988
Act 1 scene 2 of this rather baffling play contains a brilliantly lucid account of
the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics - which Richard Feynman
described as the only mystery. I include this as another example of how we
can gain understanding from a blend of art and science.
Toffler, Alvin
The Third Wave
Pan, 1980
Toffler followed Future Shock (which I didnt read) with this detailed
analysis of where a society goes when it no longer needs most of its members
to be working in industry.
Wood, Barbara
Alias Papa - A Life of Fritz Schumaker
Oxford Paperbacks,
1984
The brilliant economist who left Hitlers Germany before the outbreak of
war because, unlike his family and friends (and Time magazine), he could
not accept what was being done to truth. Originally the epitome of an
establishment figure, he was one of the intellectual giants whose authority
formed the backbone of the alternative world view as it emerged in the
early nineteen seventies.