Note: As a member of the state of Florida, you should make wise choices about what is an appropriate text for you and your family's worldview. Your book selection is an independent choice.
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New Books for 2022?:
* Think Again (Adam Grant)
* HUman Compatible: AI and the problem of control
* Life 3.0: Being Human in the age of AI
* The Map of Knowledge
* The Death of the Artist
* Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
* Extra Life: A Short HIstory of Living Longer
* How to Talk To A Science Denier
* Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever Changing Brain
* The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science
* How Charts Lie
* AI Superpowers
* Light at the Edge of the World
* Fantasyland
*Antifragile
* Range by David Epstein (why generalists triumph in a specialized world)
* The Sports Gene by David Epstein
*iGen by Jean Twenge
* The Half Life of Facts by Samuel Arbesman
* The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
* Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
* Deviate (The Science of Seeing Differently) by Beau Lotto
* The Great Unknown : 7 Journeys to the Frontiers of Science by Marcus Du Satoy
* Pandora's Lab : 7 Stories of Science Gone Wrong by Paul Offit
* How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Barrett
* Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
* World Without Mind by Foer
A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger
* Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
But What If We're Wrong by Chuck Klosterman
* Homo Deus by by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens by by Yuval Noah Harari
Reader, Come Home by MaryAnne Wolf
* Factfulness by Hans Rosling
* Think Again (Adam Grant)
* HUman Compatible: AI and the problem of control
* Life 3.0: Being Human in the age of AI
* The Map of Knowledge
* The Death of the Artist
* Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
* Extra Life: A Short HIstory of Living Longer
* How to Talk To A Science Denier
* Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever Changing Brain
* The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science
* How Charts Lie
* AI Superpowers
* Light at the Edge of the World
* Fantasyland
*Antifragile
* Range by David Epstein (why generalists triumph in a specialized world)
* The Sports Gene by David Epstein
*iGen by Jean Twenge
* The Half Life of Facts by Samuel Arbesman
* The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
* Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
* Deviate (The Science of Seeing Differently) by Beau Lotto
* The Great Unknown : 7 Journeys to the Frontiers of Science by Marcus Du Satoy
* Pandora's Lab : 7 Stories of Science Gone Wrong by Paul Offit
* How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Barrett
* Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
* World Without Mind by Foer
A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger
* Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
But What If We're Wrong by Chuck Klosterman
* Homo Deus by by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens by by Yuval Noah Harari
Reader, Come Home by MaryAnne Wolf
* Factfulness by Hans Rosling
TOK Books for Book Report 2019
L*Words that Work (good for future careers in ads/marketing, politics, branding, etc)
L* The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way
Emotion
L*Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Todd Gilbert (very readable book that deals with brain thought processes more than “happiness”)
*Emotion: The Science of Sentiment by Dylan Evans
L*The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom - Jonathan Haidt;
* How Animals Grieve: Barbara J. King: - some nice case studies
L Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Reason/Rationality / Intuition / Skepticism
L*How We Decide – maybe best book on list
L* Blink (Gladwell)
L* How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom – excellent/accessible
L*Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Brafman (or the less great The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us)
L*Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy (on rationality, advertising and brain scans)
L*Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer (good on testing knowledge claims then becomes a book on rational skepticism) or read his newer but worse book
L The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
* Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds
* Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave
L* Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Memory
* Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts
The Arts
L* Proust Was a Neuroscientist (excellent book at fusing the arts with natural sciences!) (or for something much tougher try The Age of Insight)
L* How to Read Literature Like a Professor
L* All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly – MAYBE
L* Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.)
L* How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry
Natural Sciences
L*How Doctors Think by Jerome E. Groopman (head of Harvard med school) OR What Doctors Feel
L* The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande (decision making process in complex or crisis scenarios (mostly for MED students))
L* Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self
L*13 Things that Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks
L*Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson (a well known biologist gets pretty college-level advanced on various AOKs)
L* The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Rebecca Skloot – ethics, history, bio, personal ownership rights, good storytelling
L*The Tao of Physics
L*The Canon: A Whirlgig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (Angier)
L*The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and how it changed science, cities and the modern world (cholera outbreak of 1854)
L* The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition: Thomas S. Kuhn, Ian Hacking
L* Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe
L*The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge
Human Sciences
L* The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way: Amanda Ripley:
L* The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't - Nate Silver (probabilistic knowledge w/ econ, seismology, meteorology, baseball, gambling, political science)- EXCELLENT
L* Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess (we will watch movie Project Nim end of year)
L*The Wisdom of Crowds (or the more business minded try Macrowikinomics or Wikinomics in econ section)
L*Traffic:Why We Drive the Way We Do (and what it says about us)
L*Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
L* MADE TO STICK: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (or read their other book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard or Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It)
L Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated) by Charles Wheelan
L* Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them
Economics/Behavioral Economics/ the future of human decision making
L* The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business: Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen – written by CEO of Google
L*I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted by Nick Bilton (chapter 1 isn’t great but everything else is)
L*The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More – older but better known book by the author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price – good for future entrepreneurs or business majors (OR L What Would Google Do? OR L Born Digital (MAYBE)
L*Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (quite good)
L*Thinking, Fast and Slow – godfather of behavioral economics and the bias/blind spots between our rational and intuitive/reactive systems of deciding
L*Predictably Irrational – great book (or his less great but more recent L* The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty or The Upside of Irrationality)
L Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink OR L Annoying: The Science of What Annoys Us
L* Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle – (can choose to read only Part 2)
L* What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly – nat sci (indirectly about evolution); mostly intended for wide-ranging higher-end TOK minds
L* Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
L* The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive by Brian Christian – good with the theory/history of intelligence; good for those with interest in AI and comp sci; (maybe use Chap 3 in class)
Math
* Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math
L*Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math by Alex Bellos OR The Grapes of Math
L*The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
* Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock
L* Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World: Christopher Steiner
* The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos
L* The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty: K. C. Cole
L* Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
L*More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues (actually a very calmly informative book; can read his older book too)
L Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim
Ethics
L* Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil
* Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human by Paul Bloom – lots of TOK examples
* Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr.
L* Ethics for the New Millennium by The Dalai Lama
L*We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow we will be killed with our families (on 94 Rwanda genocide OR see PBS Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda)
L* The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values: Sam Harris
History
L*THE LESSONS OF HISTORY – everyone read this in TOK the first 2 years I taught it
* The Day the Universe Changed
L*Lies My Teacher Told Me (OR Lies Across America)
L*Seeds of Change: Six Plants that Transformed Mankind (agriculture/natural sciences and history)
L*Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg – ENVIRO SYSTEMS people
L*Why We Can’t Wait by MLK (MAYBE; if wanna study Civil Rights Movement)
Globalization/Predictions on your generation’s future/ Media and Contemporary Studies
L* The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think
L* Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
* College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco
* The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis
L* The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick – mostly a history of knowledge by a real smart author who touches on all AOKs, has a nice chapter on language, deals with Wikipedia, memes and just about everything that is TOK
* The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos Reprint Edition by Leonard Mlodinow
L*Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis
L*The World is Flat (or if you REALLY prefer, possibly Hot, Flat and Crowded)
L*Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman – an old book (1985?) on media studies, but very prophetic OR The Landscape of History
The Brain
* The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us
L*The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (or The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google if you are interesting in doing IT)
L*The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
* The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman
L* Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman – EXCELLENT
L* Subliminal – How your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior -(use pg 198 and note on typeface last pg)
* Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel
L* The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human by V. S. Ramachandran
L* Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain: Michael S. Gazzanig
L* Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are: Sebastian Seung
L* The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. By Daniel Coyle
*On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins – computer science and brain sci
L*Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind - V. S. Ramachandran (TED video guy on phantom limbs, etc)
L*Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves by Sharon Begley (neuroplasticity, Buddhism, the ethics of lab experiments; lots of sensory perception stuff)
L*My Stroke of Insight (MAYBE)
L*Musicophilia (academic but readable with lots of examples; also for those who take HL or SL Music; we may watch a video on the book and/or the movie Awakenings) (or possibly the book This is your Brain on Music instead)
L* Awakenings: Oliver Sacks (we will watch the movie based on this book later
L* Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To by Sian Beilock – plenty of sports examples; very accessible
L The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
Food Supply
L*Omnivore’s Dilemma (or the mildly less impressive L In Defense of Food or the better Botany of Desire) OR
L Fast Food Nation or L The End of Food
The Nature of Genius (and Success)
L*Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
L* How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World OR *Invention of Air (both also by Steven Johnson)
* The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley by Eric Weiner
*Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention -- for any future genius who wants to impact history, invent, change paradigms, etc (or read L A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink)
L* The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World
L*Outliers: The Story of Success
L* David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
* Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant
L*Ignore Everybody (and 39 other keys to creativity)
L* inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity
L* Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
L* The Creator's Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs
L* Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
Alternative Valuations of Knowledge/Intelligence (anti-school books)
L* Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
L*The Element: How Finding your Passion Changes Everything (lots of examples of people who disliked school but found ways to merge personal passion with natural ability; author was the TED video at beginning of school year)
L*Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (good for those who dislike school learning and desire a blue collar career)
Edge Magazine’s Annual Question Books (opinions of experts) BY JOHN BROCKMAN L
*This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future;
L*What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable
L*What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better;
L*What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty;
L*What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything;
*L This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works;
* What Should We Be Worried About?: Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night;
* This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress;
* Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future
* This Idea is Brilliant
* Know This
* What's Next
Fiction & Quasi Fiction
L*Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
* Doubt
L*Life of Pi
L*The Alchemist (MAYBE)
L*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
L* Art by Yasmina Reza
L* The Storyteller: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa (possibly good for enviro/Platt kids)
L Proof by David Auburn
MISC (MOST IN THE SCHOOL LIBRARY): Sum, L How to Live, L Into the Wild, The Story of Philosophy, Ways of Seeing, L The Ecology of Commerce, Spell of the Sensuous, L The Social Animal, L Invention of Air, L Man’s Search for Meaning, L What is Intelligence?, Yanomamo, L Paradox of Choice, L Macrowikinomics, L The Well Educated Mind, L Clutch, How the Mind Words, L The Idea Factory, L Freakanomics, The Language Instinct
Book Reading Days will occur right before Winter Break otherwise this becomes Winter Break Assignment
BOOK REPORT PRESENTATIONS: first 2 days back in January (10% Q2 grade)
see me if you have a good TOK-ish book idea yourself
- * = in the bookcase in C14; L = in our school’s library; all books should be available for pickup/ reservation at a Volusia County Library http://catalog.volusialibrary.org/vcplvw/Vubis.csp
- Sense Perception (& Perception/Paradigm Shifts)
- L*The Tipping Point (Gladwell)
L*The Black Swan (Taleb) – (or consider: The age of the unthinkable (Ramo)) OR Fooled by Randomness
L*The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why (Nisbett)
* Altered States
L* The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind by Seth Horowitz
Language
L* Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention by Stanislas Dehaene (isn’t a dumbed down neuroscience book but is excellent on the history and brain science of language)
L*Words that Work (good for future careers in ads/marketing, politics, branding, etc)
L* The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way
Emotion
L*Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Todd Gilbert (very readable book that deals with brain thought processes more than “happiness”)
*Emotion: The Science of Sentiment by Dylan Evans
L*The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom - Jonathan Haidt;
* How Animals Grieve: Barbara J. King: - some nice case studies
L Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Reason/Rationality / Intuition / Skepticism
L*How We Decide – maybe best book on list
L* Blink (Gladwell)
L* How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom – excellent/accessible
L*Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Brafman (or the less great The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us)
L*Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy (on rationality, advertising and brain scans)
L*Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer (good on testing knowledge claims then becomes a book on rational skepticism) or read his newer but worse book
L The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
* Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds
* Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave
L* Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Memory
* Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts
The Arts
L* Proust Was a Neuroscientist (excellent book at fusing the arts with natural sciences!) (or for something much tougher try The Age of Insight)
L* How to Read Literature Like a Professor
L* All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly – MAYBE
L* Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.)
L* How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry
Natural Sciences
L*How Doctors Think by Jerome E. Groopman (head of Harvard med school) OR What Doctors Feel
L* The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande (decision making process in complex or crisis scenarios (mostly for MED students))
L* Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self
L*13 Things that Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks
L*Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson (a well known biologist gets pretty college-level advanced on various AOKs)
L* The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Rebecca Skloot – ethics, history, bio, personal ownership rights, good storytelling
L*The Tao of Physics
L*The Canon: A Whirlgig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (Angier)
L*The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and how it changed science, cities and the modern world (cholera outbreak of 1854)
L* The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition: Thomas S. Kuhn, Ian Hacking
L* Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe
L*The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge
Human Sciences
L* The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way: Amanda Ripley:
L* The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't - Nate Silver (probabilistic knowledge w/ econ, seismology, meteorology, baseball, gambling, political science)- EXCELLENT
L* Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess (we will watch movie Project Nim end of year)
L*The Wisdom of Crowds (or the more business minded try Macrowikinomics or Wikinomics in econ section)
L*Traffic:Why We Drive the Way We Do (and what it says about us)
L*Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
L* MADE TO STICK: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (or read their other book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard or Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It)
L Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated) by Charles Wheelan
L* Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them
Economics/Behavioral Economics/ the future of human decision making
L* The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business: Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen – written by CEO of Google
L*I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted by Nick Bilton (chapter 1 isn’t great but everything else is)
L*The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More – older but better known book by the author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price – good for future entrepreneurs or business majors (OR L What Would Google Do? OR L Born Digital (MAYBE)
L*Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (quite good)
L*Thinking, Fast and Slow – godfather of behavioral economics and the bias/blind spots between our rational and intuitive/reactive systems of deciding
L*Predictably Irrational – great book (or his less great but more recent L* The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty or The Upside of Irrationality)
L Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink OR L Annoying: The Science of What Annoys Us
L* Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle – (can choose to read only Part 2)
L* What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly – nat sci (indirectly about evolution); mostly intended for wide-ranging higher-end TOK minds
L* Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
L* The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive by Brian Christian – good with the theory/history of intelligence; good for those with interest in AI and comp sci; (maybe use Chap 3 in class)
Math
* Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math
L*Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math by Alex Bellos OR The Grapes of Math
L*The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
* Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock
L* Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World: Christopher Steiner
* The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos
L* The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty: K. C. Cole
L* Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
L*More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues (actually a very calmly informative book; can read his older book too)
L Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim
Ethics
L* Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil
* Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human by Paul Bloom – lots of TOK examples
* Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr.
L* Ethics for the New Millennium by The Dalai Lama
L*We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow we will be killed with our families (on 94 Rwanda genocide OR see PBS Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda)
L* The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values: Sam Harris
History
L*THE LESSONS OF HISTORY – everyone read this in TOK the first 2 years I taught it
* The Day the Universe Changed
L*Lies My Teacher Told Me (OR Lies Across America)
L*Seeds of Change: Six Plants that Transformed Mankind (agriculture/natural sciences and history)
L*Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg – ENVIRO SYSTEMS people
L*Why We Can’t Wait by MLK (MAYBE; if wanna study Civil Rights Movement)
Globalization/Predictions on your generation’s future/ Media and Contemporary Studies
L* The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think
L* Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
* College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco
* The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis
L* The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick – mostly a history of knowledge by a real smart author who touches on all AOKs, has a nice chapter on language, deals with Wikipedia, memes and just about everything that is TOK
* The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos Reprint Edition by Leonard Mlodinow
L*Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis
L*The World is Flat (or if you REALLY prefer, possibly Hot, Flat and Crowded)
L*Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman – an old book (1985?) on media studies, but very prophetic OR The Landscape of History
The Brain
* The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us
L*The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (or The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google if you are interesting in doing IT)
L*The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
* The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman
L* Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman – EXCELLENT
L* Subliminal – How your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior -(use pg 198 and note on typeface last pg)
* Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel
L* The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human by V. S. Ramachandran
L* Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain: Michael S. Gazzanig
L* Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are: Sebastian Seung
L* The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. By Daniel Coyle
*On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins – computer science and brain sci
L*Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind - V. S. Ramachandran (TED video guy on phantom limbs, etc)
L*Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves by Sharon Begley (neuroplasticity, Buddhism, the ethics of lab experiments; lots of sensory perception stuff)
L*My Stroke of Insight (MAYBE)
L*Musicophilia (academic but readable with lots of examples; also for those who take HL or SL Music; we may watch a video on the book and/or the movie Awakenings) (or possibly the book This is your Brain on Music instead)
L* Awakenings: Oliver Sacks (we will watch the movie based on this book later
L* Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To by Sian Beilock – plenty of sports examples; very accessible
L The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
Food Supply
L*Omnivore’s Dilemma (or the mildly less impressive L In Defense of Food or the better Botany of Desire) OR
L Fast Food Nation or L The End of Food
The Nature of Genius (and Success)
L*Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
L* How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World OR *Invention of Air (both also by Steven Johnson)
* The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley by Eric Weiner
*Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention -- for any future genius who wants to impact history, invent, change paradigms, etc (or read L A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink)
L* The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World
L*Outliers: The Story of Success
L* David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
* Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant
L*Ignore Everybody (and 39 other keys to creativity)
L* inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity
L* Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
L* The Creator's Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs
L* Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
Alternative Valuations of Knowledge/Intelligence (anti-school books)
L* Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
L*The Element: How Finding your Passion Changes Everything (lots of examples of people who disliked school but found ways to merge personal passion with natural ability; author was the TED video at beginning of school year)
L*Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (good for those who dislike school learning and desire a blue collar career)
Edge Magazine’s Annual Question Books (opinions of experts) BY JOHN BROCKMAN L
*This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future;
L*What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable
L*What Are You Optimistic About?: Today's Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better;
L*What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty;
L*What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink Everything;
*L This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works;
* What Should We Be Worried About?: Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night;
* This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress;
* Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future
* This Idea is Brilliant
* Know This
* What's Next
Fiction & Quasi Fiction
L*Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
* Doubt
L*Life of Pi
L*The Alchemist (MAYBE)
L*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
L* Art by Yasmina Reza
L* The Storyteller: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa (possibly good for enviro/Platt kids)
L Proof by David Auburn
MISC (MOST IN THE SCHOOL LIBRARY): Sum, L How to Live, L Into the Wild, The Story of Philosophy, Ways of Seeing, L The Ecology of Commerce, Spell of the Sensuous, L The Social Animal, L Invention of Air, L Man’s Search for Meaning, L What is Intelligence?, Yanomamo, L Paradox of Choice, L Macrowikinomics, L The Well Educated Mind, L Clutch, How the Mind Words, L The Idea Factory, L Freakanomics, The Language Instinct
Book Reading Days will occur right before Winter Break otherwise this becomes Winter Break Assignment
BOOK REPORT PRESENTATIONS: first 2 days back in January (10% Q2 grade)
see me if you have a good TOK-ish book idea yourself
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