December 2015

Now that The Big Picture is complete, I have more time for fun things like blogging, but I have a bunch of research to catch up on before I can return as normal. So in the meantime, here’s another teaser from the book: my list of “Further Reading” keyed to the different sections. You should have enough time to read all of these between now and publication day, May 10.

Part One, Cosmos:

• Adams, F., & Laughlin, G. (1999). The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity. Free Press.
• Albert, D.Z. (2003). Time and Chance. Harvard University Press.
• Carroll, S. (2010). From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. Dutton.
• Feynman, R.P. (1967). The Character of Physical Law. M.I.T. Press.
• Greene, B. (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. A.A. Knopf.
• Guth, A. (1997). The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins. Addison-Wesley Pub.
• Hawking, S.W. and Mlodinow, L. (2010). The Grand Design. Bantam.
• Pearl, J. (2009). Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge University Press.
• Penrose, R. (2005). The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. A.A. Knopf.
• Weinberg, S. (2015). To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science. HarperCollins.

Part Two, Understanding:

• Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. HarperCollins.
• Dennett, D.C. (2014) Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. W.W. Norton.
• Gillett, C. and Lower, B., eds. (2001). Physicalism and Its Discontents. Cambridge University Press.
• Kaplan, E. (2014). Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Investigation. Dutton.
• Rosenberg, A. (2011). The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions. W.W. Norton.
• Sagan, C. (1995). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Random House.
• Silver, N. (2012). The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t. Penguin Press.
• Tavris, C. and Aronson, E. (2006). Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Part Three, Essence:

• Aaronson, S. (2013). Quantum Computing Since Democritus. Cambridge University Press.
• Carroll, S. (2012). The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World. Dutton.
• Deutsch, D. (1997). The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications. Viking Adult.
• Gefter, A. (2014). Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything. Bantam.
• Holt, J. (2012) Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. Liveright Publishing.
• Musser, G. (2015). Spooky Action at a Distance: The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time–and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything. Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Randall, L. (2011). Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World. Ecco.
• Wallace, D. (2014). The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation. Oxford University Press.
• Wilczek, F. (2015). A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design. Penguin Press.

Part Four, Complexity:

• Bak, P. (1996). How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality. Copernicus.
• Cohen, E. (2012). Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change that Shape Life. Princeton University Press.
• Coyne, J. (2009). Why Evolution is True. Viking.
• Dawkins, R. (1986). The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. W.W. Norton.
• Dennett, D.C. (1995). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. Simon & Schuster.
• Hidalgo, C. (2015). Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies. Basic Books.
• Hoffman, P. (2012). Life’s Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos. Basic Books.
• Krugman, P. (1996). The Self-Organizing Economy. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Lane, N. (2015). The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life. W.W. Norton.
• Mitchell, M. (2009). Complexity: A Guided Tour. Oxford University Press.
• Pross, A. (2012). What Is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology. Oxford University Press.
• Rutherford, A. (2013). Creation: How Science is Reinventing Life Itself. Current.
• Shubin, N. (2008). Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. Pantheon.

Part Five, Thinking:

• Alter, T. and Howell, R.J. (2009). A Dialogue on Consciousness. Oxford University Press.
• Chalmers, D.J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press.
• Churchland, P.S. (2013). Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain. W.W. Norton.
• Damasio, A. (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Pantheon.
• Dennett, D.C. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Little Brown & Co.
• Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Pantheon.
• Flanagan, O. (2003). The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them. Basic Books.
• Gazzaniga, M.S. (2011). Who’s In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Ecco.
• Hankins, P. (2015). The Shadow of Consciousness.
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrah, Straus and Giroux.
• Tononi, G. (2012). Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul. Pantheon.

Part Six, Caring:

• de Waal, F. (2013). The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. W.W. Norton.
• Epstein, G.M. (2009). Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. William Morrow.
• Flanagan, O. (2007). The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. The MIT Press.
• Gottschall, J. (2012). The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Greene, J. (2013). Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. Penguin Press.
• Johnson, C. (2014). A Better Life: 100 Atheists Speak Out on Joy & Meaning in a World Without God. Cosmic Teapot.
• Kitcher, P. (2011). The Ethical Project. Harvard University Press.
• Lehman, J. and Shemmer, Y. (2012). Constructivism in Practical Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
• May, T. (2015). A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe. University of Chicago Press.
• Ruti, M. (2014). The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living. Columbia University Press.
• Wilson, E.O. (2014). The Meaning of Human Existence. Liveright.