Take a look at this book list for academic book week!
A brief history of time, Stephen Hawking
In 1989 Anglia Television joined with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, NBC and the Tokyo Broadcasting System to announce production of a 90-minute feature on the life of Stephen Hawking and his book “A Brief History of Time”. The film that resulted highlights the visual demonstration of Hawking’s theories and this book provides an accompaniment to this film as well as a biography of Hawking’s life, including his battle against motor neurone disease.
Silent spring, Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Lord Shackleton, a preface by World Wildlife Fund founder Julian Huxley, and an afterword by Carson’s biographer Linda Lear. Now recognized as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, Silent Spring exposed the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides.
Orientalism, Edward Said
In this highly-acclaimed work, Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation – a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the ‘otherness’ of eastern culture, customs and beliefs.
The female eunuch, Germaine Greer
Probably the most famous, most widely read book on feminism ever. First published in 1970, The Female Eunuch is a landmark in the history of the women’s movement. A searing examination of women’s oppression, a worldwide bestseller.
The double helix, James Watson
At the time Watson was only 24, with more interest in girls than in chemistry. His uncompromisingly honest account of those heady days lifts the lid on the real world of great scientists and the extraordinary excitement of their desperate attempts to beat Linus Pauling to the solution to one of the great enigmas of the life sciences.
The naked Ape, Desmond Morris
Here is the Naked Ape at his most primal – in love, at work, at war. Meet man as he really is: relative to the apes, stripped of his veneer as we see him courting, making love, sleeping, socialising, grooming, playing. Zoologist Desmond Morris’s classic takes its place alongside Darwin’s Origin of the Species, presenting man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape, remarkable in his resilience, energy and imagination, yet an animal nonetheless, in danger of forgetting his origins.With its penetrating insights on man’s beginnings, sex life, habits and our astonishing bonds to the animal kingdom, The Naked Ape is a landmark, at once provocative, compelling and timeless.
The selfish gene, Richard Dawkins
“Learned, witty, and very well written…exhilaratingly good.” – “Spectator.” “The reader will come away with a clear understanding of kin selection, evolutionary stable strategies, and evolutionary theories of animal behaviour. This is a considerable achievement.” – “THES.” “The exciting theories and their wide implications are explained with clarity, wit and enthusiasm.” – Peter Parker, “Sunday Times.”
Ways of seeing, John Berger
John Berger’s seminal text on how to look at art John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series.
The Invention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm
Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention – the creation of Welsh and Scottish ‘national culture’; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial rituals in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own.
The road to serfdom, Friedrich Hayek
The Road to Serfdom remains one of the all-time classics of twentieth-century intellectual thought. For over half a century, it has inspired politicians and thinkers around the world, and has had a crucial impact on our political and cultural history. With trademark brilliance, Hayek argues convincingly that, while socialist ideals may be tempting, they cannot be accomplished except by means that few would approve of. Addressing economics, fascism, history, socialism and the Holocaust, Hayek unwraps the trappings of socialist ideology.
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