Skip to content
Books, articles, and essays for further reading
- A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder: How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place. — Abrahamson, Eric, and David H. Freedman
- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. — Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty.
- Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours. — Arikha, Noga
- The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade — Aubet, Maria Eugenia
- Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart — Ayres, Ian
- The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science — The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science
- Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral. — Ball, Philip
- The Evolution of Technology — The Evolution of Technology
- I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words — Beahm, George
- The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism 1680–1800 — Bell, David A.
- The Myths of Innovation — Berkun, Scott
- The Crooked Timber of Humanity. — Berlin, Isaiah
- Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. — Bernstein, Peter L.
- The Discovery of Insulin — Bliss, Michael
- Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy — Bostrom, Nick
- How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. — Brand, Stewart,
- At Home: A Short History of Private Life. — Bryson, Bill
- Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It. — Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It.
- 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. — Chang, H. J.,
- Tacit and Explicit Knowledge. — Collins, Harry
- The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600. — Crosby, Alfred W.
- The Secret History of the War on Cancer. — Davis, Devra,
- The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. — De Soto, H.,
- Investment Under Uncertainty. — Dixit, A. K. and R. S. Pindyck
- History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction. — Duffin, Jacalyn
- The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. — Easterly, William
- The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 — Edgerton, David
- The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal. — Franklin, James,
- The Economics of Industrial Innovation. — Freeman, C., and L. Soete
- Complications: A Surgeon’s Note on an Imperfect Science. — Gawande, Atul,
- It’s Great! Oops, No It Isn’t: Why Clinical Research Can’t Guarantee the Right Medical Answers. — Gauch, Ronald R.,
- Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. — Glaeser, E.,
- The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff. — Gold, Rich,
- Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharme Flacks. — Goldacre, B.
- Debt: The First 5000 Years. — Graeber, David
- Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives. — Grant, Ruth W
- Hayek on Liberty. — Gray, John,
- Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. — Gray, John,
- The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death. — Gray, John,
- The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. — Grob, Gerald N.,
- The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. — Hacking, Ian,
- The Taming of Chance. — Hacking, Ian,
- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. — Haidt, J.,
- A History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications Before 1750. — Hald, Anders,
- The Law of Athens: The Family and Property. — Harrison, A.R.W.,
- The Complete Guide to Option Pricing Formulas. — Haug, E. G.,
- Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity. — Holland, John H.,
- The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction. — Hollis, Martin,
- The Fertile Crescent, 1800–1914: A Documentary Economic History. — Issawi, Charles
- Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. — Jaynes, E. T.,
- Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. — Johnson, Steven
- Thinking, Fast and Slow. — Kahneman, D.,
- Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. — Kahneman, P. Slovic, and A. Tversky,
- Scientific Discovery: Logic and Tinkering. — Kantorovich, Aharon,
- A Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine: From the Ice Age to the Genome Project. — Kennedy, Michael T.,
- The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine. — Le Fanu, James,
- The Enterprise of Knowledge. — Levi, Isaac,
- Hammer and Tickle. — Lewis, Ben,
- Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, — Lewontin, Richard,
- Laughing Gas, Viagra, and Lipitor: The Human Stories Behind the Drugs We Use. — Li, Jie Jack,
- The Fractal Geometry of Nature. — Mandelbrot, Benoît B.
- Fractals and Scaling in Finance: Discontinuity, Concentration, Risk. — Mandelbrot, Benoît B.
- The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. — Richard Herring
- Daily Life of the Ancient Romans. — Matz, David
- Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity. — McMahon, Darrin M.,
- The Rate and Direction of Invention in the British Industrial Revolution: Incentives and Institutions. — Meisenzahl, R., and J. Mokyr,
- The Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine, 1959–61. — Meng, X., N. Qian, and P. Yared,
- Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. — Meyers, Morton A., M.D.,
- Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life. — Miller, John H., and Scott E.
- Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics. — Mindell, D. A.,
- Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing. — Mitchell, Mark T.
- The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. — Mokyr, Joel,
- The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. — Mokyr, Joel,
- The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan. — Morris, Ivan I.,
- Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. — North, Douglass C.,
- Trust: From Socrates to Spin. — O’Hara, Kieron
- Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects — Orlov, Dmitry,
- The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. — Popkin, Richard
- Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine. — Porter, Roy
- Our Final Century: Will Civilisation Survive the Twenty-First Century? — Rees, Martin
- The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. — Ridley, Matt,
- Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. — Schumacher, E. F.,
- The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. — Schon, Donald,
- Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. — Scott, James C.,
- Epistemics and Economics: A Critique of Economic Doctrines — Shackle, G.L.S.
- Rationality in Economics: Constructivist and Ecological Forms. — Smith, V. L.,
- Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. — Sorabji, Richard,
- Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems. — Sornette, Didier,
- Critical Phenomena in Natural Sciences: Chaos, Fractals, Self-organization and Disorder: Concepts and Tools, — Sornette, Didier,
- The Evolution of Modern States: Sweden, Japan, and the United States — Steinmo, S.
- The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition. — Sternhell, Zeev
- Wisdom, Intelligence and Creativity Synthesized. — Sternberg, Robert J.,
- The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900. — Stigler, Stephen M.,
- Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Techonological Innovation. — Stokes, Donald E.,
- The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. — Stroud, Barry,
- On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done. — Sunstein, Cass,
- The Collapse of Complex Societies: New Studies in Archaeology. — Tainter, J.,
- Unmaking the West: “What-If?” Scenarios That Rewrite World History. — Tetlock, Philip E., Richard Ned Lebow, and Geoffrey Parker
- Lecturing Birds on Flying: Can Mathematical Theories Destroy the Financial Markets? — Triana, P.,
- Real Options: Managerial Flexibility and Strategy in Resource Allocation. — Trigeorgis, L.,
- The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. — Trivers, Robert,
- Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall. — Turchin, P.,
- Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) — Vanderbilt, T.,
- Nature: An Economic History. — Vermeij, Geerat J.,
- Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems — Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems
- Fabulous Science: Fact and Fiction in the History of Scientific Discovery — Waller, John,
- Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths. — Waterfield, Robin
- Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health. — Welch, H. Gilbert, Lisa M. Schwartz, and Steven Woloshin,
- Science and the Modern World. — Whitehead, Alfred North,
- Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China. — Winchester, Simon,
- Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates. — Wootton, David,
- The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life. — Zerubavel, Eviatar
- The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives. — Ziliak, S., and D. McCloskey