h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Please suggest further books to add to the list. Possibly with reasons why they are good.

Master B. will be organising more formal reviews for the Post (Have I got that right B?)

So far MoG has suggested "Short history of nearly everything" Bryson

Malabrista has suggested "Science of Discworld"

Any other ideas would be welcome.

Alex.
(this is Potholer's entry)

maths - Simon Singh - "Fermat's Enigma"


bio - Richard Dawkins - "The Selfish Gene"
takes some wading, but good.


physics - Albert Einstein - "The Special and General Theory"
hard, but from understandable, and from the horse's mouth

oops, that should have been "Relativity: The Special and General Theory"

As I suggested in the 'cat behaviour'-thread:

The Wildlife of the Domestic Cat, by Roger Tabor

Others:

The essays of Stephen Jay Gould, as collected in about a dozen books (let me know if you want the titles, I don't want to make this post too long), and his 'Wonderful life', about the Cambrian Explosion.

Walker's Mammals of the World, by Ronald M. Nowak
Not exactly a pageturner, but a two-volume standard work, containing everything you didn't even know there was to know about our own particular class of animals.

Thanks Nite Owl.

I'm sure P. will add them.



Alex.

I've added the suggestions so far, and tidied up the page a little.

I was also wondering what to do about authors of numerous books in one area of science.
If an author is consistent in style and quality of writing, and especially where there is a 'classic' book of theirs that people should first read, some different style of commentary on 'later' books may be more useful, whether describing the new areas covered or possibly suggesting that if someone has book X, they needn't bother buying books Y or Z.
Maybe an article reviewing the author, rather than individual books, may be worthwhile?

As reviews get written, should there be a complementary page set up to hold (or link to) reviews, leaving this article purely as a 'suggestions' list?

Looking good P.

Do you mean next to each book have a link to an entry/review or a summary?
Yes that would be good.

Looks like we need a few more Physics and Chemistry books eh?

And some people to either write a short summary and/or a proper review.

P.: Could you do a some brief summaries of the ones you suggested?

Master B.: How about a review of the Gordon books as you suggested?

I'll add a link to SEx now.



Alex.

I'm working on some reviews/summaries now.

I just cheated and switched two chemistry-history books to 'Chemistry' so it looks a little less forlorn now.

I suppose there could be one page with either links to reviews/summaries, 'review pending', or 'book suggested' after the book, but some work on formatting the page to make things clearer would probably be useful.
I'm playing around with the page (in the maths area), wondering if tables might make things clearer. Tables do result in the font dropping back to a (small) Times on many browsers, but do give certain formatting advantages.
Any comments?

If a few people try and write one or two summaries or reviews, and we then compare what we've done, we might be able to work out some guidelines for the kinds of things worth mentioning, or at least have an article with a selction of summaries we consider reasonably representative of the kind of thing we're looking for.

I'd really hate for it to get to the point where someone wrote a overly short or badly-written review and got offended at any criticism or suggestions. Possibly if we have some kind of semi-formal editing process that is expected to be undertaken by default, but which could be skipped if enough people agree a submission is fine, it could make things less personal.

<>

I like the idea of the third column in your table either saying
Review(s)
Book suggested

And then maybe a sentence or two at the top to explain that we are inviting people to suggest book and/or write a review for any of the books. The review would be an entry in their PS and they could ask you to put a link to it.

Maybe use a key:
SU - summary
RE - Review
...save on typing a bit.

<>

Much prefer table layout.

What do you reckon?

Alex.

Page is now put into tables, and first summary/review is completed.

The layout's much clearer now.

How about aligning the title of the book with the top of each cell in the table rather than the middle? WHat do you think?

Does available mean, this book is available to review? What if someone wants to review the same book? Could you include Review 1, Review 2 etc? Anyway let's not run before we can walk (that comment was for me).

Good going,P.

Alex.

Vertical alignment of book titles and author's names has now been done.

Multiple reviews *may* be best combined into a joint review with the original review or summary where possible, with multiple links kept as a last resort.

How do you do a joint review?

Alex.

The alignment makes it much more easy to read.

I like the explanation also (at the bottom).

Fab!

I will do the marketing. No probs.

Alex

Oh man, a joint review? I haven't done one of those since college. *cough*. Back when we used to read journal articles and review them that is

Which book would you like to review then Dealer?


Alex.

Just a thought, Roger Penrose has done a couple of books as well hasn't he? They seem to have got favourable reviews where I have heard of them.

Yes, Hoo has one of the latest. A big tome it is.

Can't remember the title though. I'll ask him.

There are a load of Feynman books too.

Six Easy Pieces - is one that comes to mind. I think I'll write a review of that one.

Alex.

Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time

I like it because it manages to explain all that theoretical physics stuff without resorting to pages and pages of equations.

If I may make three suggestions...

First - 'The Day Before Yesterday' by Colin Tudge. It's about human evolution, but from an ecological point of view. Not even a picture of a fossil in it. It is really superb.

Second - 'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond. It's a history of humanity in the last 13,000 years, and tries to explain recent European dominance over the rest of the world by natural/economic means.

Third - 'The Universe that Discovered Itself' by John D. Barrow. NOT your typical cosmology book, it's definitely the most thought-provoking one I've read, lots of philosophy about the ultimate questions so that the limits of science and maths are apparent.

All three of these books are ones which have changed the way I think about things, rather than just confirm or add to what I already knew. Well worth a place in the list, I hope.