I like short books that don’t feel too daunting to read. This very readable, brief tale, described by Adams as a thought experiment wrapped in a story, reminds us how to see the world differently. Something we could all do with, to challenge our prejudices and lift us from our echo chambers.
Explore the mysteries and magic of the cosmos with the acclaimed creator of Dilbert.
God's Debris is the first non-Dilbert, non-humor book by best-selling author Scott Adams. Adams describes God's Debris as a thought experiment wrapped in a story. It's designed to make your brain spin around inside your skull.
Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life: quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes…
This book, by one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, offers a personal insight into understanding and appreciating the vastness of the Cosmos. It’s a book that spans so much and paints the most accurate picture I’ve read of how we might fit into the Universe.
“Ann Druyan has unearthed a treasure. It is a treasure of reason, compassion, and scientific awe. It should be the next book you read.” —Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith
“A stunningly valuable legacy left to all of us by a great human being. I miss him so.” —Kurt Vonnegut
Carl Sagan's prophetic vision of the tragic resurgence of fundamentalism and the hope-filled potential of the next great development in human spirituality
The late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth…
This book, tells the story of a journey the author, embarks on to search for something he feels he’s missing in his life. Lelord is a psychiatrist and has an insightful perspective on the human condition. I love his simple use of language – which brings a refreshing, child-like wonder to observing the world and what makes life worth living.
Can we learn how to be happy? Hector is a successful young psychiatrist. He's very good at treating patients in real need of his help. But many people he sees have no health problems: they're just deeply dissatisfied with their lives. Hector can't do much for them, and it's beginning to depress him. So when a patient tells him he looks in need of a holiday, Hector decides to set off round the world to find out what makes people everywhere happy (and sad), and whether there is such a thing as the secret of true happiness.
This book, by the author of The Little Prince, is an autobiographical account of Antoine’s adventures during WWII – as a pilot, reflecting on the meaning and significance of life from a humanistic philosophy and how perceptions of life are shifted when you are tested to your limits. A good lesson for anyone grappling with their existence and purpose in life.
The National Book Award-winning autobiographical book about the wonder of flying from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the beloved children's classic The Little Prince.
A National Geographic Top Ten Adventure Book of All Time
Recipient of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Wind, Sand and Stars captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying.
Translated by Lewis Galantière.
"There are certain rare individuals...who by the mere fact of their existence put…
When sixteen-year-old Ashlee Sutton's home life falls apart, she is beset by a rare mental illness that makes her believe she's clairvoyant. While most people scoff at her, she begins demonstrating an uncanny knack for sometimes predicting the future, using what could either be pure luck or something more remarkable.…
Easy Travel to Other Planets by Ted Mooney, is a fictionalised story of an attempt at another Moon shot idea; the building of an interspecies communication bridge between humans and dolphins. This was a real experiment attempted in the 1960s, by neuroscientist John Lilly – which I made a film about, for the BBC, called The Girl who talked to Dolphins. Like God’s Debris, Mooney’s book challenges our perceptions of reality, and like Varieties of Scientific Experience, it tries to shed light on what it is to be human. Not only does it cover these grand ideas, but it also touches on some very prescient themes – such as our current epidemic of information overload and our existential environmental crisis.
"One of the most original seductions in recent fiction... a novel of immensely tender feeling." –The New York Review of Books
Ted Mooney's first novel Easy Travel to Other Planets endures as a cult classic known for its opening scene describing a woman having sex with a dolphin.
Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a finalist for the National Book Award, Mooney's inventive novel was also named to the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list.
My most recent book – Where Once We Stood, was written for the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo Moon landing. Using the actual words spoken by the first humans to reach the surface of the Moon, it captures the first-hand accounts of an extraordinary chapter in our history. Interwoven with a unique series of illustrations by artist Martin Impey, it offers a rare insight into what it really felt like to live and work on another world; something that those who’d experienced it often found hard to convey.
When two brothers discover a 300-year-old sausage-curing cabin on the side of a Slovenian mountain, it's love at first sight. But 300-year-old cabins come with 300 problems.
Dormice & Moonshine is the true story of an Englishman seduced by Slovenia. In the wake of a breakup, he seeks temporary refuge…
Bold, funny, and shockingly honest, Ambidextrous is like no other memoir of 1950s urban childhood.
Picano appears to his parents and siblings to be a happy, cheerful eleven-year-old possessed of the remarkable talent of being able to draw beautifully and write fluently with either hand. But then he runs into…
