100 books like A Social History of Truth

This is one of the finest books I’ve ever read. It’s a monumental history of ideas about nature and culture from ancient times up to the end of the eighteenth century. I have consulted it countless times, and it’s now beginning to fall apart. But I hate discarding it, and I’ll likely end up with two copies when I soon have to buy it again.

I also had the great privilege of having a brief correspondence with the author when I was still a graduate student. Amazingly, he took the time to respond to my questions. So, it holds a special place in my heart. It convinced me of the huge importance of ideas about the environment and its history.

This book has long been my go-to guide on all matters related to the relationship between science and religion. Its beauty is that it takes a cool, clear-headed look at the history of a subject that frequently stimulates more heat than light.

It’s now over thirty years old but has aged extremely well–certainly better than I have! I still find it illuminating on episode after episode. The connections are subtle and complex; Brooke never allows us to settle for comfortable simplicity. 

My admiration for this book knows no limits. Initially, I was put off by the title, but the subtitle says it all: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities. I know of no other book that tells the remarkable story of the very idea that there’s something called ‘the humanities’ and how it emerged as a suite of disciplines in modern education.

In a book of this scope and scale, I find it stunning that the author seems to have included a witticism on every other page! 

What struck me about this book was its enigmatic subtitle: A Metabiography. Here, I encountered not a biography of the great Prussian scientific traveler Alexander von Humboldt but a host of different Humboldts: Humboldt the liberal democrat, Humboldt the Aryan supremacist, Humboldt the anti-slavery Marxist, and Humboldt the pioneer of globalization.

What I discovered is that biographers construct their subjects in the image of their own time and place. This impressed me with two thoughts: that all scientific reputations are fundamentally unstable and that all of us are composed of multiple selfhoods.

Smith is generally considered as the father of economics, laying its foundations in the eighteenth century.

But he can also be an inspiration for rethinking economics (providing more realistic assumptions about human conduct) and laboratory experiments in the twenty-first century, helping us to build a new “Humanomics” (see also McCloskey’s two books on this subject). That’s what Vernon Smith (Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002) and Bart Wilson convincingly argue for in their uncommon and innovative book. Smith is still alive (and well alive) today. 

This book is a lovingly and expertly written biography of an underappreciated but vastly significant economist, Herman Daly. Professor Daly was an early proponent of ecological economics, and his work is becoming increasingly important and relevant if we want to stop climate breakdown.

One of the main reasons we are approaching climate breakdown is because neo-liberal economic theories and the economic system they have led to through trade agreements and the like rely on false or oversimplified assumptions—like pollution is free or that any resource constraints can be met by new inventions. The fact that neither is true—and the policy implications that set out from that conclusion - are persuasively documented in this biography.

The book is about economics and a great economist who brilliantly and convincingly demonstrated that the Planet and human resource demands on it must be included in our economic analysis and rules. As such, the biography… show more.

This book asks policymakers to look beyond incentives when designing policies.

Whether we are trying do something at a personal level, such as have our children do chores, or achieve something much bigger, such as combat obesity, designing appropriate incentives (carrots or sticks) is generally believed to help us achieve our goals.

Bowles warns us that this view assumes that incentives and morality are independent and that such view is faulty. Numerous experimental evidence attests to his argument. In its stead, he suggests shaping norms as a much more viable option.

When I presented these concepts in my economics elective this semester, one student commented that this was a “paradigm shift” in their understanding of economics; hence, the reason why I recommend this book.

In this beautifully written study of Lincoln’s pre-presidential years, the political ethicist William Lee Miller, a warm and generous friend as well as a gifted scholar, argued that to “appraise Lincoln fairly” one “should not compare him to unattached abolitionists in Massachusetts or to anyone a century and a half later” but rather to “other engaged politicians in the Old Northwest in the 1850s,” who were far more skeptical about racial equality than Lincoln was.

Miller observed that Lincoln was consistently “cordial and welcoming in his treatment of individual African-Americans,” but that he was more than that. In Miller’s words, Lincoln’s interaction with those Blacks demonstrated “a racially inclusive egalitarianism.” Miller’s companion volume, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman is an equally insightful examination of Lincoln’s presidential years.

I found this book to be life-changing. No good books have explained racial wealth inequality in America for years. This book changed that oversight. I love how the book calls upon its readers to think beyond income as a measure of economic equality and consider wealth. It plainly shows the causes and consequences of racial wealth inequality in America. I am glad that the book offers some recommendations for narrowing the gap but is also realistic about the related challenges.

This is hands down the best book on transnational feminism that I’ve ever read!

I have recommended this book to so many people that I’m planning on hosting a book club. Zakaria opens the book with her own experience attending a happy hour with a group of white women that ends on a particularly awkward note.

Zakaria is not only challenging white feminists, but she is also calling out all people who subscribe to white feminism and how it does more harm than good. What is white feminism you ask? Pick up this book and let Zakaria tell you.