Here are 100 books that Death by Black Hole fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a research physicist working in fusion energy and astrophysics. To explain our work, I’ve had to overcome the misconceptions about science that are widespread in the media and among the general population. These books are the best ones I know to correct the mystification of science, especially of topics like quantum mechanics, time, consciousness, and cosmology.
OK, maybe it’s funny to recommend a book that sold in the millions. But this, and the TV series that went along with it, remains the best explanation of the evolution of astronomy and, especially, the social context for that evolution. Carl Sagan is by far the best science popularizer of the past century.
* Spacecraft missions to nearby planets * The Library of ancient Alexandria * The human brain * Egyptian hieroglyphics * The origin of life * The death of the sun * The evolution of galaxies * The origins of matter, suns and worlds
The story of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transforming matter and life into consciousness, of how science and civilisation grew up together, and of the forces and individuals who helped shape modern science. A story told with Carl Sagan's remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting.
I volunteered at my local library in small-town North Carolina from a very young age. One day I picked up Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, cementing my love of science. Sagan’s explanation that we’re all just a speck on the pale blue dot called Earth spoke to me and made me curious to know more. I begged my parents to let me go to Space Camp in Alabama and I went to North Carolina Governor’s School for Physics. I didn’t pursue a scientific career but I always retained my love of science. When I finally became an author in my 40s, I knew I would someday write a sci-fi time travel romance—eventually, A Paradox of Fates was born.
The first book in this series takes us on a thrilling ride in a post-apocalyptic world. The romance is steamy, so if that’s not your thing, no worries, but I love a good spicy romance so I thoroughly enjoyed this entire series. Rocha does a great job of balancing the sci-fi elements along with the romance, satisfying my love of both science and romance!
All Noelle Cunningham has ever wanted was a life beyond--beyond her stifling role as a prim and proper councilman’s daughter, and beyond the walls of the patriarchal city of Eden, the only remnants of safety in a world destroyed by solar storms decades earlier. But when she’s banished for violating the prohibition against immorality, she’s unprepared for the lawless world outside the city’s walls.
The sectors surrounding Eden house those abandoned to fend for themselves--men like Jasper McCray, bootlegger and cage fighter. Jas clawed his way up from nothing to stand at…
I’m an author who grew up reading books with supernatural elements, whether it was a version of this world (paranormal fantasy) or other worlds (fantasy). I’m always looking for fantasy elements mixed with romance, so it’s not a huge surprise that I wrote in the genre. I went to Seton Hill University to get my Master’s in Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction and am a USA Today Best-selling author. Books and reading (and writing!) are my passions, and I hope you enjoy this list of books I’ve reread countless times.
Chronicles of the One starts with this book, and it is a wild ride. It’s postapocalyptic but with a supernatural edge to it. There’s a plague that sweeps the world, but most of the ones left standing after it have some supernatural abilities. It becomes a war to save the world, waged between the supernaturals and the normal humans.
There’s romance—because Nora Roberts is the queen of romance—battles, and a nice HEA (happily ever after) at the end. This whole series is a do-not-miss page-turner.
A stunning new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts―Year One is an epic of hope and horror, chaos and magick, and a journey that will unite a desperate group of people to fight the battle of their lives…
It began on New Year’s Eve.
The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed―and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.
I volunteered at my local library in small-town North Carolina from a very young age. One day I picked up Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, cementing my love of science. Sagan’s explanation that we’re all just a speck on the pale blue dot called Earth spoke to me and made me curious to know more. I begged my parents to let me go to Space Camp in Alabama and I went to North Carolina Governor’s School for Physics. I didn’t pursue a scientific career but I always retained my love of science. When I finally became an author in my 40s, I knew I would someday write a sci-fi time travel romance—eventually, A Paradox of Fates was born.
When I was researching time travel theories for A Paradox of Fates, I dove into this book and fell in love with Kaku’s writing all over again. I’d read him previously, and he does a great job at explaining high-concept science at a common-sense level. This is a fantastic book for anyone curious about physics where understanding seems just out of reach.
From cyborgs, starships, UFOs, aliens and antimatter to telepathy, invisibility, psychokinesis and precognition, Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible is an exciting look at how science fiction could soon become science fact.
Albert Einstein said, 'If at first an idea does not sound absurd, there is no hope for it.' Physics of the Impossible shows how our most far-fetched ideas today - from Star Trek's phasers and teleportation to time travel as envisioned by Back to the Future - are destined to become tomorrow's reality.
Michio Kaku, bestselling science author and one of the world's most acclaimed physicists, looks at…
I have been pursuing nuclear and particle physics as a career for nearly half a century, mostly in Western countries and Japan. As a professor of physics and engineering physics, I always strive to bring conceptual clarity to what I teach for application-oriented and abstract physics, even when I cannot bring the same level of connection to physical reality in my research. I am deeply concerned that physicists have gone astray in their mathematical quest to develop a glamorous picture of the building blocks of matter and the basic interactions among them. This book is an outgrowth of my search to understand the limits of human knowledge to unravel nature’s mysteries.
Professor Rothman, a historian of Science, presents the little-known fact that Kepler’s search for harmony in astronomy has deep connections to the search for harmony in the European community of his time. In less than 400 pages, Professor Rothman takes us on an educational tour of Kepler’s evolution of his ideas of cosmic harmony and his professing those ideas for harmony in an inclusive, diverse society.
There are many untold stories and circumstances that drive a person to pursue a path of discovery or innovation, making them immortal. Kepler was the main player in laying the firm foundation of the heliocentric solar system. It is fascinating to learn that the world politics of his day were contributing factors in this regard.
A committed Lutheran excommunicated from his own church, a friend to Catholics and Calvinists alike, a layman who called himself a "priest of God," a Copernican in a world where Ptolemy still reigned, a man who argued at the same time for the superiority of one truth and the need for many truths to coexist German astronomer Johannes Kepler was, to say the least, a complicated figure. With The Pursuit of Harmony, Aviva Rothman offers a new view of him and his achievements, one that presents them as a story of Kepler's attempts to bring different, even opposing ideas and…
I’m a research physicist working in fusion energy and astrophysics. To explain our work, I’ve had to overcome the misconceptions about science that are widespread in the media and among the general population. These books are the best ones I know to correct the mystification of science, especially of topics like quantum mechanics, time, consciousness, and cosmology.
This groundbreaking work, published posthumously, is the first attempt to explain consciousness as the product of the evolutionary process. In doing this, Teilhard de Chardin outlines many characteristics of the evolutionary process that have never been described before. It is his effort to unite evolutionary theory, a Marxist view of evolution, and….Christianity.
The final chapter trying to drag Christ into this scientific work did not impress me, but it does not detract from the earlier chapters either.
Visionary theologian and evolutionary theorist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect, and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile religion with the scientific theory of evolution. In this timeless book, which contains the quintessence of his thought, Teilhard argues that just as living organisms sprung from inorganic matter and evolved into ever more complex thinking beings, humans are evolving toward an "omega point"—defined by Teilhard as a convergence with the Divine.
My first love was architecture. But while I was working as an architectural drafter in my early twenties, I began taking college courses in philosophy and religious studies. During that time, I also acquired a set of the Great Books of the Western World by Encyclopædia Britannica. I was hooked. I quit my job and became a full-time student of philosophy, religion, and history. Since then, I have seen Pascal’s maxim demonstrated in all my research. Namely, that humanity is a living oxymoron: he is like a “reed,” easily blown over. Nevertheless, the human is also a “thinking reed,” concerned with meaning, purpose, and transcendence.
This book stands as a testament to the enduring legacies of two remarkable scholars whose contributions continue to shape our understanding of the relationship between science and religion.
Lindberg and Numbers, both of whom have sadly passed away in recent years, paved the way for a more nuanced and complex examination of this crucial intersection. Their edited collection brings together diverse perspectives and rigorous scholarship, offering invaluable insights into the historical, philosophical, and theological dimensions of the dialogue between science and Christianity.
If there's one book that captures the essence of this ongoing discourse, it's this one. Lindberg and Numbers' work is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between these two realms of human inquiry.
This book, in language accessible to the general reader, investigates twelve of the most notorious, most interesting, and most instructive episodes involving the interaction between science and Christianity, aiming to tell each story in its historical specificity and local particularity.Among the events treated in "When Science and Christianity Meet" are the Galileo affair, the seventeenth-century clockwork universe, Noah's ark and the biblical flood in the development of natural history, struggles over Darwinian evolution, debates about the origin of the human species, and the Scopes trial. Readers will be introduced to St. Augustine, Roger Bacon, Pope Urban VIII, Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon…
I'm a philosopher and psychotherapist, with a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton. From the beginning of my work in philosophy, I have been interested in the nature of agency: what is it to be an agent, and how is agency even possible in the first place? These questions naturally drew me to the metaphysics of free will, as well as related topics in the logic and semantics of agentive modality (that is, the kind of possibility and necessity that is characteristic of agents). Much of my recent work has been on more clinical issues, especially on understanding addiction. I continue to be fascinated by fundamental topics in metaphysics, and especially the question of free will.
The previous two authors, van Inwagen and Steward, are libertarians: they believe free will exists and is incompatible with determinism (so determinism is false).
List, on the other hand, is a compatibilist: he believes free will exists and is compatible with determinism (so determinism might be true). This is a view that has surprising few book-length defenses, and List takes up that challenge with characteristic thoughtfulness and rigor.
A crystal-clear, scientifically rigorous argument for the existence of free will, challenging what many scientists and scientifically minded philosophers believe.
Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy…
I'm a teacher, philosopher, writer, Professor of Philosophy, and holder of the Sullivan Chair in Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. I'm the author/editor of sixteen books on such topics as religion and science, religion and politics, contemporary European philosophy, and political philosophy. I'm particularly interested in how religion and science, especially evolution, can be shown to be compatible with each other, as well as in developing an argument that there is no chance operating in nature (including in biology). My book and the books below explore these fascinating topics from almost every possible angle, and should whet readers’ appetites for further thinking about these intriguing matters!
There are a group of leading thinkers in science and religion who simultaneously provoke fertile thought in their readers and irritate them at the same time! This group includes biologists Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson, and physicists Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg, who have become public intellectuals, articulating a much larger vision for science and what role it should play in the modern worldview. The scientific prestige and literary eloquence of each of these thinkers combines to transform them into what can only be called oracles of science. Curiously, these thinkers create a very misleading and culturally damaging impression that science as a whole is incompatible with religion. Giberson and Artigas offer an informed analysis of their views, carefully distinguishing science from philosophy and religion in the writings of the oracles. Overall, the book is a great introduction to many of the fascinating questions…
Oracles of Science examines the popular writings of the six scientists who have been the most influential in shaping our perception of science, how it works, and how it relates to other fields of human endeavor, especially religion. Biologists Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson, and physicists Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg, have become public intellectuals, articulating a much larger vision for science and what role it should play in the modern worldview. The scientific prestige and literary eloquence of each of these great thinkers combine to transform them into what can only be called…
As the author of 100+ children’s books, I work mainly on assignment for educational and faith-based publishers. But when I’m freelancing, I want the topic to be something I’m passionate about. Being married to a science teacher, we often discuss science issues. After having grandchildren, I wondered, what type of planet are we going to leave them? Our grandchildren are aware and concerned about severe weather patterns. I asked myself, what can I do? Plus, I wanted to write through the lens of my faith. I wrote my picture book, God’s Earth is Something to Fight For, to instill hope and give practical ways for children to help save Earth.
The devotional book, Indescribable, is engaging way to show kids how our world (science) and God are connected in the most wonderful way.
Including a Bible verse, nonfiction information, a closing prayer and a “Be Amazed” sidebar, topics include space, earth, and animals. For example, after quoting Isaiah, “He calls the stars by name,” the author gives facts about the stars. Then Mr. Giglio says “But do you know what’s even more astonishing and wonderful?
That same God who knows the stars’ names also knows your name.” What a great introduction to God’s world from a Biblical perspective for 6-10-year-olds.
Discover the wonders of the universe with the Creator. Based on Louie Giglio's popular messages "Indescribable" and "How Great Is Our God," Indescribable: 100 Devotions About God and Science will help kids discover the incredible creation of our indescribable God.
Indescribable displays the majesty of creation with scientific findings, photography, and original illustrations. Children who are fascinated with the world around them, nature, and the earth will deepen their faith as they explore God's Word. These 100 devotions encourage awe and appreciation for God's creativity with an in-depth look at these categories:
space, galaxies, planets, and stars
Earth, geology, oceans,…
