Love Gods and Robots? Readers share 100 books like Gods and Robots...

By Adrienne Mayor,

Here are 100 books that Gods and Robots fans have personally recommended if you like Gods and Robots. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Greeks and the Irrational

Josiah Ober Author Of The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason

From my list on why ancient Greece still matters today.

Why am I passionate about this?

I fell in love with the ancient Greeks a half-century ago. Ever since I have tried to learn from the past, by recognizing the ways in which the ancients were at once very like us and shockingly different. I only recently grasped that the Greeks were like us in their self-consciousness about human motivation: They recognized that many (perhaps most) people are driven by self-interest. But only a few of us are skilled at strategic choice-making. They knew that cooperation was necessary for human flourishing, but terribly hard to achieve. Today working together on common projects remains the greatest challenge for business, politics ā€“ and your everyday life. 

Josiah's book list on why ancient Greece still matters today

Josiah Ober Why did Josiah love this book?

A long time ago, back in the mid-1970s, my Greek history professor told me that Doddsā€™ Greeks and the Irrational was one of the most important books on Greek history of the 20th century. He was right. It is a wonderful book, full of amazing facts about magic, ritual, and religion. It has had a huge impact on the field of classical studies and is still in print 70 years after its first publication. Dodds was a distinguished Greek scholar (the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford) but wrote for a wide audience interested in not only Greek civilization but social science as well. I have thought hard and long about his book ever since reading it on my professorā€™s recommendation. 

By Eric R. Dodds,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Greeks and the Irrational as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this philosophy classic, which was first published in 1951, E.R. Dodds takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology and psychology, Dodds asks, 'Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from 'primitive' modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?'. Praised by reviewers as "an event in modern Greek scholarship" and "a book which it would be difficult to over-praise", "The Greeks and the Irrational" was Volume 25 of the "Sather Classical Lectures" series.


Book cover of Shame and Necessity

Josiah Ober Author Of The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason

From my list on why ancient Greece still matters today.

Why am I passionate about this?

I fell in love with the ancient Greeks a half-century ago. Ever since I have tried to learn from the past, by recognizing the ways in which the ancients were at once very like us and shockingly different. I only recently grasped that the Greeks were like us in their self-consciousness about human motivation: They recognized that many (perhaps most) people are driven by self-interest. But only a few of us are skilled at strategic choice-making. They knew that cooperation was necessary for human flourishing, but terribly hard to achieve. Today working together on common projects remains the greatest challenge for business, politics ā€“ and your everyday life. 

Josiah's book list on why ancient Greece still matters today

Josiah Ober Why did Josiah love this book?

Williams was one of the most creative and engaging moral philosophers of the 20th century. He was a student at Oxford of E.R. Dodds. While Dodds reminded his readers of how strange the Greeks are to us, in terms of their religious practices, Williams reminds us that the Greeks are also very like us in the moral problems they confronted. Rejecting the idea that modern people have given up on ā€œshameā€ in favor of ā€œguilt,ā€ Williams showed that we still share the same concerns as the conflicted characters of Greek tragedy ā€“ like them, for good and for ill, we gain our sense of ourselves and our moral worth from the reactions of the those around us. 

By Bernard Williams,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shame and Necessity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Although humanity has changed since the times of the ancient Greeks, this study claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. This treatise is directed towards writers such as Homer and the tragedians. At the centre of the study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is soā€¦


Book cover of Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece

Josiah Ober Author Of The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason

From my list on why ancient Greece still matters today.

Why am I passionate about this?

I fell in love with the ancient Greeks a half-century ago. Ever since I have tried to learn from the past, by recognizing the ways in which the ancients were at once very like us and shockingly different. I only recently grasped that the Greeks were like us in their self-consciousness about human motivation: They recognized that many (perhaps most) people are driven by self-interest. But only a few of us are skilled at strategic choice-making. They knew that cooperation was necessary for human flourishing, but terribly hard to achieve. Today working together on common projects remains the greatest challenge for business, politics ā€“ and your everyday life. 

Josiah's book list on why ancient Greece still matters today

Josiah Ober Why did Josiah love this book?

The United States today still bears the scars of our long and terrible history of slavery. In this new and wonderfully thoughtful history of ancient Greek slavery, Sarah Forsdyke brings us face-to-face with the lived experience of a very different, but also harrowing, history of human bondage. Forsdyke delves into the question of how slaves lived and worked, how they resisted their oppression, and how the fact of slavery defined Greek society and economy. The intertwined development of a market economy, a citizen-centered democracy, and the systematic extraction of labor from unfree people is a stark reminder that our American story, although in many ways distinctive, was not unique. 

By Sara Forsdyke,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Slavery in ancient Greece was commonplace. In this book Sara Forsdyke uncovers the wide range of experiences of slaves and focuses on their own perspectives, rather than those of their owners, giving a voice to a group that is often rendered silent by the historical record. By reading ancient sources 'against the grain,' and through careful deployment of comparative evidence from more recent slave-owning societies, she demonstrates that slaves engaged in a variety of strategies to deal with their conditions of enslavement, ranging from calculated accommodation to full-scale rebellion. Along the way, she establishes that slaves made a vital contributionā€¦


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Book cover of The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greeceā€”and Western Civilization

Josiah Ober Author Of The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason

From my list on why ancient Greece still matters today.

Why am I passionate about this?

I fell in love with the ancient Greeks a half-century ago. Ever since I have tried to learn from the past, by recognizing the ways in which the ancients were at once very like us and shockingly different. I only recently grasped that the Greeks were like us in their self-consciousness about human motivation: They recognized that many (perhaps most) people are driven by self-interest. But only a few of us are skilled at strategic choice-making. They knew that cooperation was necessary for human flourishing, but terribly hard to achieve. Today working together on common projects remains the greatest challenge for business, politics ā€“ and your everyday life. 

Josiah's book list on why ancient Greece still matters today

Josiah Ober Why did Josiah love this book?

Barry Strauss is among the best writers ever to address the history of ancient Greece and Rome. In this exciting book, Strauss retells the great battle of Salamis ā€“ the naval battle that turned the tide of the Greek-Persian wars of the early fifth century BCE and inaugurated the Athenian Golden Age. He does so through the eyes of a wide range of those who participated in the battle ā€“ on both sides. This is military history that attends closely to the human element, and that reminds us that at various points in the past, the future of the world hung in the balance ā€“ and that the result was never foreordained. 

By Barry Strauss,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Battle of Salamis as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On a late September day in 480 B.C., Greek warships faced an invading Persian armada in the narrow Salamis Straits in the most important naval battle of the ancient world. Overwhelmingly outnumbered by the enemy, the Greeks triumphed through a combination of strategy and deception. More than two millennia after it occurred, the clash between the Greeks and Persians at Salamis remains one of the most tactically brilliant battles ever fought. The Greek victory changed the course of western history -- halting the advance of the Persian Empire and setting the stage for the Golden Age of Athens.
In thisā€¦


Book cover of Little Eyes

Richard Polt Author Of The Typewriter Revolution

From my list on tech skeptics with an imagination.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a lifelong typewriter lover. That passion has taken me down some deep and wonderful rabbit holes, including critiques of digital tech. Iā€™m just as hooked on tech as the average person today, and of course, it has real benefits, but Iā€™m painfully aware of how my addiction damages my attention, privacy, and self-reliance. The books Iā€™ve picked help me articulate the problems, imagine just how bad things can get, and see alternatives. In my day job as a philosophy professor, I think about topics like memory, time, and technology, and specialize in controversial thinker Martin Heidegger (I own his typewriter!). 

Richard's book list on tech skeptics with an imagination

Richard Polt Why did Richard love this book?

I devoured this book in a day, and it has kept me thinking for years. Say you can buy a stuffed animal equipped with a camera, and an anonymous user somewhere on the planet can see through that camera, move the toy, and make a rudimentary noise. What could possibly go wrong?

I was fascinated by the range of stories Schweblin imagines: fun, sweet, silly, and absolutely awful. Why canā€™t people in Silicon Valley think outside the box like this before they release the latest gadget thatā€™s supposed to make our lives better? 

By Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell (translator),

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Little Eyes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A visionary novel about our interconnected world, about the collision of horror and humanity, from the Man Booker-shortlisted master of the spine-tingling tale

A Guardian & Observer Best Fiction Book of 2020 * A Sunday Times Best Science Fiction Book of the Year * The Times Best Science Fiction Books of the Year * NPR Best Books of the Year

World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2020 * Ebook Travel Guides Best 5 Books of 2020 * A New York Times Notable Book of 2020

They're not pets. Not ghosts or robots. These are kentukis, and they are inā€¦


Book cover of Turned on: Science, Sex and Robots

Susie Alegre Author Of Freedom to Think: Protecting a Fundamental Human Right in the Digital Age

From my list on how technology affects your human rights.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve always been passionate about social justice as a writer and as an international human rights lawyer. I had worked on human rights, surveillance, and privacy for decades around the world, but it was when I first read about Cambridge Analytica back in 2017 that it felt personal ā€“ privacy is the gateway to our right to freedom of thought and opinion and Big Tech is increasingly acting as the gatekeeper to all our human rights. These books have all helped me to understand what the risks are and how to tackle them.

Susie's book list on how technology affects your human rights

Susie Alegre Why did Susie love this book?

In Turned On, Kate Devlin takes us on a ride through the history of sex and technology, from the Ancient Greeks to modern sex robots. 

This book is written by a technologist with an acute sense of the human. Not strictly a book about human rights, Devlin raises human rights and ethical considerations around sex tech as well as offering optimism and imagination about the ways that we could enhance our intimate lives with technology. 

The way we experience sex and intimacy is at the heart of our right to private lives, Turned On offers an erudite, funny, and sensitive exploration of what technology could mean for us.

By Kate Devlin,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Turned on as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Illuminating, witty and written with a wide open mind' Sunday Times

The idea of the seductive sex robot is the stuff of myth, legend and science fiction. From the myth of Laodamia in Ancient Greece to twenty-first century shows such as Westworld, robots in human form have captured our imagination, our hopes and our fears. But beyond the fantasies there are real and fundamental questions about our relationship with technology as it moves into the realm of robotics.

Turned On explores how the emerging and future development of sexual companion robots might affect us and the society in which weā€¦


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Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier,

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. BrenƩ Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher,ā€¦

Book cover of The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals about Our Future with Robots

Colin Wright Author Of Some Thoughts about Relationships

From my list on for thinking differently about relationships.

Why am I passionate about this?

I find a lot of satisfaction and beauty in the interconnections between people and things and concepts, as these relationships are numberless and varied, and the web they makeā€”that entangling meshā€”essentially defines everything and everything weā€™ll ever know or be capable of knowing. Relationships between people are just as diverse and structural to the shape of humanity and our globe-straddling society as anything else we might build or accomplish.

Colin's book list on for thinking differently about relationships

Colin Wright Why did Colin love this book?

Our relationships with living beings like plants and animals may influence the way we treat other sorts of lifeā€”or ā€œlifeā€ā€”we encounter in the future, including the artificial life we create. Itā€™s probably prudent to consider what those relationships should look like, now, before we begin engaging with AI or aliens lacking a clear sense of how to behave toward them.

By Kate Darling,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The New Breed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For readers of The Second Machine Age or The Soul of an Octopus, a bold, exciting exploration of how building diverse kinds of relationships with robotsā€•inspired by how we interact with animalsā€•could be the key to making our future with robot technology work

There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, suggesting that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better. Fromā€¦


Book cover of Jillian VS Parasite Planet

Catherine Egan Author Of Sneaks

From my list on middle-grade sci fi ā€“ with bonus aliens.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was bored or stressed out at school as a kid, I used to pretend that I was an alien posing as a person and that Iā€™d come to earth to learn about humans. It was fun and helped me to relax. (Look, we all have our own ways of relaxing, I donā€™t know why ā€œpretending to be an alienā€ isnā€™t on more self-care lists these days). Given my tendency to drift toward other worlds, itā€™s amazing that it took me so long to write a book featuring aliens! The trouble-making Sneaks provide the action in my most recent MG book, which also deals with very real middle-school struggles with friendships and family.  

Catherine's book list on middle-grade sci fi ā€“ with bonus aliens

Catherine Egan Why did Catherine love this book?

On Take Your Kid To Work Day, Jillian is thrilled that she gets to go to space with her parents. The routine trip goes terribly wrong, their shuttle crashes, and Jillian has to figure out how to survive ā€“ and save her injured parents ā€“ with only her own ingenuity and the help of a sarcastic, TV-loving AI nanobot swarm called SABRINA. 

The bantering Jillian-Sabrina relationship is the highlight of the book, and Jillian is a pitch-perfect MG protagonist. It was a delight to read about a super anxious kid solving problems in the absolute worst of situations. 

The Aliens: Primarily, a very creepy parasite ā€“ but the descriptions and fictional-science behind all the various life forms on the planet are fantastic.

By Nicole Kornher-Stace, Scott Brown (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jillian VS Parasite Planet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Can an anxious eleven-year-old find her chill and save her family from creepy aliens? Only if sheā€™s the most awesome, super-brave astronaut since Spaceman Spiff! So take a deep breath, grab your sidekick, and blast off with Jillian to Parasite Planet.

Eleven-year-old Jillian hates surprises. Even fun ones make her feel all panicky inside. But, sheā€™s always dreamed of joining her space-explorer parents on a mission. Itā€™s Take Your Kid to Work Day, and Jillian finally has her chance to visit an alien world!

The journey to Planet 80 UMa c is supposed to be just a fun camping trip.ā€¦


Book cover of Fires of Invention

Amanda Hamm Author Of Beyond Wisherton

From my list on fantasy to read with your kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

My favorite booksā€”to read and to writeā€”have always been funny Christian romances. But all four of my kids prefer fantasy. They want me to read with them, and theyā€™ve been asking me to read nothing but fantasy for years. Now I can say itā€™s my second favorite genre. In fact, I learned to like it so much I eventually started writing a childrenā€™s fantasy series of my own, in between all the mushy stuff. Beyond Wisherton is the first in that series.

Amanda's book list on fantasy to read with your kids

Amanda Hamm Why did Amanda love this book?

Dragons are cool. The one on this cover is clearly mechanical, and that got my attention. Cove is a rather dark setting so I would only recommend this for older kids. Readers can tell from the beginning that the oppressive society is rooted in fear. What is behind that fear? The main characters, Trenton and Kallista, arenā€™t all that concerned with the bigger picture. Theyā€™re only trying to solve a puzzle left by Kallistaā€™s father. We get to watch them become good friends in the process.

By J. Scott Savage,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fires of Invention as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.

What is this book about?

Trenton Colman is a creative thirteen-year-old boy with a knack for all things mechanical. But his talents are viewed with suspicion in Cove, a steam-powered city built inside a mountain. In Cove, creativity is a crime and ā€œinventionā€ is a curse word. Kallista Babbage is a repair technician and daughter of the notorious Leo Babbage, whose father died in an explosionā€”an event the leaders of Cove point to as an example of the danger of creativity.

Working together, Trenton and Kallista learn that Leo Babbage was developing a secret project before he perished. Following clues he left behind, they beginā€¦


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Book cover of I Am Taurus

I Am Taurus by Stephen Palmer,

The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.

Each of the sections is written fromā€¦

Book cover of Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel

Christopher Gainor Author Of The Bomb and America's Missile Age

From my list on the exploration of space.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, I was inspired by the feats of the first astronauts and cosmonauts, culminating with the Apollo expeditions to the Moon. As I grew up, I found that I was more of a historian than an engineer or a physicist. So, I began writing the stories of some of the people who were involved in the 1960s space race. I have since written about topics ranging from the strategic missiles that kicked off the space race to the Hubble Space Telescope, and today, I am the editor of Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly. 

Christopher's book list on the exploration of space

Christopher Gainor Why did Christopher love this book?

While many people expect that the future of space exploration will look like Star Trek, the reality is that robots will be blazing the trail around the solar system and beyond for some time.

This is an important and well-argued book that explains the realities of distance and danger that dictate the use of robots rather than humans for space exploration. It also explores the reasons why human-led space exploration is so popular in spite of its great expense.

By Roger D. Launius, Howard E. McCurdy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Robots in Space as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Given the near incomprehensible enormity of the universe, it appears almost inevitable that humankind will one day find a planet that appears to be much like the Earth. This discovery will no doubt reignite the lure of interplanetary travel. Will we be up to the task? And, given our limited resources, biological constraints, and the general hostility of space, what shape should we expect such expeditions to take? In Robots in Space, Roger Launius and Howard McCurdy tackle these seemingly fanciful questions with rigorous scholarship and disciplined imagination, jumping comfortably among the worlds of rocketry, engineering, public policy, and scienceā€¦


Book cover of The Greeks and the Irrational
Book cover of Shame and Necessity
Book cover of Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece

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