Here are 32 books that Nuts and Bolts fans have personally recommended if you like
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For as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with figuring out how things work. What started with me pulling apart redundant household tech as a child (thanks to my very supportive parents) has become a lifelong passion in making and restoring one of the most incredible machines invented – the watch. Our millennia-old obsession with making things tells us so much about who we are and the world we like in. I love all of these books as, in varied ways, they inspire curiosity and connect us with our innately human instinct to understand the world around us.
Shop Class as Soulcraft is a very special book to me, because it’s the first one I read over 10 years ago that managed to perfectly weave between the philosophy and practice of craft. It was that moment of “wow, I want to be able to write like this!”
Too often, craft is studied by academics or theorists, while the craftspeople getting their hands dirty rarely write about what they do. This book so perfectly balances between the two, it’s an ode to making, with the passion for working with your hands oozing from every page in such a brilliantly funny and engaging way.
A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands
“This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving.” —Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman
Called “the sleeper hit of the publishing season” by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a…
For as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with figuring out how things work. What started with me pulling apart redundant household tech as a child (thanks to my very supportive parents) has become a lifelong passion in making and restoring one of the most incredible machines invented – the watch. Our millennia-old obsession with making things tells us so much about who we are and the world we like in. I love all of these books as, in varied ways, they inspire curiosity and connect us with our innately human instinct to understand the world around us.
As you’ve probably guessed by this point, I love it when makers and restorers write about what they do.
It brings a history of craft to life in such an infectious way. The Stonemason is a journey back in time that explores how the way we’ve built buildings can tell us stories about our social and cultural histories. It’s incredibly personal, using some of the monuments Ziminski has worked on over his 30-year career as a stonemason, and for my fellow dog lovers it also stars his gorgeous whippet Nutmeg.
A stonemason's story of the building of Britain: part archaeological history, part deeply personal insight into an ancient craft.
In his thirty-year career, stonemason Andrew Ziminski has worked on many of our greatest monuments. From Neolithic monoliths to Roman baths and temples, from the tower of Salisbury Cathedral to the engine houses, mills and aqueducts of the Industrial Revolution and beyond, The Stonemason is his very personal history of how Britain was built - from the inside out. Stone by different stone, culture by different culture, Andrew Ziminski (with his faithful whippet in tow) takes us on an unforgettable journey…
For as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with figuring out how things work. What started with me pulling apart redundant household tech as a child (thanks to my very supportive parents) has become a lifelong passion in making and restoring one of the most incredible machines invented – the watch. Our millennia-old obsession with making things tells us so much about who we are and the world we like in. I love all of these books as, in varied ways, they inspire curiosity and connect us with our innately human instinct to understand the world around us.
As adults, we get to a point in our lives where we generally know what we’re good at, and when we’re good at something, it becomes challenging to try new things we know we’ll initially, probably, be very bad at it. It pushes us outside our comfort zone.
Ploszajski is a brilliant materials scientist who bravely heads outside her field on a journey to explore the hands-on world of the materials she knows so well in the lab. It’s an incredibly inspiring read for anyone holding back from trying new skills. It’s hard to come away from this book without having set your heart on taking up a new craft!
From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass. Handmade is the story of materials through making and doing. Author and material scientist Anna Ploszajski journeys into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work.
Anna has the fresh perspective of someone at the forefront…
For as long as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with figuring out how things work. What started with me pulling apart redundant household tech as a child (thanks to my very supportive parents) has become a lifelong passion in making and restoring one of the most incredible machines invented – the watch. Our millennia-old obsession with making things tells us so much about who we are and the world we like in. I love all of these books as, in varied ways, they inspire curiosity and connect us with our innately human instinct to understand the world around us.
I can’t think of a better way to close than with a book to inspire the next generation of people who love taking things apart! This brilliant compilation of easy makes sets out to cultivate curious young minds.
By using common things you can find around the house, it makes science and making accessible to all. The projects are all really straightforward and designed by Shaha, a dad and science teacher, to support the educational curriculum whilst having a lot of fun.
Transform and recycle household objects into your very own home-made toys and machines!
Learn about the centre of gravity by making a balancing bird, create a toroidal vortex with a smoke-ring machine, and turn a spoon into an electromagnet. Chances are you won't need to buy the materials required for these machines because they're all in your house right now. Every child can be an engineer with the help of Mr Shaha and his marvellous machines.
Written by a science teacher and dad, Mr Shaha's Marvellous Machines is the highly anticipated sequel to Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder. This book…
I love thriller stories. I also love a variety of types of thrillers because there are so many ways for someone to face great challenges, overcome those hurdles, and achieve a major goal, all in the context of high stakes and fast-paced situations. It doesn’t matter if the story is related to crime, medicine, science, law, politics, espionage, etc. After experiencing such a diversity of thriller stories, including the books recommended below, I am passionate about creating my own stories, based on my life experiences and endless imagination.
Many medical thrillers are set in a hospital or similar setting, but this one is, I believe, the only one set on the International Space Station.
I found it so scary to experience one catastrophe after another in a place where access to help is so far away. I also loved the unique combination of medical science and space science, something that is rarely seen in thriller fiction.
Top Ten bestselling author Tess Gerritsen delivers a thoroughly menacing new thriller. A brilliantly compulsive page-turner from the author of The Surgeon.
Dr Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living organisms in space. Jack McCallum, Emma's estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded him. Now he must watch from the sidelines...
The mission aboard the space station turns into a nightmare when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control - and infects the crew with agonising and…
My passion for flying old aeroplanes led me to the pilots who flew them in history, and my particular fascination is with the interwar period and the ‘Golden Age of Aviation’, which saw the establishment of the early commercial air routes and the historic solo flights by pilots flying basic machines and pushing themselves and their aircraft to the very limits of endurance to prove that it could be done. I was absolutely mesmerised by the stories of their bravery and obsession. My recommended books all share the theme of pioneering aviation as this has been a consuming interest for much of my adult life, both in and out of the cockpit.
This is a lively history of the first 200 years of British women in the sky.
Given that women were largely blocked by a hostile male establishment from participating in commercial and military aviation for most of the 20th century, this is a riveting account of the unconventional women who defied gravity and everything else to get airborne. Marvellous stuff!
Just eighteen months after two Frenchmen made the world's first ever flight, a fearless British woman hopped into a flimsy balloon and flew across the London sky for nearly an hour. Since then, many other remarkable British women have decided to defy traditional society and follow their dreams to get into the sky. Magnificent Women and Flying Machines tells the stories of the pioneers who achieved real firsts in various forms of aviation: in ballooning, parachuting, gliding, airships and fixed-wing flight - right up to a trip to the International Space Station! Full of entertaining adventure mixed with a wealth…
My husband/co-author and I are sci-fi nerds and started getting excited about space settlements after writing two space-related chapters in our first book, Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. We spent 4 years doing research for A City on Mars and ended up with around 35 shelves of space-related books in our bookcases. About 3 of those shelves are books related to life in space, many of which are astronaut memoirs. Here are some of our favorites, picked so they span from the Apollo to the International Space Station eras!
I wanted to end the list with a book that gives a sense of what life in space is like now. Scott Kelly spent a year aboard the International Space Station, returning to Earth in 2016.
Being an astronaut is undoubtedly an incredible experience, and I envy those who have had the chance to look down on the Earth from space. But Kelly’s biography makes clear that the bulk of an astronaut’s day is not comprised of these moments of euphoria.
Lots of time is spent on tasks like maintaining the space station and running experiments, and life in a cramped station orbiting Earth in the void isn’t all fun and games. Carbon dioxide levels get high and give you headaches; from time to time, someone needs to tamp down the poop in the space toilet, and it’s hard to be physically separated from loved ones, especially when something catastrophic…
*As featured on BBC Breakfast, Radio 5Live and Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2*
From the Nasa astronaut who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station - what it's like out there and what it's like now, back here. Enter Scott Kelly's fascinating world and dare to think of your own a little differently.
As soon as you realize you aren't going to die, space is the most fun you'll ever have...
The veteran of four space flights and the American record holder for most consecutive days spent in space, Scott Kelly has experienced things…
I was a smart kid myself – I even have the report cards to prove it—and I always loved reading about other smart kids. As I got older, I realized that good grades and study habits are only part of the picture, because it’s emotional intelligence that helps us navigate the complicated parts of growing up. That’s why I wrote a book about a brilliant kid who learns to be part of a super-family, and that’s also why I love middle grade novels about clever kids who have to grow something other than their “book smarts” to figure out what they need to thrive. The books I’m recommending all get an A+ in that category.
Most space adventures for middle grade readers are totally sci-fi fantasies, but this one is so realistic and well-researched, it’s like a genre of its own. The main character, Fin, is 12 years old and he’s surrounded by other brilliant kids who are part of the StellarKid Project for young inventors. They all have the opportunity to go to space with NASA, but someone is trying to sabotage them. It takes a lot of brain power for the kids to save themselves when everything goes wrong in orbit, but even more than that, it takes teamwork, which requires each of them to face their fears. I felt like I was holding my breath for the entire second half of the book, so you know I was into it.
I’m pretty sure I’m about to die in space. And I just turned twelve and a half.
Blast off with the four winners of the StellarKid Project on a trip to the International Space Station and then to the Gateway outpost orbiting the Moon! It’s a dream come true until space junk collides with the ISS, turning their epic trip into a nightmare of survival. Alone aboard the Aether starship, the kids have to work as a team to save the adults before the ISS is destroyed. Suit up, cadet, and launch into adventure with One Giant Leap!
Growing up on the Space Coast, with my dad working on the Space Shuttle, and launches a regular occurrence, over time I took the program for granted. When the last Shutte launched, though, it left a hole in my heart. Gradually a desire to write about my hometown and its place in space history gave birth to the Jessie Cole trilogy. A combination of stories from my dad’s childhood in Titusville, conversations with docents at our historical society, and scores of books, magazine articles, and archived news footage helped reshape my view of space exploration. It was hard to choose just five books to highlight. More are noted in the Research Library section of my website.
This is a must-read for anyone who wants to follow the history of the US Space program from the very first launch onward. Barbree was the only journalist to cover every launch and while doing so met many of the astronauts and provides behind-the-scenes stories of dedication and comraderie. I had the privilege to participate in a book signing with Mr. Barbree at the US Space Museum in Titusville, FL in 2014. He’s a funny man who has loved all things space since the launch of Sputnik. This book is filled with humor, personal stories, and an understanding of how the media coverage of the space program and NASA has changed over the years. Barbree has also written an outstanding biography of Neil Armstrong, completed just prior to this pioneer’s death.
“From Sputnik to the International Space Station, Jay Barbree has seen it all, and reported it well. ‘Live from Cape Canaveral’ encapsulates the most technically exciting half century in history.” –Neil Armstrong
Some fifty years ago, while a cub reporter, Jay Barbree caught space fever the night that Sputnik passed over Georgia. He moved to the then-sleepy village of Cocoa Beach, Florida, right outside Cape Canaveral, and began reporting on rockets that fizzled as often as they soared. In "Live from Cape Canaveral," Barbree—the only reporter who has covered every mission flown by astronauts—offers his unique perspective on the space…
When I was five years old, my father sat down with me in front of the television and we watched together as the Space Shuttle Columbia launched for the first time. Four decades later, I’ve authored a history of those early shuttle missions, been a part of developing future space missions, and, most importantly of all, watched several space firsts with my own son. Space exploration is humanity at its greatest – working together using the best of our abilities to overcome incredible challenges and improve life here on Earth – and I’m always grateful for the opportunity to share that inspiration with others.
The first three books on this list are focused on the history of space exploration; The Mars Challenge is all about the future. Told us a conversation between an ambitious student and a more experienced space professional mentor, The Mars Challenge explores just that – the numerous challenges humanity will have to overcome before we can take the first steps on the Red Planet. In doing so, it threads a needle brilliantly – doing justice to the complexity of these challenges, but presenting them in a way that a lay reader can understand. The book is perfect for inspiring the next generation of explorers, and provides a fun read for adults who’d like an overview of the challenges of space.
Nadia is a teenager with a dream: to be the first woman on Mars. But there are a lot of obstacles in her way: gravity wells, interplanetary trajectories, space weather, and that pesky rocket equation. It's a good thing Nadia's friend Eleanor is a space wiz.
Eleanor explains how scientists are working to overcome the numerous challenges involved in a manned mission to Mars. Eye-catching illustrations and detailed diagrams bring to light the scientific concepts and complex machinery of interplanetary travel. The challenges are great, but not insurmountable. Humans can reach Mars in our lifetime, and this book explains how…
