Here are 100 books that The Triumph of Doubt fans have personally recommended if you like
The Triumph of Doubt.
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I am a former Shakespeare scholar who became increasingly concerned about the climate crisis after I had a son and started worrying about the world he would inherit after I died. I began to do research into climate communication, and I realized I could use my linguistic expertise to help craft messages for campaigners, policymakers, and enlightened corporations who want to drive climate action. As I learned more about the history of climate change communication, however, I realized that we couldn’t talk about the crisis effectively without knowing how to parry climate denial and fossil-fuel propaganda. So now I also research and write about climate disinformation, too.
This book is the classic study that you must read if you’re going to understand how fossil fuel interests set out to create climate denial. Taking their playbook from the tobacco lobby, these interests hired unscrupulous researchers to do work that inspired doubt about climate science.
This book documents a core truth: climate change isn’t a tragedy; it’s a crime. This book will introduce you to the criminals and show you their MO.
The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.
Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific…
I am an economist who came to realize that the marketplace of ideas was a political doctrine, and not an empirical description of how we came to know what we think we know. Science has never functioned in the same manner across centuries; it was only during my lifetime that it became recast as a subset of market reality. I have spent a fair amount of effort exploring how economics sought to attain the status of a science; but now the tables have turned. It is now scientists who are trained to become first and foremost market actors, finally elevating the political dominance of the economists.
A best-seller in the UK, it never garnered the attention it deserved in the US. As a trained physician, Goldacre explains why doctors cannot trust the information concerning prescription drugs that is made available to them, and why this should concern every patient. The incentives motivating drug regulators constitute a big part of the problem, but the actual conduct of clinical trials comes in for intensive scrutiny as well. The rigors of double-blinded trials are useless if owners of the data can hide whatever outcomes they don’t like. His chapter on how to bend a clinical trial has become a classic.
"Smart, funny, clear, unflinching: Ben Goldacre is my hero." ―Mary Roach, author of Stiff, Spook, and Bonk
We like to imagine that medicine is based on evidence and the results of fair testing and clinical trials. In reality, those tests and trials are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors who write prescriptions for everything from antidepressants to cancer drugs to heart medication are familiar with the research literature about these drugs, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality…
I am an economist who came to realize that the marketplace of ideas was a political doctrine, and not an empirical description of how we came to know what we think we know. Science has never functioned in the same manner across centuries; it was only during my lifetime that it became recast as a subset of market reality. I have spent a fair amount of effort exploring how economics sought to attain the status of a science; but now the tables have turned. It is now scientists who are trained to become first and foremost market actors, finally elevating the political dominance of the economists.
I don’t often praise edited collections, but this book is the most clear-eyed discussion of our current predicament in the face of worsening global warming I have ever encountered. The authors argue that the political deployment of geoengineering to ‘save’ us has become essentially a foregone conclusion—forget all that wishful Green New Deal happy talk. They then proceed to argue out the various potential political scenarios concerning what this means for future politics. Read this and weep.
Geoengineering is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system in an attempt to mitigate the adverse effects of global warming. Now that climate emergency is upon us, claims that geoengineering is inevitable are rapidly proliferating. How did we get into this situation where the most extreme path now seems a plausible development? Is it an accurate representation of where we are at? Who is this “we” who is talking? What options make it onto the table? Which are left out? Whom does geoengineering serve? Why is the ensemble of projects that goes by that name so salient,…
I am an economist who came to realize that the marketplace of ideas was a political doctrine, and not an empirical description of how we came to know what we think we know. Science has never functioned in the same manner across centuries; it was only during my lifetime that it became recast as a subset of market reality. I have spent a fair amount of effort exploring how economics sought to attain the status of a science; but now the tables have turned. It is now scientists who are trained to become first and foremost market actors, finally elevating the political dominance of the economists.
Edwards revealed how the very architecture of early computers owed a debt to the political structures of the Cold War. The innovation of a command/control/information infrastructure set the template for military regimentation, and subsequently for the surveillance society we currently inhabit. The story of how cybernetics—a field that never quite made the grade as pure science—nevertheless conquered the culture, is fascinating.
The Closed World offers a radically new alternative to the canonical histories of computers and cognitive science. Arguing that we can make sense of computers as tools only when we simultaneously grasp their roles as metaphors and political icons, Paul Edwards shows how Cold War social and cultural contexts shaped emerging computer technology―and were transformed, in turn, by information machines.
The Closed World explores three apparently disparate histories―the history of American global power, the history of computing machines, and the history of subjectivity in science and culture―through the lens of the American political imagination. In the process, it reveals intimate…
I’m a historian of early modern Europe. I have a particular interest in the history of violence and social relations and how and why ordinary people came into conflict with each other and how they made peace, that’s the subject of my most recent book Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe, which compares the entanglement of everyday animosities and how these were resolved in Italy, Germany, France and England. I’m also passionate about understanding Europe’s contribution to world history. As editor of The Cambridge World History of Violence, I explored the dark side of this. But my next book, The Invention of Civil Society, will demonstrate Europe’s more positive achievements.
I love this book because it’s a story about ordinary people. But it’s a true story.
It reads like a fairytale: a peasant, Arnaud du Tilh, is accused of impersonating another man who had abandoned his wife several years before. Arnaud seems to have outwitted the judges until the errant husband returns condemning the impostor to death.
I like this story because it helps to identify with men and women in the past, who in many respects, are just like us. It’s also a piece of great history reconstructed from original trial records. Davis is a great writer.
The clever peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse when, on a summer's day in 1560, a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the continent. Told and retold over the centuries, the story of Martin Guerre became a legend, still remembered in the Pyrenean village where the impostor was executed more than 400 years ago.
Now a noted historian, who served as consultant for a new French…
Helen is an ambassador for the Museum of Military Intelligence, a trustee of the Friends of the Intelligence Corps Museum, and a trustee of the Medmenham Collection. Her latest book Spymaster: The Man Who Saved MI6 about one of the greatest spies of the 20th century, was a Daily Mail best biography for 2021. Her history of MI9—the first such history for over 40 years—was shortlisted for The Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History.
This is perhaps an unusual choice in that it focuses on deception outside the sphere of countries usually covered by historians. Bendeck explores the numerous deceptions around D-Day, in a cluster of operations that were known as Plan Bodyguard. He explores the little-known, but vital, Plan Zeppelin which was the largest and most complex of the Bodyguard plans. Plan Zeppelin, in conjunction with A Force’s strategic deception plans in the Mediterranean, succeeded in convincing Hitler to hold back sixty German divisions from southern France and move them to the Balkans in time for D-Day. Focusing on the years 1943 to 1945, Bendeck illuminates how A Force, under the leadership of charismatic Dudley Clarke, orchestrated both strategic and tactical deception plans to create the illusion of military threats by the Allies to German defences and troops across the southern perimeter of Europe. Her book is a nuanced and important…
Among the operations known as Plan Bodyguard, the deception devised to cover the Allies' Normandy landing, was the little known but critical Plan Zeppelin, the largest and most complex of the Bodyguard plans. Zeppelin, in conjunction with the Mediterranean Strategy, succeeded in pinning down sixty German divisions from southern France to the Balkans in time for D-Day. This was the work of "A" Force, Britain's only military organization tasked with carrying out both strategic and tactical deception in World War II. Whitney T. Bendeck's Diversion and Deception finds "A" Force at its finest hour, as the war shifted from North…
I have obsessed with maps my whole life, but I guess the main drive for studying them is my enjoyment of outdoor spaces, as a hiker, a mountaineer, and as a sailor: always with a paper map at hand. If you use GPS (a wonderful innovation) you will not only lose some of your precious orientation abilities but above all you will look less at the environment around you. I feel that paper maps do a great favor to my brain and to my enjoyment of places. The books below are a great tribute to maps; they helped me understand them better, and this affected the way I use them.
Maps lie. In the standard visualization you have on Google Maps, for instance, Greenland is shown as bigger than the whole South American continent, while it is, in fact, smaller than Argentina.
Monmonier did an incredible job unpacking the many surprising ways in which maps lie. My favorite case is the sneaky introduction, by publishing houses, of fake towns in US road maps to track plagiarists (as plagiarists just copy, they do not care about checking). There are so many fun examples in this profound book.
An instant classic when first published in 1991, How to Lie with Maps revealed how the choices mapmakers make--consciously or unconsciously--mean that every map inevitably presents only one of many possible stories about the places it depicts. The principles Mark Monmonier outlined back then remain true today, despite significant technological changes in the making and use of maps. The introduction and spread of digital maps and mapping software, however, have added new wrinkles to the ever-evolving landscape of modern mapmaking. Fully updated for the digital age, this new edition of How to Lie with Maps examines the myriad ways that…
As a long-time reader of mysteries, thrillers, and pulp fiction, I’ve lived a double life. By day, a scholar and a serious biographer, tackling heavyweight literary subjects, fighting the good feminist fight. By night, I devoured crime writing as a secret pleasure. Writing my book confirmed my belief that there have always been authors who transform genre fiction into literary magic – and that I could have fun telling their stories. Whether in my writing or mentoring, I want to celebrate neglected creators and explore how literary magic is made. The authors in this list are brave, authentic, and a damn good read. I wish you the joy of them all!
One of the best things about teaching English at Oxford University is that students sometimes get to choose their own topics. Years ago, one of those students introduced me to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, and (to my shame) I didn’t even know the author. Yet Braddon sold more novels than Dickens in the nineteenth century.
Indeed, Lady Audley went head-to-head with Great Expectations, and Braddon won! On first reading, I loved the novel’s raw energy, its crazy plot twists, and its honesty: there’s little or no sentimentality in Braddon. On the second or third reading (yes, Lady Audley can cope with multiple reads even though it’s a murder mystery), I discovered complexities, contradictions, and challenges that just made me more intrigued.
Put simply, Victorian Braddon is the original and best Queen of Pulp.
Originally published in Robin Goodfellow magazine, Lady Audley's Secret is the essential work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and is considered a staple of sensation fiction. The story centers on a mysterious woman, whose dark past slowly comes to light.
Lady Audley is a former governess who marries the wealthy widower, Sir Michael Audley. She thoroughly enjoys the life of privilege and status associated with her new husband. Although she appears beautiful and polished, Lady Audley is more than meets the eye. She has a dark secret that could jeopardize everything she's worked for. To maintain her facade, she plots and…
I love to write about crime. I have no idea why. I don’t have any real-life experience of crime. Honest. I enjoy setting books in the places that I love to visit. So Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Nice all feature strongly here. And so far, the two novels I’ve written of which one is available on Amazon, have had strong female protagonists. I guess I find it interesting for a woman to take on a bunch of nasty men. And I studied art and the history of art at college, so everything I have written in terms of novels has been in the world of stolen art.
Apply Tree Yard is along the lines of The Girl On The Train. A deeply flawed main character. Someone who’s done something she shouldn’t have. As her life hangs in the balance in a courtroom, everything depends on her remembering how and why she had sex with a random man.
Soon To Be a STARZ Mini-Series, Starring Emily Watson
Yvonne Carmichael sits in the witness box. The charge is murder. Before all of this, she was happily married, a successful scientist, a mother of two. Now she is a suspect, squirming under florescent lights and the penetrating gaze of the alleged accomplice who is sitting across from her, watching: a man who is also her lover. As Yvonne faces hostile questioning, she must piece together the story of her affair with this unnamed figure who has charmed and haunted her. It is a tale of sexual intrigue and ruthless urges—and…
I’ve become a bit of a Hamlet geek in my adult years, including having a framed poster in my house that features the entire text. The passion, for me, comes from the depth and complexity of the story. It sounds like hyperbole, but there really is always something new to discover. Some years ago, I taught Hamlet in a college writing class. That experience really allowed me to dive into the text and much of the attendant criticism. The academic approach opened up whole new worlds of opinions and perspectives for which I’m very grateful.
I know, I know—the same author. But wait–there’s more! Same protagonist, too! Lear’s Fool Pocket is back in this hilarious revenge sequel that features not only characters and plot from The Merchant of Venice but also Othello. (There’s also a sizeable nod to a Poe story with which I’m not familiar.) The craft of piecing this all together and making it work as a funny, engaging tale is impressive, to say the least.
Moore is a different, escapist type of read for me, and his embracing of Shakespeare in multiple books keeps me curious. Some feel this book has too much going on at the cost of depth, but I didn’t mind riding closer to the surface on this one.
New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore channels William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe in The Serpent of Venice, a satiric Venetian gothic that brings back the Pocket of Dog Snogging, the eponymous hero of Fool, along with his sidekick, Drool, and pet monkey, Jeff. Venice, a long time ago. Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy of Britain and France, and widower of the murdered Queen Cordelia: the rascal Fool Pocket. This trio of cunning plotters-the merchant, Antonio; the senator, Montressor Brabantio; and the naval officer, Iago-have lured Pocket to a dark…
