30 books like The Victorian Internet

I spend a lot of my time trying to clarify the bilge poured out by the merchants of fake science: the flat-earthers, creationists, and climate deniers mainly, but also medical quacks and other fruitloops who throw out alternative science, stuff which is like normal science, with one small exception. I was already fighting these fights when Wolpert came to Sydney, and I chaired a lecture he gave. He showed us where the problem lay in combatting idiocy: the idiots depend on naïve and naked intuition.

Invariably, these unhinged pseudo-realities rely on a simple misreading of scientific lore, and Lewis explained that this is because a great deal of science is counter-intuitive. We can’t see evolution happening, the world looks flat, the sun appears to go around us, and common sense says that kinetic energy must be proportional to velocity, not it's square. Enter the simpleton who slept through a key… show more.

I have to deal, from time to time, with nervous would-be experts who have an abject fear of hybrid species in the sanctuary where I am a volunteer. One of the main lessons you take away from this ecological history is that hybrids drive a great deal of evolution, and trying to wipe out the hybrids is, in fact, an attempt to interfere with nature.

Looking at Europe as an evolutionary melting pot, we see that time and again, species migrated into the continent and were transformed, whether the immigrants were humans, elephants, or plane trees. Like all of Flannery’s books, Europe is food for thought, something to savour.

A whole book about a single stone? Whaaaaat?

Sure, The Planet in a Pebble is usually filed under ‘popular science’ but with a premise like that, we could also consider it a work of experimental literature.

Zalasiewicz picks up a pebble on a Welsh beach – humble, rounded grey slate intersected by a seam of white quartz – which starts him on a journey back over 4.5 billion years, looking at the minerals of early Earth.

We watch elements of our pebble progress through the rock cycle, eroding from igneous rock, slowly settling in a bacteria-rich bed of sediment within the early ocean before re-lithifying, metamorphosing under intense heat and pressure as mountains are formed by the movement of continental plates, to at last be exposed again and splintered from its mother rock by the force of wind and waves.

I have had my copy since about 1972, when I was a penurious post-grad, and it lacks an ISBN, but it is based on a famous phrase that may or may not have been written by Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”, and it is an uproarious and undisciplined history of that phrase. Merton calls it a Shandean postscript, because there are parallels with the style of Tristram Shandy.

I am afraid (or so two of my more literate editors have assured me), Merton infected my own style to an extent, but you can just tell that he enjoyed telling a story, almost as though it came from Falstaff himself. Any would-be understander of science needs to read it, but if you cite it, don’t make the mistake of Charlesworth et al., who, in Life Among the Scientists,… show more.

This remarkably thorough and well researched book gives a sense of the sweep of history of the ideas that underpin the digital revolution. These are topics that I know really well, but the book added texture and nuance and I found myself reading it with eyes wide open and jaw slightly slack.

Gleick is a great story teller and he has dug into the topics and their implications so well that I felt like I had a front-row seat to the invention of Morse Code, "memes", and the theory of information itself. Quite an accomplishment!

This book came out when I was a struggling founder CEO and hit me in the right way. Steve is clearly a polarizing leader, and for good reason. He’s complex and deeply flawed, but he also created magic products that changed the world. As a founder, you must constantly step back and question your motivations, as they will subconsciously drive your decisions in ways you don’t always consider. 

For me, this was a call to action to understand what it takes to inspire teams to greatness, but it was also a warning to approach it from the right source of inspiration. 

This is perhaps the best-known book on innovation inside large companies. When discussing technological change, people have mentioned it to me more than any other book—by a large margin! It includes examples from industries ranging from hard disks to excavators and even offers an earlier look at the prospects for electric vehicles.

It is especially interesting to see how past success can lead to complacency that hinders sustained growth and financial health. In the process, Christensen underscores how important it is for companies to continue innovating within—even when business is going well and even when acquisitions seem alluring and less difficult. This is a must-read because it establishes foundational knowledge on the importance of continued investment to sustain success.

It is impossible to overestimate the breadth and importance of Edison’s contributions to our lives. But Stross gave me a much better picture of Edison as a relentless competitor who often struggled to develop the business practices and processes to achieve commercial success with his numerous inventions.

The fact that I could visit the Menlo Park historical site in NJ to see things for myself made the book come alive.

This novel is sometimes described as the Victorian Pride and Prejudice, and it’s true there are many similarities.

Margaret Hale moves with her parents from rural southern England to a northern manufacturing town and experiences profound culture shock. She spars with John Thornton, the wealthy owner of a cotton mill, whose outlook and opinions are very different from her own.

In time their antagonism gives way to mutual understanding, and finally to love. But North and South isn’t only a love story.

There’s the ongoing conflict between the mill workers and the owners, and Margaret’s discoveries about herself as she begins to find ways to help the downtrodden. Gaskell was a minister’s wife in Manchester and interested in social reforms.

In this novel she explores many issues that are still relevant today. The book delves more deeply into the spiritual lives of the characters than does the BBC mini-series… show more.

I really loved the way this book told the story of London across the Victorian era. I often call London my spiritual home, and books about the city always capture my attention. Each chapter covers a separate topic, such as the Middle Class, Buildings, Amusements, etc., with interesting stories for each one.

I love the book as it is the sort I can pick up if I only have a few minutes to read.