Books like Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain

01

The Brain That Changes Itself

Norman Doidge · Psychology

Norman Doidge is a Canadian psychiatrist who traveled to interview the scientists and patients at the frontier of neuroplasticity research in the mid-2000s.

Shares neuroplasticity and perception with Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain.

02

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee · Psychology

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Both dig into perception.

03

Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychology

Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote this short book — genuinely short at under thirty thousand words — as an accessible introduction to seven core findings of modern neuroscience, each presented as a lesson that overturns something most people believe.

A kindred science read.

04

Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect

Matthew D. Lieberman · Psychology

Matthew Lieberman is one of the founders of social neuroscience, the field that uses brain imaging and neuroscience methods to study social behavior.

A kindred science read.

05

Climbing Mount Improbable

Richard Dawkins · Science

Climbing Mount Improbable is Richard Dawkins's response to the persistent intuition that complex biological structures — the vertebrate eye, insect wings, spider webs — are too improbable to have evolved by chance.

Both dig into adaptation.

06

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Charles Petzold · Science

Code is Charles Petzold's explanation of how computers work, built from first principles.

Both dig into technology.

07

How Buildings Learn

Stewart Brand · Science

How Buildings Learn is Stewart Brand's argument that buildings are not finished products but ongoing processes — and that the buildings most valued over time are those designed to change gracefully rather than resist change defensively.

Both dig into adaptation.

08

How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker · Science

How the Mind Works is Steven Pinker's synthesis of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, built around a central thesis: the mind is a computational system — a neural computer — shaped by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems that faced our ancestors on the Pleistocene savanna.

Both dig into perception.

09

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin · Science

On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, is the book in which Charles Darwin presented the theory of evolution by natural selection to the general reading public.

Both dig into adaptation.

10

The Blind Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Blind Watchmaker is Richard Dawkins's argument that natural selection — cumulative, non-random selection acting on random variation — is sufficient to explain the apparent design in biological organisms.

Both dig into adaptation.

11

The Brain's Way of Healing

Norman Doidge · Science

The Brain's Way of Healing is Norman Doidge's follow-up to The Brain That Changes Itself and extends its central argument: the brain retains significant capacity to reorganize itself throughout life, and this plasticity can be deliberately harnessed to treat conditions that conventional medicine has largely written off as permanent.

Both dig into neuroplasticity.

12

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

Simon Singh · Science

Simon Singh's The Code Book traces the history of cryptography from Caesar's cipher through the breaking of Enigma to the mathematics of public-key encryption and the looming possibility of quantum cryptography.

Both dig into technology.