Books like The Dispossessed

01

The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin · Science fiction

The Left Hand of Darkness follows Genly Ai, an envoy from a loose interstellar federation called the Ekumen, who has been sent alone to the planet Gethen — also called Winter — to persuade its nations to join.

A kindred science fiction read.

02

Foundation

Isaac Asimov · Science fiction

Foundation opens at the peak of a twelve-thousand-year empire that mathematician Hari Seldon knows is about to collapse.

A kindred science fiction read.

03

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.

A kindred science fiction read.

04

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · History

Published in 1848 on the eve of a wave of European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a short political pamphlet that has shaped more history than almost any other document of its length.

A kindred science fiction read.

05

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir · Science fiction

Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spacecraft with no memory of who he is, where he is, or why he's there.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

06

Chaos: Making a New Science

James Gleick · Science

Chaos: Making a New Science, published in 1987, tells the story of how a loose network of scientists working across meteorology, mathematics, biology, and physics in the 1960s and 1970s developed chaos theory — the study of systems that are deterministic but unpredictable because tiny differences in initial conditions produce wildly different outcomes.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

07

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Suzanne Simard · Science

Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who discovered that trees communicate and share resources through underground mycorrhizal fungal networks — the research that gave rise to the concept of the "mother tree" and, at several removes, Peter Wohlleben's popular writing on the subject.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

08

In Search of Memory

Eric R. Kandel · Memoir

In Search of Memory is Eric Kandel's autobiography interleaved with the history of neuroscience, organized around his own central scientific achievement: the cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory storage in the sea slug Aplysia.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

09

The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science

Richard Holmes · History

Richard Holmes is a British literary biographer best known for his two-volume life of Shelley, and The Age of Wonder brings that literary sensibility to the history of science during the Romantic period — roughly 1769 to 1832.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

10

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table

Sam Kean · Science

The Disappearing Spoon is Sam Kean's account of how the periodic table of elements came to be — not as a dry exercise in classroom science, but as a record of obsession, accident, rivalry, and the occasional poisoning.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

11

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes · History

Richard Rhodes spent years researching the scientific and political story behind the Manhattan Project, and the result is a work of narrative history that refuses to treat the bomb as either a triumph or a horror to be judged from a comfortable distance.

Both dig into scientific discovery.

12

The Song of the Cell

Siddhartha Mukherjee · Science

The Song of the Cell is Siddhartha Mukherjee's account of how the cell — the basic unit of life — was discovered, decoded, and eventually harnessed to rebuild and repair the human body.

Both dig into scientific discovery.