Books like The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

01

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.

A kindred science read.

02

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

James Gleick · Biography

Genius is James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who developed quantum electrodynamics, cracked safes at Los Alamos, played bongo drums in bars, and became the twentieth century's most celebrated scientific personality.

A kindred science read.

03

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 computing.

04

The Master Algorithm

Pedro Domingos · Science

The Master Algorithm is Pedro Domingos's survey of machine learning — the field of computer science that creates algorithms capable of learning from data — organized around a central speculative thesis: that there exists, or may be found, a single master algorithm from which all learning can be derived.

A kindred science read.

05

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · Psychology

Brian Christian is a writer and Tom Griffiths is a cognitive scientist, and together they argue that computer science has worked out rigorous solutions to many of the problems humans face every day — when to stop searching for a better option, how to manage your schedule, how to sort your memory — and that these solutions are both interesting and useful.

A kindred science read.

06

Four Laws That Drive the Universe

Peter Atkins · Science

Peter Atkins, one of the most respected chemistry educators of the twentieth century, wrote this book as a compact but uncompromising account of the four laws of thermodynamics.

Both dig into entropy.

07

The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)

Katie Mack · Science

The End of Everything is cosmologist Katie Mack's tour through the five leading theories about how the universe will eventually cease to exist.

Both dig into entropy.

08

The Fabric of Reality

David Deutsch · Science

The Fabric of Reality is David Deutsch's argument that four distinct strands of explanation — quantum physics, epistemology, the theory of evolution, and the theory of computation — are not separate fields but facets of a single unified description of reality.

Both dig into knowledge.

09

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson · Science

The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's history of the digital revolution, tracing the development of computers and the internet from Ada Lovelace's conceptualization of programming in the 1840s through the emergence of the modern internet, personal computer, and smartphone.

Both dig into computing.

10

A World Without Email

Cal Newport · Business

A World Without Email is Cal Newport's most targeted critique of modern knowledge work culture.

Both dig into communication.

11

Co-Active Coaching

Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl, and Laura Whitworth · Business

Co-Active Coaching presents the model developed at the Coaches Training Institute (CTI), which has trained more professional coaches than any other organization in the world.

Both dig into communication.

12

Critique of Pure Reason

Immanuel Kant · Philosophy

The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's attempt to resolve a crisis in 18th-century philosophy by asking what human reason can and cannot know.

Both dig into knowledge.