The Anonymous Widower

Holiday Reading

I rarely read novels and usually take something that educates me, rather than enlightens.

Books I’ve enjoyed on holiday include the following.

• Lise Meitner – Ruth Lewin Sime – A biography of one of the greatest women scientists.
• Bloody Foreigners – Robert Winder – Not what it seems, but a scientifically-correct history of immigration into the UK. Ideal for keeping Germans off sun-beds.
• Moscow 1941 – Rodric Braithwaite – The definitive account of the battle for Moscow in the Second World War.
• The Wages of Destruction – Adam Tooze – An economic history of the Nazis, by a serious Cambridge academic.
• The Password is Courage – John Castle – A wartime biography of Charlie Coward, who rescued hundreds from Auswitz.
• Rosalind Franklin – Brenda Maddox – A biography of the Dark Lady of DNA.
• Buckminster Fuller’s Universe – Lloyd Steven Sieden – A biography of the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.
• Principia – Isaac Newton – His great work, that laid down many of the scientific truths, which govern our lives.
• The Skeptical Environmentalist – Bjorn Lomberg – This book debunks many of the myths put around by quack scientists and charity doommongers.
• Beyond the Blue Horizon – Alexander Frater – A book following the route of Imperial Airways to Australia.
• Fermat’s Last Theorem – Simon Singh – A great mathematical story.
• The Man who Loved Only Numbers – Paul Hoffman – The remarkable story of Paul Erdos.
• Liberators – Robert Harvey – The brutal story of those that liberated South America from the Spanish and the Portuguese.
• The Subterranean Railway – Christian Wolmar – The story of the London Underground.  I actually read this on Salina, which is the last place you’d build one.
• Prisongate – David Ramsbotham – A frank expose of the British penal system.
• Aspirin – Diarmuid Jeffreys – The remarkable story of a wonder drug.
• Engineering Archie – Simon Inglis – How one man designed many of Britain’s football grounds.

The trouble is that I bought most in hardback and eat into my hand-baggage allowance.

But this is only a start list.  There are lots more and I’ll add to it in future.

July 31, 2009 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Books, Scientifically Correct