I don’t put a book on this list unless I have read it.   Many of these books are as interesting as the three I have chosen for this course.

Lee Billings, Five Billion Years of Solitude
John McPhee Quotation: length of civilization and Earth’s history compared.

Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

David Christian, Origin Story

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Steven Johnson, How We got to Now
Big History of Salt (a model of what Steven Johnson does with such things as glass —here

Steven Johnson, Extra life:  A Short History . . ..

Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction
Kolbert Related: The Insect Apocalypse: David Attenborough on Butterflies; Counting Butterflies in Mexico

Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works and Enlightenment Now

Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire

Richard Powers, The Overstory.    Similar to The Hidden Life of Trees.  About how trees communicate. Contains much about the Big History of Plants, and their coevolution with humans.  Review article here

David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here
Reich related: Yamnaya Culture; indoEuropean Origins;Kaitlyn Greenidge (NYTimes)–DNA versus family history:DNA vs. Family History
DNA testing: pros and cons ; New Discoveries from Archaic DNA in 2018.
recent NY Times article about Reich and ancient DNA studies, here.

Hans Rosling, Factfulness

Smithsonian Dr. Rick Potts hominid technology of stone tools

James C. Scott, Against the Grain. (Has some similarities to Harari’s thesis.)

Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Welcome to the Universe

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Neil deGrasse Tyson Most Astounding Fact of the Universe

Scott Weidensaul, A World on the Wing

Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch

David Lewis Williams, The Mind in the Cave

Edward O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth

Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence
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