Reading List

 

     Here is a list of books that I have read, enjoyed, re-read, and re-enjoyed!

Fall 2011

-------------------

Bad Ideas? - Robert Winston

This Time is Different - Reinhart and Roghoff

Pythagoras - Kitty Ferguson

A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision - Simon Ings


Summer 2011

-------------------

Modern C++ Design - Andrei Alexandrescu (CS)


Spring 2011

----------

Exceptional C++ Style - Herb Sutter (CS)

The Reformation - William Durant (History)

The Cyberiad - Stanislaw Lem (SF)

The Ends of the Earth - Robert D. Kaplan (Journalism)

The Gulag Archipelago - Alexander Solzhinitsyn (History)


Fall 2010

---------

The Real War 1914-18 - Captain B.H.Liddell Hart (History)

Jhereg - Steven Brust (Fantasy)

Hardness of Flint - Thomas Harlan (SF)

The Sleepwalkers - Arthur Koestler (History of Science)

Astronomer's Universe - Herbert Friedman (Pop. Sci.)

A treasury of great mysteries - Howard Haycraft and John Beecroft (Mystery)

Pattern Theory - David Mumford and Agnes Desolneux (Machine Learning)


Summer 2010

-----------

Tales of Philosophy (R) (Philosophy)


Spring 2010

-----------

Cloudspotter's Guide - Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Pop. Sci.)

The Great Terror - Robert Conquest (R) (History)

The Book Nobody Read - Owen Gingerich (History of Science)

Gut Feelings - Gerd Gigerenzer (Pop. Sci.)

The Watchers out of time - H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (Horror)

Punic Wars - Nigel Bagnall (History)

King of Infinite Space - Siobhan Roberts (Math)


Fall 2009

---------

Traders, Guns, and Money - Satyajit Das (Finance)

Arctic Dreams - Barry Lopez (Travel)

The Symmetries of Things - Conway, Burgiel, Goodman-Strauss (Math)

The Age of Wonder - Richard Holmes (History)

The Road to Berlin - John Erickson (R) (History)


Summer 2009

-----------

A Farewell to arms - Gregory Clark (Economics)

A History of Economics before Adam Smith - Murray Rothbard (Economics)

Michalangelo and the Pope's ceiling - Ross King (History)

Across Realtime - Vernor Vinge (SF)

Axiomatic - Greg Egan (SF)

Ice, Mud and Blood - Chris Turney (SF)

What the nose knows - Avery Gilbert (Pop. Sci.)


Spring 2009

-----------

Fooled by Randomness - Nicholas Nassim Taleb (Finance)

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland (History)

The Misbehavior of Markets - Benoit Mandelbrot (Finance)

Watchmen - (SF)

Philosophy of Visistadvaita - Srinivasa Chary (Philosophy)

Counting Sheep -

Number words and Number symbols - Karl Menninger (History? of numbers)



Fall 2008

---------

An Instance of the Fingerpost - Ian Pears (Mystery)

The Secret of Scent - Luca Turin (Pop. Sci.)

Tales of Vikramaditya - Anon (Mythology)

Rites of Peace - Adam Zamoyski (History)


Summer 2008

-----------

Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind - Arthur Zajonc (Pop. Sci.)

Devil take the hindmost: A history of financial speculation - Edward Chancellor (History)

A History of histories - John Burrow (History)

Pursuit of Glory - Tim Blanning (History)

Behold the Man - Michael Moorcock (SF)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon (History)

(stretching into fall)


Spring 2008

-----------

The Death of Achilles - Boris Akunin (Mystery)

Cultural Amnesia - Clive James (Literature)

The Great Terror - Robert Conquest (History)

Mao: A Life - Philip Short (History)

Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body - James Hall (History)

The Theory of Almost Everything - Robert Oerter (R) (Pop. Sci.)

Special Assignments - Boris Akunin (Mystery)

Ivan the Terrible - Robert Payne & Nikita Romanoff (History)

Tintin & the Blue Lotus - Herge


Fall 2007

---------

Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich

Necromancer - Gordon R. Dickson (SF)

The Civil War, An Illustrated History - Ward, Burns & Burns (History)

Coming into Country - John McPhee

A Brief History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (Pop. Sci.)

City - Clifford D. Simak (SF)

Connections - James Burke (Pop. Sci./History)

Turkish Gambit - Boris Akunin (Mystery)

Road to Berlin - John Erickson (History)

The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross (Music)

The Winter Queen - Boris Akunin (Mystery)

The Cold Equations - Tom Godwin (SF)

The Unicorn Variations - Roger Zelazny (SF)

His name is Legend - Roger Zelazny (SF)

Calvin and Hobbes (Collected) Vol 1 - Bill Watterson


Summer 2007

-----------

Tales of Philosophy - Felix Marti-Ibanez (Philosophy)

Cities in Flight - James Blish (SF)

Rocannon's World - Ursula K. Le Guin (SF)

This Immortal - Roger Zelazny (SF)

The Theory of Almost Everything - Robert Oerter (Pop. Sci.)

A Heinlein Trio - Robert Heinlein (SF)

The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse - Hermann Hesse (Fiction)


Spring 2007

-----------

The Wonder that was India - A.L.Basham (History)

The ABC Mysteries - Agatha Christie (Mystery)

Curtains - Agatha Christie (Mystery)

Mystery at Styles - Agatha Christie (Mystery)

Barabbas - Par Lagerkvist (Fiction)

The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester (SF)

Murder in Mesopotamia - Agatha Christie (Mystery)

Symmetry and the Monster: The Story of One of the Greatest Quests of Mathematics - Mark Ronan (Math)

The Pea and the Sun: A Mathematical Paradox - Leonard Wapner (Math)


Fall 2006

---------

The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse (R) (Fiction)

The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 - William Shirer (History)

War: The lethal custom - Gwynne Dyer

Envisioning information - Edward R. Tufts

The Self-made tapestry: Pattern formation in nature - Philip Ball (Pop. Sci.)

Vishnu Purana (Vol 1) - H.H.Wilson (Mythology)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie (Mystery)

Three Dimensional Geometry and Topology (Vol 1) - William Thurston (Math)

Age of revolution, 1789-1848 - E.J. Hobsbawm (History)

Lincoln - Gore Vidal (Historical Fiction)

Image of the city - Kevin Lynch (CS)

The art of always being right - Arthur Schopenhauer

Emphyrio - Jack Vance (SF)

Vishnu Purana (Vol 2) - H.H.Wilson (Mythology)

Kaninun siruttambu - Radha Muralidhar (Philosophy)

The Future of Money by Bernard Lietaer (Economics)

The Lives of the Dravida Saints - Alkondavilli Govindacharya (Mythology)

Pride of India - Samskrita Bharati


Summer 2006

-----------

The Doors of his Face, The Lamps of his Mouth - Roger Zelazny (SF)

The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K. Le Guin (SF)

Earth is Room Enough - Isaac Asimov (SF)

Dragons of Winter Night - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (Fantasy)

Strange Defeat - Marc Bloch (History)

Dragons of Spring Dawning - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (Fantasy)

The Franco-Prussian War - Geoffrey Wawro (R) (History)

The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe (SF)

Warped Passages - Lisa Randall (Pop. Sci.)

Annals of the Former World - John McPhee (Geology)

Uncommon Carriers - John McPhee

The Dreams of Reason - Heinz Pagels (Pop. Sci.)

Fearless Symmetry - Avner Ash, Robert Gross (Math)

The Pleasures of Counting - T.W.Korner (Math)


Spring 2006

------------

The Worldly Philosophers - Robert Heilbroner (Economics)

Indian Philosophy (Vol 1) - S. Radhakrishnan (Philosophy)

Islam: A short history - Karen Armstrong (Philosophy)

I, Claudius - Robert Graves (Historical Fiction)

Private Lives of Garden Birds - Calvin Simonds (Pop. Sci.)

City of Illusions - Ursula K. Le Guin (SF)

Dragons of Autumn Twilight - Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman (Fantasy)

Finite Markov Chains and Algorithmic Applications - Olle Haggstrom (Math)

Berlin Diary - William Shirer (History)

Heart of Darkness and other tales - Joseph Conrad (Fiction)

The Forgotten Soldier - Guy Sajer (History/Biography)

Mind of God - Paul Davies (Pop. Sci.)

A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay (SF)

Battle Cry of Freedom - James MacPherson (History)

Moscow 1812, Napoleon's Fatal March - Adam Zamoyski (History)


Fall 2005

----------

Changing Planes - Ursula K. Le Guin  (Fiction)

Blood Child and other stories - Octavia Butler  (SF)

The Winter War - Eloise Engle, Lauri Paananen  (History)

The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant  (Philosophy)

How the Universe Got Its Spots - Janna Levin (Pop. Sci.)

Probabilistic Robotics - Thrun, Burgard, Fox (Science)

The Moons of Jupiter - Kristin Leutwyler (Science)

Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges (Fiction)

Earth: Portrait of a Planet - Stephen Marshak (Geology)

An Imaginary Tale - Paul Nahin (Pop. Math.)

Creation - Gore Vidal (Historical Fiction)

Ka - Roberto Calasso  (Fiction)

Narcissus and Goldmund - Herman Hesse (Fiction)

Life of Cesare Borgia - Rafael Sabatini (History)

Julian - Gore Vidal  (Historical Fiction)


Summer 2005

------------

Transformation - Carol Berg  (SF)

Revelation - Carol Berg  (SF)

Restoration - Carol Berg  (SF)

The Compass Rose - Ursula Le Guin  (Fantasy)

Tales from Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin  (Fantasy)

A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin  (Fantasy)

The Farthest Shore - Ursula Le Guin  (Fantasy)

The Wind's Twelve Quarters - Ursula Le Guin  (Fantasy/Fiction)

The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury  (SF)

Hyperspace - Michio Kaku (Pop. Sci.)

A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter M. Miller  (SF)

The Nine Billion Names of God - Arthur C. Clarke  (SF)

The Wind from the Sun - Arthur C. Clarke  (SF)

Hyperion - Dan Simmons  (SF)

Nine Tomorrows - Isaac Asimov  (SF)

The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G.Farrell  (Fiction)

Earthlight - Arthur C. Clarke  (SF)

Supermen - Isaac Asimov (Ed.)  (SF)

Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince - J.K.Rowling (Fantasy)

Tales of the Dying Earth - Jack Vance  (SF)

Jack of Shadows - Roger Zelazny  (SF)

Short stories - Fritz Leiber  (SF)