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Previously read books
20 14
Jan. 15, 2014 – Mark k Pagel's
book Wired for Culture (2012)
Feb 19, 2014 - Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of
Introverts in a
World that Can't Stop Talking (2013).
March 19, 2014 - The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and
Human Evolution by Denis
Dutton (2009), which argues that human
proclivities for art are evolutionary
traits, shaped by natural selection--inborn and
in some ways universal.
April 16, 2014 – Peter Boghossian A Manual for Creating Atheists (2013.
May 21 – Plutocrats: The Rise of the New
Global Super-Rich and the Fall
of Everyone Else by Chrystia
Freeland (2013). We know that income
inequality is increasing in
super-rich? How do they justify their privilege?
Do they spend their money
creating jobs, or perhaps making charitable
contributions to others? What is
their politics? Why do they profess to
experience so much stress? Should
we by sympathetic? Apathetic? Or
what?
June 18
July
Aug
Sept
Oct
Nov
Dec
2013
January 15, 2013 - What Intelligence Tests
Miss: the psychology of rational thought, by Keith Stanovich (2010)
February 19, 2013 - 1491: New
revelations of the
March 19, 2013 - The Righteous Mind:
Why good people are divided by politics and religion by Jonathan Haidt (2012)
April 16, 2013 - The Belief
Instinct: The psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life by
Jesse Bering (2011)
May 21, 2013 - Thomas
Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens
June 18, 2013 - Collapse
by Jared Diamond
July 16, 2013 Galileo's
Daughter by Dava Sobel
(1999)
August – cancelled
Sept 18, 2013: The Brain that Changes Itself by
Norman Doidge (2007)
Oct 16, 2013- Why
Does the World Exist by Jim Holt (2012; won't be published in paper until
April 2013)
Nov. 20, 2013 - The Price of Inequality: how today's
divided society endangers our future by Joseph E. Stiglitz
(Nobel Prize economics) 2012.
Dec. 18, 2013 - Lawrence Krause, physicist and former
Jeff Center/SOU speaker: "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is
Something Rather than Nothing" 2012
2012
January 17, 2012 - Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking
America by John Avlon (2010)
February 21, 2012 - Thinking,
Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (to be
published Oct. 25, 2011. If the book is not out in paperback soon, we may
postpone reading it and choose another book for February.) We are group #17 at
March 20, 2012 -
The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values by Sam
Harris (2010)
April 17, 2012
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond
(1997 or 2005
May 15, 2012 - With
June 19, 2012 -
The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and
Delusion on Wall Street (2009) by Justin Fox
July 7, 2012 - The
Portable Atheist: Essential
August 21, 2012 - Sense
and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism by Richard
Carrier (2005).
September 18, 2012 - The
Sacred Balance: Rediscovering our Place in Nature by David Suzuki
(1997).
October 16, 2012 - The
Trial of Socrates by
November 20, 2012 - All
the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany
McLean and Joe Nocera (2010).
December 18, 2012 - Justice: What’s the
Right Thing to do? By Michael Sandel (2010)
2011
Jan. 18, 2011 - Nonsense on Stilts by
Massimo Pigliucci.
“Why do
people believe bunk? . . . cuts through the ambiguity surrounding science to
look more closely at how science is conducted, how it is disseminated, how it
is interpreted, and what it means to our society. The result is in many ways a
'taxonomy of bunk' . . . No one - not the public intellectuals in the culture
wars between defenders and detractors of science nor the believers of
pseudoscience themselves - is spared Pigliucci's
incisive analysis.”
Feb. 15, 2011 -Society
without God, by Phil Zuckerman (2008). (Zuckerman will be lecturing in
March 15, 2011 - What
is Emotion? History, Measures, and
Meaning By Jerome Kagan (2007)
“examines what exactly we do know about emotions, which popular
assumptions about emotions are incorrect, and how scientific study must proceed
if we are to uncover the answers to persistent and evasive questions . . .
Integrating the findings of anthropological, psychological, and biological
studies . . .”
April 19, 2011 - The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion
in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, by Drew Westen (2007)
http://www.thepoliticalbrain.com/videos.php
May 17, 2011 - Descartes’
Error, by Antonio Damasio Since Descartes famously
proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked
emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even modern neuroscience has
tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain
function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the
publication of Descartes’
Error in 1995. http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/damasio.htm
June 21, 2011 - A
Brief Tour of Human Consciousness, from Imposter Poodles to Purple Numbers,
by V. S. Ramachandran. podcast:
Ramachandran on mirror neurons video:
http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/the-science-reader/a-brief-tour-of-human-consciousness-from-impostor-poodles-to-purple-numbers
July 19, 2011 =
canceled
August 16 - Souled
Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right,
by E.J. Dionne (2009) http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8599.html
Sept. 20 is Mistakes
Were Made (but not by me): Why we Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad
Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and
Elliot Aronson (2007).
Oct. 18, 2011 - The
Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the
Golden Rule by Michael Shermer (2004)
November 15, 2011 -The
Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Carl Sagan (1997)
December 13, 2011 - The
Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins (2009)
2010
Jan. 12, 2010 -
Feb. 9 2010 - Train
Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals our Extraordinary
Potential to Transform Ourselves, by Sharon Begley 2007
March 9 2010 - God,
the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, by Victor
J. Stenger
2007
April 13 2010 - On
Being Certain: Believing you are right even when you’re not, by Robert
Burton 2008
May 11 2010 - What’s
the Worst that could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate,
by Greg Craven 2009 paperback
June 8, 2010 - The 10,000 Year
Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory
Cochran and Henry Harpending (2009)
July 13, 2010 - The
Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, By Leonard Mlodinow
(2009)
August 10, 2010 - Freedom
Evolves, by Daniel Dennett (2003)
September 14, 2010 - Nudge
: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein,
2008.
October 12, 2010
-Born to Be Good:
The Science of a Meaningful Life,
By Dacher Keltner
(2009) ) “new examination of the surprising origins of human goodness. . . .demonstrates that humans are not hardwired to
lead lives that are "nasty, brutish, and short"—we are in fact born
to be good. . . .why have we evolved
positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote
ethical action and are the fabric of cooperative societies?”
Nov. 9, 2010 -
No Contest by Alfie Kohn (1986/1992
“No Contest, which has been stirring up
controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of
competition. . . .
December 14,
2010 at noon The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking
and Leonard Mlodinow
(2010) “the real meat of their book: the way theories about
quantum mechanics and relativity came together to shape our understanding of how our universe (and possibly
others) formed out of nothing. . . . It gets into the deepest questions of
modern cosmology without a single equation. The reader will be able to get
through it without bogging down in a lot of technical detail”
2009
3/09 What is Your
Dangerous Idea? edited by John Brockman
4/09 Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely (2008)
5/09 The Thirteen American Arguments by Howard Fineman (2008)
6/09 Ethics: several articles
7/09 The Shock Doctrine
by Naomi Klein (2007)
8/09 Empires of Trust
by Thomas F. Madden (2007)
9/09 Conscience of a
Liberal by Paul Krugman (2007)
10/09 Living Without God
by Ronald Aronson (2008)
11/09 The Happiness
Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt (2006)
12/15/09
Physiology of Truth, by Jean-Pierre Changeux (2009)
2008
5/08-7/08 Susan Jacoby The Age of American Unreason
8/08
9/08 On Bullshit by Harry
Frankfurt
10/08
Sigmund Freud, The
Future of an Illusion
11/08
Virus of the mind by Richard Brodie
12/08-2/09
How to Think About Weird Things by Schick and Vaughn