Friends of the Aiken Public Library Book List

The Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

This book launched the environmental “movement” in the U.S. The author, a zoologist and marine biologist, argued that the widespread use of pesticides was causing unacknowledged harm to animals and humans.

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

This book introduced the theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It was controversial because it contradicted religious beliefs and the doctrine of "Created kinds", which underlay the then widely accepted theories of biology. Darwin's book was the culmination of evidence he had accumulated on the voyage of HMS Beagle in the 1830s and added to through continuing investigations and experiments.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

This Pulitzer prize-winning book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilization has survived and conquered others, discarding the belief that it is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual or moral superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but are due to environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

An attempt to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, light cones and superstring theory, to the nonspecialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusually for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. The author notes that an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership will be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E=mc².

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

This Pulitzer prize-winning book is an intellectual tour-de-force. A braid is woven from three strands, and the three persons in the title are geniuses in mathematics, art, and music. This difficult book is worth the effort because of how it challenges your mind and exposes it to a wide variety of interesting ideas.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

This book actually was written to accompany a 13 part television series that was originally aired on PBS in 1980. It covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.

Welcome

Events