Sunday, April 17, 2016

Non-fiction reading list

As I indicated in this post, I think it is worth keeping track of the non-fiction reading I am contemplating, or at least those books that didn't already migrate over to the main reading list.  I really have no idea how long it will take me to get around to these books.  Many of them I've carried around with me for years, or decades in a few cases.  I think I will group them by subject rather than try to write them down in the sequence I expect to follow.  I have vastly more books that I would like to read than I will list here, but I don't want to get too discouraged.  If I make any meaningful progress on this list, I will roll the remaining books over into a new list with the next round of urban studies books and history tomes.

Physics
Relativity by Albert Einstein
Relativity Simply Explained by Martin Gardner
Einstein's Universe Nigel Calder
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Death by Black Hole Neil D. Tyson

Natural History/Biology
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin 
The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin (I'm not quite as interested in this, but I really ought to read it once)
The Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould
The Flamingo's Smile by Stephen Jay Gould (I tracked down a box set of Gould's early books)
Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould

Philosophy
Essays by Montaigne/Shakespeare's Montaigne
Persian Letters by Montesquieu
The Spirit of Laws by Montesquieu (on-line here)
Confessions by Rousseau (actually a tedious auto-biography - I got through 9 of the 12 sections before finally throwing in the towel*)
On Certainty by Wittgenstein
Being and Time by Heidegger
A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari
We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour (ultimately abandoned this; just not rewarding)

Anthropology
The Raw and the Cooked by Levi-Strauss
Tristes Tropics by Levi-Strauss
Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
Growing Up In New Guinea by Margaret Mead
Male and Female by Margaret Mead (a few interesting insights but very dated and a slog overall)
Cultural Patterns and Technical Change ed. by Margaret Mead
Risk and Culture by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky
Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict
The Forest of Symbols by Turner
The Ritual Process by Turner
Routes by James Clifford (quite disappointing actually)
Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Malinowski
A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term by Malinowski

History
The Autumn of the Middle Ages by Huizinga and Payton
The Federalist Papers by Hamilton/Madison/Jay (wow this was dense)
Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
Crevecoeur - Letters from an American Farmer
Democracy in America by de Tocqueville
The Journals of Lewis and Clark ed. by DeVoto
The Silk Road by Wood
Cross-Cultural Trade in World History by Curtin
Gold and Spices: the Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages by Favier
The Structures of Everyday Life (3 vol) - Ferdinand Braudel
Postwar by Tony Judt
Reappraisals by Tony Judt
The Cool School - Library of America (does Art History count?)

Urban Studies/Architecture
MoneySpace: Geographies of Monetary Transformation by Leyshon and Thrift
Now Here: Space, Time and Modernity ed. by Friedland and Boden
Economies of Signs and Space by Scott Lash and John Urry
The 100 Mile City by Sudjic
Making the Second Ghetto by Arnold Hirsch
Venkatesh American Project
Venkatesh Floating City
The Neoliberal City by Jason Hackworth
The Power Broker by Robert Caro (managed to get 1/3 through, but that was so long ago I'll have to restart this)
The Battle for Gotham by Gratz
Divided Cities: New York and London by Fainstein, Gordon & Harloe
Cities and Visitors by Hoffman, Fainstein and Judd
The Tourist City ed. by Judd and Fainstein
Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play by Sheller and Urry
Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History ... by Bairoch
Cities in the International Marketplace by Savitch & Kantor
Global Chicago ed. Madigan
Chicago Dreaming by Spears
Nightshift NYC by Sharman and Sharman
City Lights by Jakle
Cities of Light and Heat by Ross
Subterranean Cities: The World Beneath Paris and London by David Pike
Metropolis on the Styx: The Underworlds of Modern Urban Culture by David Pike
The Ruins of Paris by Jacques Reda
The Search for the Ultimate Sink by Joel Tarr

Urban Studies: Toronto-specific
Urban Engimas ed. Sloan
Imagining Toronto by Harris
The Ward ed. Loring et. al.
Accidental City by Fulford
The Public Metropolis by Friskin
Changing Toronto by Boudreau, Keil & Young

General Non-Fiction Essays
Susan Sontag Essays of the 1960s & 70s (LOA)
Joan Didion We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (everything except The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights -- the latter is quite skipable apparently)
Saul Bellow It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future
Essays of E.B. White (includes Here is New York)
A Collection of Essays by George Orwell
The Real World of Technology (revised & expanded ed.) Ursula Franklin 
Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & An Athropologist on Mars

* I have to say that my bad reaction to Rousseau's The Confessions makes it much less likely I read anything else by him, though some day I'll perhaps attempt A Discourse on Inequality.

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