Bits & Bobs

An engineer's perspective of science, reason, knowledge, history, life, humanity, and sometimes the boundless capacity for cruelty that we human's are capable of visiting on another. 

My favorite picks from the following: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in the fiction category, and in the nonfiction category by far, Cosmos by Carl Sagan, closely followed by Pirsig's Lila. 

Like Thomas Jefferson once wrote to John Adams, 'I cannot live without books,'.

No special order intended.

1. Cosmos, Carl Sagan
2. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
3. Lila, ibid
4. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer
5. Spy who came in from the cold, John Le Carre
6. 1984, George Orwell
7. Animal Farm, ibid
8. Tinker tailor soldier spy, John Le Carre
9. Demon haunted world, Carl Sagan
10. What do you care what other people think?, Richard P. Feynman
11. Surely, you are joking Mr. Feynman, Richard P. Feynman
12. Chaos, James Gleick
13. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
14. Stalingrad, Antony Beevor
15. House on Garibaldi Street, Isser Harrel
16. A brief history of time, Stephen Hawking
17. Unweaving the rainbow, Richard Dawkins
18. Blind Watchmaker, ibid
19. The god delusion, ibid
20. Periodic Table, Primo Levi
21. Around the world in 80 days, Jules Verne
22. God is not great, Christopher Hitchens
23. The master and the margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
24. Iacocca, Lee Iacocca
25. The concept of the corporation, Peter Drucker
26. It is not luck, Eliyahu Goldratt
27. Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming
28. The Machine That Changed the World, Jim Womack and James Roos
29. 1, 2,3..Infinity, George Gamow
30. Freakonomics, Steven Levitt
31. Black Swan, Nassim Taleb
32. Billions and Billions, Carl Sagan
33. Just 6 numbers, Martin J. Rees

34. Dune, Frank Herbert
35. Dune Messiah, Ibid
36. Children of Dune, Ibid
37. God Emperor of Dune, Ibid
38. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
39. Just Three Minutes, Stephen Weinberg
40. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
42. Player Piano, ibid
43. Slaughterhouse Five, ibid
44. Happy B'day Wanda June, ibid
44. Mother Night, ibid...pretty much everything written by Vonnegut...hilarious
45. 2001 a space odyssey, A.C. Clarke
46. Rama, A.C. Clarke
47. Do androids dream of electric sheep, Philip K. Dick
48. The meeting of east and west, Northrop
49. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
50. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
51. Tom Sawyer, ibid
52. Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
53. Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
54. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
55. Godel, Escher, and Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
56. My man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
57. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
58. Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland, George Gamow
59. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
60. Stranger in a Strange Land, R. Heinlein
61. Red Dragon, Thomas Harris
62. The emperor's new mind, Roger Penrose
63. Sync, (I forget)
64. I, Robot, Asimov
65. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas N. Adams (sorry for forgetting DNA!)
66. So long and thanks for all the fish!, DNA

67.The emerging mind, Vilayanur Ramachandran
68. Broca's brain, Carl Sagan
68. Pale Blue dot, Ibid
69. Father, Son, and Company,Thomas Watson Jr. 
70. Who say's elephant's can't dance, Lou Gerstener
71. Only the paranoid survive, Andy Grove
72. Perceptrons, Minsky and Papert
73. Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
74. The greatest show on earth, Richard Dawkins
75. Lost Victories, Eric von Manstein
76. The moon is a harsh mistress, Robert Heinlein
77. A train to Pakistan: Khuswant Sigh
78. Republic, Plato (the heaviest read ever...like drinking lead)
79. Schindler's Ark, T. Keaneally
80. Pride of Carthage, D.A. Durham
81. The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler, William Shirer
82. The Information, James Gleick
83. Decoding Reality, Vlatko Vedral
84. Our Cosmic Habitat, Martin J. Rees 

85. Anna Karenina,Leo Tolstoy
86. War and Peace, ibid (get a paper and pencil to keep track of characters)
87. Ulysses, James Joyce (you will be better than an english major at english at the end)
88. Brothers Karamazov, Feydor Dostoyevsky (Three attempts to finish...all failed)
89. Crime and Punishment, ibid
90. Moby Dick, Hermann Melville 
91. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
92. The Family, Mario Puzo
93. Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis
94. War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
95. Dialogue concerning two chief world systems, Galileo Galilei
96. The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke
97. Connections, ibid 
98. War, Gwynne Dyer
99. Double Helix , Nancy Werlin
100. The Feynman Lectures in Physics, Richard Feynman

More Stuff I have read as I grow Older

1.  Twelve Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson

By far the best book i have ever read in my life. The book that gives me pause.

2.  The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep, Mark Manson

3.  Homo Sapiens, Yuval Nova Harriri

4. Twenty one lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Nova Harriri

5. Fooled by Randomness, Nicholas Nassem Taleb

6. AntiFragile, Nicholas Nassem Taleb

7. The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt

8. Enemy at the Gates, William Craig

10. The Second World War, Anthony Beevor

11. A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein

12. Silk Road, Peter Frankopan

13. A spy among friends, Ben Macintyre

14. Operation Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre

15. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, Ben Macintyre

16. The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, Ben Macintyre

17. A Legacy of Spies, John LeCarre

18. Lord of the Rings, and the Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

19. Harry Potter, JK Rowling.

20. The Subtance of Civilizations, Stephen Sass

21. Collapse, Jared Diamond

22. How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History: The Hinge Factor, Erik Durschmied

23. Eichmann in my Hands, Peter Z Malkin

24. The Six Day Way, Micheal Oren

25. The Road to Serfdom, Hayek