Books Recommended by Matt Ridley
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The Martian
A Novel
Andy Weir
Source: "I loved the fact that the hero never once implies that it’s courage, spirit and faith that saves him [...] just lots of practical tinkering and problem-solving: Science the crap out of it." - Matt Ridley
Whole Earth Discipline
Stewart Brand
Source: "Describes how one of the things he did was spawn a back-to-the-land movement with people growing their own vegetables and forming communes." - Matt Ridley
The Vital Question
Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
Nick Lane
Source: "A brilliant new analysis of the origin of life, by the man who has himself done more than anybody to crack the problem." - Matt Ridley
What Technology Wants
Kevin Kelly
Source: "Realises that there’s an inexorability about the way technology changes and that it’s almost as if technology has its own agenda." - Matt Ridley
The Fabric of Civilization
How Textiles Made the World
Virginia Postrel
Source: "A fascinating, surprising and beautifully written history of technology, economics, and culture, told through the thread of textiles." - Matt Ridley
The Double Helix
A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
James D. Watson Ph.D.
Source: "An astonishing literary achievement, and it was about the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century." - Matt Ridley
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
Source: "Turned evolutionary biology on its head and was written like a great detective story." - Matt Ridley
The Skeptical Environmentalist
Measuring the Real State of the World
Bjørn Lomborg
Source: "Most of the environmental trends in the world are getting better not worse." - Matt Ridley
The Bottomless Well
The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
Peter Huber
Source: "Points out that the cheaper energy gets the more we use." - Matt Ridley
The Hockey Stick Illusion
A W Montford
Source: "A great piece of detective work on a key scientific blunder." - Matt Ridley
My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell
Source: Matt Ridley recommended this book in a "What Should I Read Next" interview.
The Ultimate Resource 2
Julian Lincoln Simon
Source: "[The author] is really the god of this subject in many ways." - Matt Ridley
One Summer
America, 1927
Bill Bryson
Source: "A charming account of the events of 1927 in America." - Matt Ridley
Unravelling the Double Helix
The Lost Heroes of DNA
Gareth Williams
Source: "Uncovers those who almost found the secret of life." - Matt Ridley
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
Source: "[Changed] science and [reached] the public." - Matt Ridley
Into the Silence
The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
Wade Davis
Source: "The account of the 1920s Everest expeditions." - Matt Ridley
Freezing Order
A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
Bill Browder
Source: "Fascinating and frightening." - Matt Ridley
6 books