Core reading recommendations

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Our recommendations below, categorized by subject, satisfy all these criteria:

  • They are intellectually engaging and enriching.
  • They are accessible to intellectually curious high school students, and to highly precocious middle school students, who have interest in the subject.
  • They can be read without too much real-time intellectual effort. You do not need to use paper and pencil while reading these books. Of course, putting in intellectual effort can help you derive more value from the books.
  • They systematically cover important ideas related to the subject. We have refrained from listing books that cover ideas that are interesting but relatively unimportant in the subject.

In particular, you won't find any books here that we're recommending purely because they're fun. You also won't find any books here that we're recommending purely because they are difficult to read.

For reading recommendations of other types, see:

Mathematics

Book Author ISBN and purchase links Why we're recommending it
Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction Timothy Gowers ISBN 978-0192853615, Amazon purchase ??
The Mathematical Experience Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh ISBN 978-0395929681, Amazon purchase The book provides excellent insight into the kind of work that mathematicians do, without requiring the readers to grasp a lot of mathematics.

Statistics and applications to data analysis

Book Author ISBN and purchase links Why we're recommending it
The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century David Salsburg ISBN 978-0805071344 Provides a historical overview of the important developments in statistics and the statistical way of thinking.
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data Charles Wheelan ISBN 978-0393347777 (paperback), Amazon link Explores statistics concepts through a number of simple real-world examples.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't Nate Silver ISBN 978-0141975658 (paperback), Amazon paperback, Amazon Kindle Explores ideas from statistics and data analysis with the specific goal of understanding the art and science of predicting the future.

Economics

Book Author ISBN and purchase links Why we're recommending it
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science Charles Wheelan ISBN 978-0393337648, Amazon paperback, Amazon Kindle ??
The Undercover Economist Timothy Harford ISBN 978-0345494016, Amazon paperback This book uses real-world examples and a minimum of mathematical formalism to explain key economic concepts. Moreover, it systematically covers a significant fraction of the typical introductory college economics course, unlike some of the other pop economics literature.
The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life Steven Landsburg ISBN 978-1451651737, Amazon paperback The original book was one of the first in the "pop economics" literature. It offers an excellent introduction to the economic way of thinking using real-world examples and purely verbal reasoning (with a minimum of mathematics). A revised edition in 2012 updated some of the numbers so that they make more sense to modern readers.

While Freakonomics and its sequel Superfreakonomics are much better known than the above books, we would not recommend Freakonomics or Superfreakonomics if your goal is to obtain an understanding of the economic way of thinking, because they do not systematically cover the core economic concepts.

Cognitive psychology

Book Author ISBN and purchase links Why we're recommending it
Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman Amazon The book is a summary of decades of research into human behavior, in particular the systematic biases and cognitive errors that humans commit. Kahneman was awarded a Nobel Prize for the work that he describes in this book.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt Amazon Kindle The book describes findings related to a relatively new field of research in psychology called moral psychology. This field aims to understand the different dimensions of what people call morality, and the researchers have identified about five axes. Their website, where you can take a survey to find out your own brand of morality, is yourmorals.org.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert Cialdini Amazon This is the Bible of influence.
The New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love and Act the Way You Do John Oldham and Lois Morris Amazon Kindle ??

Global trends

The books in this category are of an "applied" nature. They draw on ideas across many fields to advocate for a case. The cases made in these books may be controversial among scholars. Readers of the books should not blindly accept the arguments put forth by the authors, but should use the books to obtain a richer understanding of the ideas being discussed. For a richer understanding, readers are encouraged to look for online reviews, debates, and discussions surrounding the books and the theses presented in them.

Book Author ISBN and purchase links Why we're recommending it
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Steven Pinker Amazon Kindle The book presents numerous arguments to argue that violence has declined, and offers as well as rejects numerous explanations for the phenomenon.
The Rational Optimist Matt Ridley Amazon Kindle Ridley argues for an optimistic vision of the future. He considers a number of concerns people currently have about the future.
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics William Easterly Amazon paperback Easterly argues that development economists have had a decidedly mixed record in helping kickstart economic growth around the world.

Applied ethics

The books in this category are of an "applied" nature. They draw on ideas across many fields to advocate for a case. The cases made in these books may be controversial among scholars. Readers of the books should not blindly accept the arguments put forth by the authors, but should use the books to obtain a richer understanding of the ideas being discussed. For a richer understanding, readers are encouraged to look for online reviews, debates, and discussions surrounding the books and the theses presented in them.

Book Author ISBN and purchase links Why we're recommending it
The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty Peter Singer Amazon Kindle Singer makes the case that people should do more to end world poverty, and can do so feasibly at minimal cost to themselves.
The Ethics of Voting Jason Brennan Amazon Kindle Brennan argues against the consensus embodied in civics education that people have a moral obligation to vote.
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