(2022-12-31) Hill HELS books

GeePawHill describes certain books as "HELS" - "high-end-layperson-suitable". A good To-Read list.

US history:

• Anderson: Crucible of War (Seven Years War)
• Foner: Reconstruction, (post-Civil War)
• Foote: Civil War trilogy.
• Hamalainen: The Commanche Empire.
• Robert Caro (all of it, especially the LBJ series.)
• Doris Kearns Goodwin:, Team of Rivals amd _The Bully Pulpit (might be technically MEL, but still magnificent),
• Barbara Tuchman: The Guns of August.

Evolutionary Biology:

• All of Stephen Jay Gould
• all of Richard Dawkins before he became rabid about atheism (I'm an atheist as a matter of faith, but I'm not rabid, it's faith, yo.)
• Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation
• Hrdy: The Maternal Instinct
• Konner: The Tangled Wing

World history:

• Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, (most of Johnson is solid writing and medium-end, but this is amazing on both counts)
• Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror
• all of Tony Judt

Rome:

• O'Donnell: The Ruin of the Roman Empire (plus everything else, but that one first)
• All of the Goldsworthy biographies
• The great Mary Beard, all of her, tho much of it is MEL.
• Edward Gibbon, believe it or not, who is a stunning writer, give him a few hours to learn his style, and is by and large not wrong.

AI -- not statistical mechanics w/neural nets on Markov chains

• All of Douglas Hofstadter
• all of Melanie Mitchell
• Roger Schank when you can find him, he's somewhat forgotten.
• Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind, even though he's wrong.
• Daniel Dennett, but don't watch the TED talks first.

Western Art/Culture/Literature:

• Said: Orientalism
• Scarry's stunning The Body In Pain (the smartest writer I have ever been able to understand)
• Auerbach's Mimesis
• all of John Berger, to reawaken
• all of Julian Bell, to learn the mixed lot of bitterness and love.