The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam, 2010 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a nonfiction book about science Premise: “How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives.” This is a fascinating survey of research around unconscious reactions, and when they can and can’t be overridden by our conscious minds. There is a lot about bias. In some cases, no matter how tolerant and fair-minded we may be consciously, the biases we pick up from society may override our intentions. There was one particularly interesting piece of evidence that people found it easier to react without bias after having sugar. There are details about the invisible currents caused by gender biases. This section includes more detailed stories from a few prominent transgender researchers I’ve heard of before and their unique perspectives on society and privilege. There is a fascinating chapter on herd mentality, group-think, and disasters...

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Carl Sagan, 1995 The Demon-Haunted World is a fine compilation of skepticism for beginners. Structured as a series of related essays, the book explores the need for skeptical and critical thinking, offers some tips, and systematically takes down a few pseudo-sciences. Sagan reaches out to the reader, and in the nicest way imaginable, says: 'You're not a bad person, but here's why you really need to stop just blindly believing in things.' I personally found the book a little long, and with a bit too much time spent on UFOs. It was an important work when it came out, but only 15 years later it feels quaint to me to consider people who report UFOs as a large population, one needing to be engaged with. He also addresses faith healing, channeling, and other instances of magical thinking, but a sizable chunk of the book is spent debunking UFO sightings and alien abduction stories. There is a per...

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution Richard Dawkins, 2009 The Greatest Show on Earth is both a lovely, careful step-through of the process of evolution via natural selection, an explanation of many of the mountains of evidence supporting it, and a call to solidarity against those who would deny such evidence.  On this level alone I recommend this book in the strongest terms. This is the third book I've finished by Dawkins, and by now I'm getting a sense of the hallmarks of his style.  They include an easy confidence combined with infectious enthusiasm for his subject, a ready humor tinged with a bit of didacticism, acknowledgment of retread ground, and friendly recognition of criticism with merit. In a sense, this occupies a middle ground between the two previous works I read, with a similar amount of scientific explanation as The Selfish Gene while tempering the righteous anger of The God Delusion to a frustration tinged with hope. Ev...