Hey Book Break!
My name is Simon, and I'm here doing a guest video, because I am a bit of a bibliophile,
and a scientist.
So I'm going to be talking about my top five pieces of scientific nonfiction.
Let's start with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.
This book is an absolute masterclass in blending nonfiction with storytelling.
The book contains three different story threads, the first of which is Henrietta Lacks herself.
Henrietta Lacks was a woman in America in the mid-20th century, who died of cervical
cancer.
But just prior to her death, doctors took some of her cells, which they were then able
to grow in a lab.
And they were able to do so so successfully that her cells are still alive today.
They just kept multiplying and multiplying.
So in a sense, she has become immortal.
Her cells have become incredibly important to scientific research, and tens of thousands
of scientific papers have been written using her cells.
But the problem is that her cells were taken without her consent.
So the first thread in this book is what happened to Henrietta Lacks and her family when they
found out what had been done to her.
The second thread is about the science done using her cells, and the scientists who used
them.
And the third is about Rebecca Skloot who wrote the book, uncovering all this information
and piecing the story together.
Those three threads are combined in a way that Hitchcock would call, 'meanwhile, back
at the ranch', where you build up one particular thread up to the point of maximum tension
and then drop it, and then go to a different thread and build that up.
And it keeps your interest, and it's just a masterful use of techniques that you normally
only see in fiction, applied to nonfiction.
And the story that's told using these techniques is profoundly moving, and deeply tragic.
The book touches on deep topics such as the ethics of biomedical research.
Should Henrietta Lacks's family be reimbursed? Compensated for the tens of millions of dollars
that were made off of their mother's cells?
And the incredibly deep divide that existed in America in the middle of the 20th century,
and still persists to this day.
I just can't recommend this enough.
I want more books like this in my life please.
Next, another book about the human body.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.
Something that I've noticed in books about medicine and medical history, is that people
are just reduced to a series of biochemical reactions.
There's a series of causes, there's then a series of biochemistry things that go on,
some physiological actions, and then some results at the end.
Which, you know, sometimes include death.
The human being in the middle of all of that somehow gets missed.
And this is something that Oliver Sacks puts dead centre in his book.
The book is a series of case studies, particularly interesting neurological cases over Sacks's
career as a doctor.
Now this could easily have been one of those books that I've talked about before: this
happened, the human brain did this, this happened.
But in this case, the humans, the personalities, the souls are at the centre of each of these
case studies.
Sacks consciously moved towards a more humanistic representation of medicine, and from doing
that he raises incredibly interesting questions, such as, a neurological patient who has no
memory whatsoever, who lives entirely in the moment.
Do they have a soul?
Do they have a personality?
Or are they just constantly reacting to things that are happening around them?
The book introduces fascinating concept after concept after concept, which I just never
considered before.
And in a way, the book feels like a meta-commentary on how we talk about the medical sciences.
In the last chapter, Sacks talks about a patient who he describes as an 'idiot savant', someone
who is incredibly gifted in one area, but who has very minimal capabilities in others.
The patient in the chapter in particular is an incredible artist, but can barely verbally
communicate, or understand other people.
And when talking about how this patient can be so incredibly in the moment of something,
but not understand abstraction, it feels like Sacks is commenting on how we talk about medicine.
And how we talk about science in general.
About scientists who are so incredibly good at nailing down the abstract methodological
way of thinking, but incapable of communicating it to humans.
And when you read the book, you'll find that it is beautiful.
It is one of the, if not the most, beautifully written nonfiction books I've ever read.
Sacks draws his influences from a diverse range of sources, and you can tell that he's
incredibly well-read.
It really comes across.
The book almost reads like poetry.
It is just sumptuous.
So for a book that's about more than it says it's about, and what it's about is incredibly
interesting, and it's told in a beautiful way.
I can't recommend this enough.
I thought it was fascinating.
OK, all right, that's enough gushing about biology.
Let's talk about some real science.
A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.
This is one of those books that is incredibly popular, and has been bought by a lot of people,
but not necessarily read by a lot of people.
However, people should be reading it.
If they just get the introduction down, then they've read, in my opinion, the most interesting,
the most engaging introduction to modern physics that there is.
I first read the book when I was about ten, which was way too young.
And I always assumed that I didn't really understand a lot of what I was reading at
the time.
But I recently re-read it, and having done now a master's degree in Physics, and a PhD,
I realised that actually it had all gone in.
The way that I think about physics, the way that I think about the physical world, comes
directly from this book.
It had an unspeakably large influence on me, without me even realising!
Much as it has this reputation for being mind-bending and difficult, I find, admittedly, slightly
biased, two degrees, I find it to be the most concise, the most precise in its use of language,
introduction to physics that there is.
I think you could argue that because Hawking was confined to his wheelchair and had to
type this book incredibly slowly, he had to be incredibly economical with what he was
typing, and how he was choosing to communicate these complicated ideas.
And that that really strengthened the book.
It's not even that long, considering the sheer number of concepts that it put across.
It's a classic.
It is for a reason.
I think it's the best introduction to physics there is, so you should definitely read it.
And then at number four, a book which I don't actually have with me.
Alex's Adventures in Numberland, by Alex Bellos.
In a way, the fact that I don't actually have this book, is the best recommendation I could
possibly give, because Alex's Adventures in Numberland is one of these books that I just
had to recommend to people as soon as I had finished reading it.
For some context, I did my degree in physics, and I recently finished my PhD in theoretical
atmospheric physics, both of which had a great deal of maths in.
Except, I hated maths at school, and I sucked at it.
That is, until I read this book.
Because this book was the key to the door.
It unlocked maths as a field for me, because after this book, I found it interesting.
For some people, myself included, language is just a delight.
Like, words are these things that you can manipulate and play around with your hands,
and have fun with combining in new ways.
And that's exactly what the people in Alex's Adventures in Numberland, and Alex Bellos
himself, are like with numbers.
The book goes across a variety of fields of maths, not necessarily modern cutting-edge
research, but just vast areas of maths that you might not even think of as being maths.
And along the way, you meet these people for whom numbers are these playthings.
These abstract mathematical concepts, are like old friends that they can have fun with.
Looking at numerology, looking at infinities, looking at probability, looking at the history
of pi.
The book just blasts through all of these things, and along the way I could feel myself
getting entrained, getting sucked into this world.
And I am so happy I read it, so happy because it meant that I could suddenly enjoy this
huge field of what I was doing in my degree at the time.
And it was one of these books that I just had to immediately give away.
So my copy has gone from person to person to person, because I just think it's one of
the most influential books I've ever read.
And that is the biggest compliment I could give it.
So I give it to other people to read.
You should read it too.
And then, lastly, something a little different.
What If? by Randall Munroe.
You may have heard of Randall Munroe, from his comic strip XKCD, especially if you're
a scientist.
But I'd argue the more interesting thing about him is his project What If?
Which was a blog which answered absurd hypothetical questions with real answers. For example,
from what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the
ground.
The book is like the greatest hits of that blog, and all these questions are just so
bizarre.
Some of them you think, how on earth did somebody come up with that?
Is it possible to cry so much you dehydrate yourself?
But regardless of how ridiculous the situation being considered is, Munroe applies real physics,
real engineering analysis, to the problem.
Which is why it's on this list, because I'd argue that it is the most scientific piece
of scientific nonfiction that I've ever read.
Because the focus is on the method.
So many science books are just about 'isn't quantum mechanics amazing?' or 'isn't the
way that we worked out how this enzyme in the body works, how cool is this?'
In these books the method is lost, the way we actually do science.
There's a reason why I recommend this book to people who are going to university interviews
to do science, because the way that Munroe tackles a problem, and spells it out in the
book, is exactly how you would tackle a science problem in an interview.
You work out your assumptions, you go through some approximations, and then try and get
it as accurate as possible, using the physics that you do know, to make the most of an absurd
situation.
Despite the fact that some of the situations covered involve rampaging T-Rexes and bridges
made of lego that can carry traffic, the techniques that are discussed in this book, the mindset
that is put forward in this book, is incredibly true to how I have done science in my academic
career.
So for that reason, this is arguably the best piece of scientific nonfiction writing I've
ever read.
So I guess you should read it.
So those are my top five.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, A Brief
History of Time, Alex's Adventures in Numberland, and What If?
Thank you so much to Book Break for having me on the channel, I had a great time getting
ready for this video and re-reading some of these books.
There'll be a link to my channel down there in the description, and let me know in the
comments if you have some suggestions that you think should have made it to my list.
Thanks for watching.