Published

February 22, 2018

Written by

Chris Gonzales

Photography

Cathy Mü

Everyone likes to feel smart — not just because it means they know things, but because it makes them a more interesting person.

One of the hallmarks of intelligence is having an insatiable curiosity about any number of subjects. In today's entry in our Books to Make You a Better Human guide series, we'll be sharing a handful of books to spark your curiosity, teach you a few new things, and generally expand your mind — perhaps in ways you don't expect.

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What If? by Randall Munroe.

What If? by Randall Munroe.

What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions »

Randall Munroe, creator of the mega-popular xkcd webcomic, gets asked a lot of weird questions:

  • What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity?
  • What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?
  • What would it be like if you traveled back in time, starting in Times Square, New York, 1,000 years? 10,000 years? 100,000 years? 1,000,000 years? 1,000,000,000 years? What about forward in time 1,000,000 years?
  • What is the farthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely?

The questions themselves are amusing, but the real fun comes when he attempts to answer them seriously using hard scientific data and analysis. In What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, he collects together a bunch of these eminently readable pieces — many of which have never been published on the webcomic.

As one Amazon reviewer put it:

If you have even a passing interest in science and ever enjoy daydreaming about the fantastic or the ridiculous, this book is for you. If you don't think that you enjoy those things, this book will prove to you that you do.

The things you pick up from this book will not only open your mind to information you didn't even know you needed to learn, it'll also make you more entertaining at parties.

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The Origin of (almost) Everything by Graham Lawton and Jennifer Daniel of New Scientist.

The Origin of (almost) Everything by Graham Lawton and Jennifer Daniel of New Scientist.

The Origin of (almost) Everything »

Whereas What If? teaches you a variety of things through humor, New Scientist's The Origin of (almost) Everything presents a similarly fascinating set of facts and difficult concepts in more of an "almanac-y" (but no less engaging) format:

Did you know, for instance, that if you were to get too close to a black hole it would suck you up like a noodle (it’s called spaghettification), why your keyboard is laid out in QWERTY (it’s not to make it easier to type) or why animals never evolved wheels? New Scientist does.

And now they and award-winning illustrator Jennifer Daniel want to take you on a colorful, whistle-stop journey from the start of our universe (through the history of stars, galaxies, meteorites, the Moon and dark energy) to our planet (through oceans and weather and oil) and life (through dinosaurs to emotions and sex) to civilization (from cities to alcohol and cooking), knowledge (from alphabets to alchemy) ending up with technology (computers to rocket science).

Helpful diagrams and infographics abound throughout this book. Its foreword was also written by Stephen Hawking, so if you have even a passing interest in science, you know you're in for a treat.

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Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Thinking, Fast and Slow »

If you want to improve your intuition and reasoning abilities, it helps to understand how the mind itself works so you can bypass cognitive bias and stop jumping to irrational conclusions in your life. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow breaks it all down at a technical level and teaches the importance of "slow thinking" for better decision-making:

[Kahneman] takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

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The Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson.

The Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson.

The Information Diet »

Being smart isn't just about knowing a lot of things; it's also about filtering out the crud. The aim of Clay Johnson's The Information Diet is to help people consume content better by being more selective about what information they allow into their lives. In preventing yourself from falling victim to "information glut", you'll increase your attention span, improve your literacy, and boost your critical thinking skills immeasurably.

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Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

Why We Sleep »

One of the largest impacts on mental ability is the amount of sleep you get. Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker has noticed some disturbing sleep deprivation trends over the past two decades, and wrote Why We Sleep to help people better understand why sleep is so important — not just for mental health and critical thinking, but in every aspect of our lives:

Walker answers important questions about sleep: how do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us and can they do long-term damage? Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses.

Get the book in these formats: