I enjoy learning about fields where I'm only a layperson — whether that's the sciences, math, social sciences, economics, history, whatever. My interests are pretty broad.
However, I keep picking up NYT bestselling pop science books that are written as if they're for toddlers. For example, I'm currently reading Eugenia Cheng's "Beyond Infinity" and she writes as if you still pick up baby carrots with your full fist. She does things like calling sets "bags" and makes a lot of references to childhood and preschool level math, tends to overexplain things, etc. Another book in this vein was "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal.
I understand that authors do this because many readers are intimidated by these subjects, and that's totally fine. I'm not here to judge. For me, though, I find this style of writing to be a huge turn off, and I would prefer a more direct, more adult, maybe even less conversational writing style. I am not afraid of big words or difficult subjects, but I do hate feeling talked down to!
Ideally the content would be at the level of say, an undergraduate college class on the subject.
On that note, does anyone have suggestions for nonfiction books written like they're for adults?
by melody_elf
8 Comments
– The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
– User Friendly, Cliff Kuang
– Home from Nowhere, James Kunstler
Max Tegmark’s speculative non-fiction **Life 3.0** presents the spectrum of futures mankind faces due to the ascent of artificial intelligence. He’s a physics professor so it leans heavily into how it could occur.
**The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)** by Dr. Katie Mack on cosmology.
One Day by Gene Weingarten
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
About a Mountain by John D’Agata
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Rabid: a cultural History of the world’s most diabolical disease.
It doesn’t dwell on the science but it does cover the science and a variety of other topics. I still spit rabies facts at my friends like a year after reading it. It’s very casual in nature and pretty clearly intended for anyone to read without talking down to the audience.
I enjoyed The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. If you’re interested in firsthand accounts of historical events, I cannot recommend enough that you pick up The Long Shadow of Little Rock by Daisy Gatson Bates.
**The Mismeasure of Man** by Stephen Jay Gould
I would highly suggest looking into the Very Short Introduction series. It covers hundreds of subjects and each book is written by an expert in each books given field. All the books I’ve read so far are great introductions to a subjects with resources for further reading.
https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/v/very-short-introductions-vsi/?cc=ca&lang=en&
Another book I would recommend is Sean Carrol’s Big Picture. Great book that doesn’t talk down to the readers. Carrol argues for his meta theory of reality he calls Poetic Naturalism.
Carrol is also working on the third book in his “Biggest Ideas in the Universe” trilogy where he attempts to teach the layperson reader physics with the first book “Space, Time, and Motion” covering Classical Physics, the second “Quanta and Fields” covering Quantum Physics. I haven’t gotten into this series yet, but hear really good things.
Anything by David McCullough.