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Recommendations of books for “Prime Day”

Posted on by Razib Khan

Since many of you will be taking advantage of “Prime Day” sales, I thought I might as well put some recommendations of books you might be interested in as well, and if you buy other stuff after the initial click I’ll get a cut!

First, thematically here are three books on ancient Rome that you probably should read: The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe.

For stuff on religion and culture, I think Atran’s In Gods We Trust is still the best treatment. It’s dated, and probably doesn’t take cultural evolution into account enough. Therefore, read Henrich’s The Secret of our Success.

For population genetics, Gillespie’s introductory book and Hartl and Clark’s more thorough one suffice. Also, Falconer’s Introduction to Quantitative Genetics is an excellent resource.

David Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here is a must-read. In part, because the author’s lab might publish stuff soon requiring major revisions. This is a fast-changing field, and Reich gives you a good window upon that.

Haier’s The Neuroscience of Intelligence and Ritchie’s short book are both useful.

The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China, is an excellent book.

Soft spot for Cameron Rondo’s A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times to the Present by Cameron Rondo.

And of course, Beckwith’s eccentric Empires of the Silk Road.

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9 thoughts on “Recommendations of books for “Prime Day””

  1. Razib,

    “David Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here is a must-read. In part, because the author’s lab might publish stuff soon requiring major revisions. This is a fast-changing field, and Reich gives you a good window upon that.”

    Any idea when Prof. Reich might do a major revision? in 2-3 years?

  3. Razib

    Any recommendations on history books related to Bronze to Iron Age: East Med / Levant / Mesopotamia?

    Read “Empires of the Silk Road” on your recommendation and it was excellent. Answered many questions I had from my childhood.

    Thanks

  4. “Empires of the Silk Road” seemed eccentric to me only because of the “kids these days” rant at the end.

  8. Any recommendations on history books related to Bronze to Iron Age: East Med / Levant / Mesopotamia?

    Warriors of Anatolia: A Concise History of the Hittites by Trevor Bryce is
    also worth reading.

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