📚Book Recommendations
Most of these are well-known, but missing any one of them would be a pity. More to come. Including a book doesn't mean I endorse all content or think it's the best description of its field.
As an experiment, I will also try to keep track of good peer-reviewed papers here.
Macrohistory and Cultural Evolution
📚Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success and The Weirdest People in The World (Timeline. I wish the books had better names but both are in-depth and well-written)
📚 Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in a Global Context.
📚Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches and A Culture of Growth (Timeline)
📚Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms. (Most economic historians disagree with the rapid shift from Malthusian state to modern growth but it's an engaging read and a good place to start).
📚Frank Marlowe, The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania.
📚 Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature
📚James Scott, Against the Grain
📚Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Effective Altruism, Existential Risk, Differential Technological Development
📚Toby Ord, The Precipice
📚William MacAskill, Doing Good Better
📚Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes
📚Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics and The Human Use of Human Beings
📚Eric Drexler, Radical Abundance; Engines of Creation
📚Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence
Biographies
📚Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine (J.C.R. Licklider and early history of the personal computer and the internet)
📚Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; Leonardo da Vinci; The Innovators
📚Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk
📚John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
The Great Courses
📚Bernard Carlson, Understanding the Inventions That Changed the World
📚Bart Ehrman, From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity
📚Sherwin Nuland, Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography
📚David Ball, The Nature of Matter: Understanding the Physical World