Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A num­ber of years ago, a Red­dit user posed the ques­tion to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every sin­gle intel­li­gent per­son on the plan­et?”

Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astro­physi­cist, direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, and pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence. Where pos­si­ble, we have includ­ed links to free ver­sions of the books.

1.) The Bible (eBook) — “to learn that it’s eas­i­er to be told by oth­ers what to think and believe than it is to think for your­self.”

2.) The Sys­tem of the World by Isaac New­ton (eBook) — “to learn that the uni­verse is a know­able place.”

3.) On the Ori­gin of Species by Charles Dar­win (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn of our kin­ship with all oth­er life on Earth.”

4.) Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els by Jonathan Swift (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn, among oth­er satir­i­cal lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”

5.) The Age of Rea­son by Thomas Paine (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn how the pow­er of ratio­nal thought is the pri­ma­ry source of free­dom in the world.”

6.) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that cap­i­tal­ism is an econ­o­my of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”

7.) The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that the act of killing fel­low humans can be raised to an art.”

8.) The Prince by Machi­avel­li (eBook — Audio Book) — “to learn that peo­ple not in pow­er will do all they can to acquire it, and peo­ple in pow­er will do all they can to keep it.”

Tyson con­cludes by say­ing: “If you read all of the above works you will glean pro­found insight into most of what has dri­ven the his­to­ry of the west­ern world.”

He has also added some more thoughts in the com­ments sec­tion below, say­ing:

Thanks for this ongo­ing inter­est in my book sug­ges­tions. From some of your reflec­tions, it looks like the intent of the list was not as clear as I thought. The one-line com­ment after each book is not a review but a state­ment about how the book’s con­tent influ­enced the behav­ior of peo­ple who shaped the west­ern world. So, for exam­ple, it does no good to say what the Bible “real­ly” meant, if its actu­al influ­ence on human behav­ior is some­thing else. Again, thanks for your col­lec­tive inter­est. ‑NDTyson

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Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2011.

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