Whether you read in the sun, under a shady tree on the Union Terrace or inside in the air conditioning there are lots of great summer reading lists out there. Here are a few of our favorites and links to selected books. Happy reading!
NY Times Summer Reading List (2018): The New York Times also recently released their summer reading list. Predictably it’s little light on physics but lots of other interesting titles. Here are some of those recommendations also available through the UW-Madison library catalog:
- Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
- The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales From the Wild Side of Wildlife
- Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece
Berkeley Summer Reading List (2018): Every year at UC Berkeley, staff, faculty, and students give book recommendations for the incoming freshman class. Check out some of their recommendations below:
- Climate Changed: A Personal Journey through the Science
- The Hacking of the American Mind : the Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of our Bodies and Brains
- Reality is Not What It Seems: the Journey to Quantum Gravity
- Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
Science Magazine: Summer Reading, Science Style
Use Your Brain for Science Summer Reading List (2018): And now for something completely different! In the first edition of their Summer Reading List, the science advocacy website Use Your Brain for Science recommended these science books available through the UW–Madison library catalog for your summer reading:
- The Poisoner’s Handbook : Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
- The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth: A Celebration of Scientific Eccentricity and Self Experimentation by Trevor Norton
- Stiff : the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
- The Information : a History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleich
