The books I read in 2013

Below is a list of the books I managed to get through in 2013, and below that, is another list of the books I’m currently reading.

Apart from the usual mix of science, technology, psychology and evolution, last year I was obsessed with the JFK assassination and ~early 20th-century notables.

★★★★★

• Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution by Rebecca Stott
• Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss

★★★★☆

• Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins by Ian Tattersall
• The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman
• Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi
• One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
• Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman
• America’s Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation by Joshua Kendall
• A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley by Neal Thompson
• The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond
• Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave by Adam Alter
• Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
• The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ by Roger Stone
• Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Cas James DiEugenio
• The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science by Douglas Starr
• The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our…Search for Meaning by Daniel Bor
• The Invention of Religion by Alexander Drake
• Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame by Christopher Boehm
• Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden—from 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter L. Bergen
• The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer
• Citizen Hughes : The Power, the Money and the Madness by Michael Drosnin
• Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
• The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw

★★★☆☆

• The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond
• An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage
• Lying by Sam Harris

★★☆☆☆

• Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization by Parag and Ayesha Khanna

Currently, I’m reading the following books:

• Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thompson
• Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age by Robert Bellah
• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
• The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory by Jesse Walker
• Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of The Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works by John Brockman