Not Another Review Blog!: Top 10 Educational Books I Recommend

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Top 10 Educational Books I Recommend

Yeah, I'm a gamer, but I am also a researcher. I like to read many books on topics that interest me, and so far I have found a decent number of books that I believe are really good at teaching particular subjects. If this is not for you, than please ignore this list, but if you are truly interested, here they are:

10. Discerning Truth - Jason Lisle 

Yeah yeah yeah, Don't shoot me, I know know what you're thinking. "That's Creationist propaganda!" and you are 100% right, it is. Now there are probably better books than this out there, but I am listing it for one reason: Logical Fallacies. 

This good is good on two fronts. It 1. is able to teach people how to argue better by teaching them a wide array of logical fallacies and 2. Teachers you what many Creationists actually think and helps people to find better ways to debate them. But I think this book because it was the first book that I got that ever taught me about so many logical fallacies.

9. Too Good to be True - Jan Brunvand

Snopes in a book. That's all I can really say about it. This book tells you about all sorts of myths and urban legends and shows them to be fake. Like the Spider in the Cactus story, and The Exploding Toilet myth. I remember so many times people who try to scare me with these stories, or teach me these stories as fact, and then would get so upset when I didn't take their word for it. I think this book is a must-have for any household.

8. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

I love a lot of Richard Dawkins works, but The Selfish Gene is one of my favorites. It teaches Altruism and why the human species is inherently selfish. It is a very nicely written work that is able to explain things simply for even readers who are not all that into science to read. 

7. Hungry Hollow - A.K.Dewdney

I love this book, it's just fantastic! It talks about the world in the eyes of animals. Getting into detail never thought possible. Looking at this land, called the Hungry Hollow, in the eyes of a biologist, a raccoon, a bird, etc. Bringing you to smaller and smaller sizes, the biological changes as one shrinks. It's just a fantastic book!

6. What a Plant Knows - Daniel Chamovitz

This book shocked me when I read it. I never thought of plants having any sort of senses, but this book explained in a very scientific way that plants can respond to sound, light, and even touch. Although incorrectly reading this book, you might think that plants are sentient, and they are not. But this book I checked out days before my college science lesson that taught me the same thing. Plants are more awesome than I thought.

5. Raccoons are the Brightest People - Sterling North

Yeah, this technically is more of a documentary than a educational novel. But this book is what really started to teach me that animals did in fact have emotions, and feelings, and lives. Before this book, I believed animals did in fact have feelings, but I did not know anyone else believed the same. I was told that animals are just mindless beings that ran on instinct. 

This is just one of those books that sold me on the case that animals are indeed living creatures with a mind and reason all their own.

4. Some we Love, Some we Hate, Some we Eat - Hal Herzog

This is a wonderful book that explains why we think about animals the way we do and why we eat pigs but eating a cat is considered taboo. Why don't we eat dogs? And why do we test on rats instead of cats? Ad why are we just hate many animals for seemingly no reason? This book is great for those very questions.

3-2. Don't Cross Your Eyes/Don't Swallow your Gum - Aaron Caroll and Rachael Vreeman

These two books are wonderful for teaching about the numerous myths regarding our health that are out there being perpetuated in the world today. I always get annoyed when someone says something unproven and incorrect like "Sugar makes kids hyper" or "Underwear makes one infertile" and these books helps a ton in that regard. 

1. Animals Make us Human - Temple Grandin

Whereas Raccoons are the Brightest People made a point, this book drove that point home. Animals Make us Human is a book regarding how animals react and why. Temple telling us about her work in the field and how her observation from her Autism reinvented the way we view animals. From mindless beings to beings with a different mindset. She helped create a more humane slaughter house existence. 

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