 | Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand [Copleston, Frederick C.] Russell
Buy used from: $18.98 Of the most logically sound arguments against the supernatural, by famous mathematician
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 | I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Buy new: $20.48 / Used from: $0.34 Provided some of my most epiphanous moments of adult life, reconfigured my idea of consciousness.
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 | The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $5.00 Wonderfully entertaining accounts of evolution occurring right now, with examples that can be measured in decades.
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 | Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
Buy new: $9.50 / Used from: $2.00 Excellent collection of essays
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 | The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007
Buy new: $10.92 / Used from: $0.01 Veritable smörgåsbord of witty and pioneering thoughts that have graced the pages of the best science publications. A new editor each year, past editors include Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Oliver Sacks, Brian Greene, Steven Pinker. Buy every year's edition, you WON'T be sorry.
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| The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Buy used from: $11.45 Backdoor introduction to Islam. This book forced its reader into hiding for over a decade.
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 | The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.) by Steven Pinker
Buy new: $11.51 / Used from: $6.50 an entire chapter is devoted to helping us understand why we say f*u*c*k the way we do.
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 | Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
Buy new: $17.16 / Used from: $3.59 Any Sacks' book is going to stimulate your brain in ways that it has never been stimulated. This book is jam-packed with Dr. Sacks' own patients and case-studies.
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 | The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (Official Edition)
Buy used from: $2.00 Whoops, how'd this get in here? This book is utter, useless crap.
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 | Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson
Buy new: $13.60 / Used from: $4.48 You'll be THE expert in the rare event that Che might come up in a conversation, if you can manage to make it through the minute-by-minute account of Che's early teens.
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 | All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer
Buy new: $9.72 / Used from: $7.79 Gain a clearer picture of what America did to deserve to be hated in yet another middle-eastern country. Shocking story of CIA operative who orchestrated a coup d'etat in Iran in the early 50's...the Iranians found out and the rest is history, or as they say in Iran, "Marg Bar Amrika! Marg Bar Amrika!"
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 | Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $1.50 Even an ultra-skeptical science-buff who think that reality is so much more fascinating than fiction has to admit that their precious reality cannot hope to compete with Mr. Chuck Palahniuk's strange world. Choke is, I think, his crowning acheivement.
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 | Fight Club: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Buy used from: $2.63 Sadly (but in a cool, nihilistic, melancholy kind of way) this book seems to define my segment of my generation. See the movie AND read the book. They're delightful.
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 | The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
Buy used from: $0.69 Samuel Winchester co-authors Oxford English Dictionary with psychotic American civil war surgeon serving life sentence for murder at a prison for the criminally insane. Antics ensue. Best part: true story.
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 | Human Impact on Ancient Environments by Charles L. Redman
Buy new: $20.65 / Used from: $14.99 Rethink everything you know about why human civilization.
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 | The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classic.) by Eric Hoffer
Buy new: $9.35 / Used from: $4.95 Ever wondered why your neighbors buy into Benny Hinn, or Catholicism, or palm-reading?
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 | Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $10.48 Diamond examines the geographical explanations for determining world dominance.
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