Other books

Clouds in a Glass of Beer - In science there is no authority other than observation and experiment illuminated by reason

Drunken botanist by Amy Stewart - every plant can be used to make alcohol or infuse it to make bitters

Eat and run by Scott Jurek - inspiring book about distance running with good recipes.

Run or Die by Killian Jornet - meh. Killian sets a lot of records and describes it with flowery language that sounds unachievable to normal people

The Big Burn by Timothy Egan - Look at the great fire that helped convince the US public to back the National Park Service when it was first getting started:

• “I took to him at once,” Pinchot wrote. Muir became a friend and mentor, starting when Pinchot was twenty-seven, and Muir was nearly twice his age.

• Olmsted, who was one of the first to insist that it was America’s duty to put aside “great public grounds for the free enjoyment of people”;

• in private Roosevelt wanted to steer the Republican Party away from big business and toward becoming “a fairly radical progressive party,” as he wrote in his memoir.

• His Republican Party stood for public ownership of natural resources, among the pillars of the progressive cause. At a time when the gap between rich and poor was never greater, Roosevelt called for a national inheritance tax on wealthy families.

• Pinchot’s thinking had evolved from five years earlier. He knew then, though he seldom said so in public, that wildfire was part of nature, even essential. He knew that some species in the West needed fire to proliferate—“gaining ground by the action of its enemy,” as he said. But he put the science aside and chose to believe the words he used to sell Congress on his big idea.

The Martian - good, fun, quick read. Some solid science and plenty of fiction