Over a truly illustrious career in experimental cognitive psychology, Steven Pinker has garnered recognition for advocating evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. A native of Quebec, he earned his PhD from Harvard, taught at Stanford and MIT, and presently serves as the Johnstone Family Professor in Harvard’s Department of Psychology. Pinker is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a Richard Dawkins Award recipient, and was named one of Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Public Intellectuals.”
A visual cognition and psycholinguistics specialist, Pinker’s research interests include language development, communication and common knowledge, and the history and psychology of violence. His academic work has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science. As a popular science author, Pinker has published nine books for general audiences since 1994: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, Enlightenment Now, and last year’s Rationality – an excavation of the nature and importance of reason.
In a reading list for NY-based bookstore One Grand, Pinker shared ten tomes that have most impacted his life and work. From number theory to writing style to human sexuality, check out his favorites below, and complement with the bookshelves of Malcolm Gladwell, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris.
Steven Pinker’s Reading List
One, Two, Three, Infinity by George Gamow
“A delightful introduction to number theory, Einstein’s theory of relativity, higher dimensions, and other mathematical and scientific topics. I read it as a young adult, but it’s informative for old adults too.” -SP
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (also rec’d by Neil deGrasse Tyson)
“Perhaps the best display of expository scientific prose of the twentieth century. It gave me the idea to try my hand at the genre in The Language Instinct, and had a strong influence on my own writing.” -SP
The Evolution of Human Sexuality by Donald Symons
“The founding document of evolutionary psychology, filled with insights about sex and the sexes, and more relevant than ever with #metoo. A major inspiration for the discussions of evolution and sexuality in my own How the Mind Works.” -SP
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
“A grandmother from New Jersey uses genetics, ethnography, and child psychology to refute the dogma that parents shape their children’s intelligence and personality. A major influence on my own book The Blank Slate.” -SP
36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
“A moving, hilarious, and intellectually deep novel about religion and atheism. Disclosure: I like this author’s fiction so much that I married her.” -SP
Enemies: A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Perhaps my favorite contemporary novel by someone I’m not married to. It’s about a holocaust survivor who ends up with three wives. Every scene is a goldmine of insight about human nature.” -SP
Atrocities by Matthew White
“This chronicle of history’s hundred deadliest wars and massacres, including death tolls, is a good way to settle bets (who was worse, Genghis Khan or Hitler?), brush up your history, and marvel at the cruelty and stupidity of our species. It was a useful source when I wrote The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.” -SP
Clear and Simple as the Truth by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner
“Perhaps the best analysis of writing style, and a major inspiration for my own The Sense of Style.” -SP
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
“This 21st-century statement of the ideals of the Enlightenment offers fresh insight on a vast number of topics, including the workings of human cognition, the ways of science, and the drivers of progress. A major inspiration for Enlightenment Now.” -SP
Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand
“No, the environment is not hopelessly despoiled and depauperate, says eco-modernist Stewart Brand. Children of the 1970s will appreciate the title, an allusion to Brand’s groundbreaking Whole Earth Catalog, which merged technology with the counterculture and encouraged global consciousness with the breathtaking earthrise photograph on the cover.” -SP
(via One Grand Books)