After reading a few reviews, I will be buying "The Happiness Hypothesis". Haidt appears to develop further some of the themes he introduced us to in "The Righteous Mind". I would like to see this book chosen for discussion.
A second choice would be "The World Until Yesterday ".

This looks good.

THE SWERVE

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction
Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-Fiction

Description: One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039334 ... PDKIKX0DER

I looked up some of the suggestions, and here are my two cents (no suggestions from me - have to increase my number of posts before I am eligible )

My first pick would be "The Swerve". I just read the critics on Amazon and was very surprised by the high quality of the negative critics. The writers seem to be highly knowledgeable of the topic. I found that very interesting - seems like the experts either love or hate the book. Being a subject of a fierce debate, makes every book interesting.

Second pick would be "A world without time", simply of personal interest (I have some Vilenkin/Susskind on my reading list) in non-fiction that covers aspects of science and philosophy.

The third pick would be the Shakespeare book. Only third because I would like to be better prepared and read more of Shakespeare's oeuvre before I start reading a book about him.

I have bought and started reading The World Until Yesterday. It gets my vote as a next non-fiction selection.

Chris OConnor wrote:Jared Diamond has a brand new release coming out in a few days. We've read and discuss 2 past Diamond books so clearly he is one of our favorite authors around here.

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
By Jared Diamond

Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.

The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. A characteristically provocative, enlightening, and entertaining book, The World Until Yesterday will be essential and delightful reading.

We have a total of 12 non-fiction book suggestions. Out of these 12 suggestions these are the 6 books that received positive feedback:

Dexter suggested: Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
LevV seconded this suggestion.

Stahrwe suggested: A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy Of Godel And Einstein
Dexter, Aomame both liked this suggestion.

Stahrwe suggested: Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung
Pheidippides liked this suggestion.

I suggested: The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
Dexter, Pheidippides, Robert Tulip all liked this suggestion.

Olivia22 - How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche
Aomame seconded this suggestion.

Geo - THE SWERVE
Aomame also likes this one.

I'll create a poll with these 6 suggestions tomorrow.

This thread is now locked. Look for the poll soon!