Secondhand Science, Nature & Ideas Bargain Book Box SP2937

Secondhand Science, Nature & Ideas Bargain Book Box SP2937

Twenty-one books spanning natural history, evolutionary science, social theory, and biography — the kind of reading that shaped how educated people thought from the 1960s to the 1980s. Darwin and Rachel Carson share space with Erving Goffman and Viktor Frankl; elephant ethology beside a definitive biography of the Marquis de Sade.

1. The Origin of Species — Charles Darwin — The book that changed everything, in the World's Classics edition. Darwin's argument for natural selection remains one of the most consequential texts in the history of science.
2. The Dark Romance of Dian Fossey — Harold Hayes — A deeply reported biography of the controversial primatologist, tracing her obsessive dedication to mountain gorillas and the circumstances of her murder.
3. The Evidence of Evolution — Nicholas Hotton III — A clear scientific account of the fossil and biological evidence supporting evolutionary theory, written for the general reader.
4. Elephant Memories — Cynthia Moss — Moss spent thirteen years documenting a single elephant family in Amboseli. Landmark field research, compellingly written.
5. Life Sciences — Arthur W. Biddle & Daniel J. Bean — A writer's guide to the life sciences: useful for anyone who wants to think or write more clearly about biology and natural history.
6. Woman in the Mists — Farley Mowat — Mowat's vivid account of Dian Fossey's life and work among the mountain gorillas of Rwanda.
7. The Pursuit of Loneliness — Philip Slater — Slater's influential 1970 critique of American culture: individualism, competition, and the social isolation they produce.
8. The Human Sciences & Philosophy — Lucien Goldmann — A theoretical examination of the relationship between the social sciences and philosophical inquiry.
9. Apes, Angels, and Victorians — William Irvine — The story of Darwin and Huxley, and the Victorian intellectual storm their ideas unleashed.
10. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide — A. Alvarez — Alvarez's landmark exploration of suicide, art, and the relationship between creativity and self-destruction. One of the most discussed books on the subject.
11. Five Hundred Years of Printing — S.H. Steinberg — A comprehensive history of printing from Gutenberg to the twentieth century, now a classic reference.
12. The Marquis de Sade: A Definitive Biography — Gilbert Lely — The most thorough biography of the Marquis de Sade, drawing on archival sources to separate the man from the myth.
13. Hermit of Peking — Hugh Trevor-Roper — Trevor-Roper exposes the extraordinary deceptions of Edmund Backhouse, the Oxford scholar who fabricated an entire relationship with the Empress Dowager of China.
14. The Darien Disaster — John Prebble — The catastrophic Scottish colonial venture of 1698–1700 that bankrupted Scotland and paved the way for the Act of Union, told with Prebble's characteristic narrative force.
15. The Fossil Monarchies — Edmond Taylor — An examination of Europe's old imperial dynasties in their final decades before the First World War swept them away.
16. Culture's Influence on Behaviour — Robert Serpell — From the Essential Psychology series: how cultural environment shapes human cognitive and social behaviour.
17. Silent Spring — Rachel Carson — The book that launched the modern environmental movement. Carson's 1962 exposé of pesticide damage to ecosystems remains essential reading.
18. Mendelism & Evolution — E.B. Ford — Ford's account of the synthesis between Mendelian genetics and Darwinian natural selection — the foundation of modern evolutionary biology.
19. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life — Erving Goffman — Goffman's foundational sociological text: social interaction as theatrical performance. Still widely read and taught.
20. Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl — Frankl's account of survival in Nazi concentration camps, and the logotherapy he developed from that experience. One of the most influential books of the twentieth century.
21. The Biological Time Bomb — G. Rattray Taylor — A 1968 popular science book exploring imminent developments in genetics and biology — prescient in more ways than one.