100 Best Wave Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best wave books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Dan HooperEverybody knows Hawking’s greatest contributions: understanding that black holes radiate light and other particles, that they contain entropy and all these things that no one imagined before him. Hawking and Roger Penrose also worked out the Big Bang singularity, the very moment of creation. To hear him describe some of these things with his own word choices, his own phrasing—not to mention his... (Source)
Adam Hart-DavisWhen Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time..his publisher told him that every equation he left in would halve the number of readers (Source)
Sergey BrinBrin told the Academy of Achievement: "Aside from making really big contributions in his own field, he was pretty broad-minded. I remember he had an excerpt where he was explaining how he really wanted to be a Leonardo [da Vinci], an artist and a scientist. I found that pretty inspiring. I think that leads to having a fulfilling life." (Source)
Larry PageGoogle co-founder has listed this book as one of his favorites. (Source)
Peter AttiaThe book I’ve recommended most. (Source)
The focus, as the title suggests, is quantum... more
Marcus ChownWhen Feynman was at Cal Tech, this wealthy couple who’d grown up in the same New York neighbourhood as he had said, Look, you’ve won this Nobel Prize, now explain to ordinary people what for. And Feynman said, No, it’s too complicated. But eventually he did this series of public lectures, and that was the book. It’s a tiny book and in it he describes the whole of quantum electrodynamics without a... (Source)
Barack ObamaAs a devoted reader, the president has been linked to a lengthy list of novels and poetry collections over the years — he admits he enjoys a thriller. (Source)
Drew McLellanFavorite non-business book that I would argue can teach you a ton about business leadership — The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. (Source)
Adam LawrenceI hate reading. I always have. Except for Harry Potter and To Kill A Mockingbird, which I've read dozens of times. (Source)
Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother-or even... more
For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dismissed these stories—waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British... more
"The whole thing was basically an experiment," Richard Feynman said late in his career, looking back on the origins of his lectures. The experiment turned out to be hugely successful, spawning a book that has remained a definitive introduction to physics for decades. Ranging from the most basic principles of Newtonian physics through such formidable theories as general relativity and quantum mechanics, Feynman's lectures stand as a monument of clear exposition and deep insight. Now, we are reintroducing the... more
Bill GatesYou don't have to take a course [to learn physics]. If you're hardcore, read the Feynman book and do the problems. (Source)
David BainbridgeI think that he is one of the most intelligent people to live in the 20th century. Yet at the same time, surprisingly, he is an amazingly good teacher. This is quite an unusual combination. (Source)
With an... more
Eric Weinstein[Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)
Kirk Borne#Gravity is the only one of the four fundamental forces of #Physics that doesn’t (yet) have a quantum explanation — learn how our understanding of Gravity has evolved, from Newton’s great insight to Einstein’s: https://t.co/DZJz9OJ9Lv 👇See this gravitationally heavy 3-kg book👇 https://t.co/9whUOUJqxi (Source)
Seamus BlackleyA couple things saved me. One of them I found the other day, slipped into my all time favorite physics book. It was a simple note from my dad, still in it’s envelope. It said that he believed in me, and that things would work out. https://t.co/z48r12w6m6 (Source)
From the New York Times–bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the universe.
What are time and space made of? Where does matter come from? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. Here he explains how our image of the world has changed over the last few dozen centuries.
In... more
Caspar HendersonHe’s got a good, simple style, and he has a great capability to explain. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others’ ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.
Cassie and her friends haven’t seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate... more
The powerful forces of group pressure that pervaded many historic movements such as Nazism are recreated in the classroom when history teacher Burt Ross introduces a "new" system to his students. And before long The Wave, with its rules of "strength through discipline, community, and action", sweeps from the classroom through the entire school. And as most of the students join the movement, Laurie Saunders and David Collins recognize the frightening... more
Professor Brian Cox and Professor Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of 21st century science to consider the real meaning behind the iconic sequence of symbols that make up Einstein’s most famous equation, E=mc2. Breaking down the symbols themselves, they pose a series of questions: What is energy? What is mass? What has the speed of light got to do with energy and mass? In answering these questions, they take... more
Philip PlaitThis book, written by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, is wonderful. Brian, who is a friend of mine, is a physicist in England. By exploring the equation “energy equals mass times the speed of light squared”, this book helps you to understand why the universe is what it is. (Source)
Phil Plait“Why Does E=mc^2” is a *great* book. It’s short, well-written, and makes it a lot easier to understand just why the speed of light is what it is. https://t.co/nfuYjouX0r (Source)
In 1945 when the atomic bombs, our "protectors" and "watchers" in outer space saw that Earth was on a collision course with disaster. The prime directive of non-interference prevented them from taking any action, but then they came up with a brilliant plan to save Earth and assist her in her ascension. They couldn't interfere from the "outside," but maybe they could influence from the "inside." So the call went out... more
Our universe has been growing for nearly 14 billion years. But almost everything about it, from the elements that forged stars, planets, and lifeforms, to the fundamental forces of physics, can be traced back to what happened in just the first three minutes of its life.
In this book, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg describes in wonderful detail what happened in these first three minutes. It is an exhilarating journey that begins... more
Dan HooperSteve Weinberg is arguably the most brilliant physicist of the last many decades. He’s an absolute luminary. He also happens to be a really good writer and communicator. I’ve liked all of the books of his I’ve read, but I picked The First Three Minutes because it is the classic book about the Big Bang and the first three minutes of our universe’s history. (Source)
Tim RadfordNot only is it the beginning of the universe, it’s the beginning of books about the universe. (Source)
David GoldbergAnother one that has to be on any list like this is The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize-winner. It’s a relatively slim volume, in which he describes what happened in the first three minutes of the Big Bang, as it was known and understood back then [1977]. We’ve learned a fair amount since then and some of the details in his original version are a little off, but the basic... (Source)
Two of the boldest and most creative scientists of all time were Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). This is the story of how these two men - separated in age by forty years - discovered the existence of the electromagnetic field and devised a radically new theory which overturned the strictly mechanical view of the world that had prevailed since... more
Charles T. MungerIt's a combination of scientific biography and explanation of the physics, particularly relating to electricity. It's just the best book of its kind I have ever read, and I just hugely enjoyed it. Couldn't put it down. It was a fabulous human achievement. And neither of the writers is a physicist. (Source)
The Worst Vacation Ever!
Thirteen-year-old Kyle thought spending a vacation on the Oregon coast with his family would be great. He’d never flown before, and he’s never seen the Pacific Ocean.
One evening Kyle is left in charge of his younger sister, BeeBee, while his parents attend an adults-only Salesman of the Year dinner on an elegant yacht.
Then the earthquake comes—starting a fire in their hotel! As Kyle and BeeBee fight their way... more
No writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the act—the fact that poetry must both guard and reveal, hint at and pull back... Also, and maybe most crucially, Ruefle’s work is never once stuffy or overdone: she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play that’s vital and welcome, that doesn’t make writing poetry sound anything but wild, strange,... more
A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.
Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She... more
Praise for the Darkest Minds series:
"Meet your next dystopian... more
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
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Talk about risky business.
The superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it: the local merchants fearing for their businesses, and the environmentalists predicting ecological disaster. The protests don't seem to be slowing the project down, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands.
The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart's headquarters. The second one explodes... more
Beginning in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, The First Wave follows ten men attempting to carry out D-Day's most critical missions. Their actions would determine the fate of the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe.
The ten make a charismatic, unforgettable cast. They include the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the only British soldier that day to earn a Victoria... more
They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.
But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.
In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human. less
Lynne McTaggart, indefatigable investigative journalist, reveals a radical new biological paradigm -- that on our most fundamental level, the human mind and body are not distinct and separate from their environment but a packet of pulsating power constantly interacting with this vast energy sea.
The Field is a highly readable scientific detective story that offers a stunning picture of an interconnected universe and a new scientific theory... more
In The 5th Wave, Cassie finds herself in a world devastated by alien attack, desperate to save herself and find her lost brother. As the onslaught from the Others--the beings that look human and kill anyone they see--continues, Cassie's mission is to stay alone and stay alive. But then she meets Evan Walker, who may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance... more
Serafina believes her talisman was buried with an old shipwreck. While researching its location, she... more
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
For instance, have you ever wondered. . .
How do clouds made up of dense water droplets manage to float in the sky? Why don't your joints squeak as they rub together? Why do you sink in dry sand, but not in wet sand? How does capillary action manage to raise water up a 100 foot tree? Why does warm water... more
Master storytellers and humorists, they advise us to become media free, to work in teams, and to eliminate the words "should" and "try" from our vocabularies. We learn how to go beyond fear, how the original human was a magnificent being with twelve strands of DNA and twelve chakra centers, and who our "gods" are. more
Mark Cuban[On Mark Cuban's list of books to read in 2018.] (Source)
Mixing Secrets For The Small Studio is a down-to-earth primer for small-studio enthusiasts who want chart-ready sonics in a hurry. Drawing on the back-room strategies of more than 100 famous names, this entertaining guide leads you step-by-step through the entire mixing process. On the way, you'll unravel the mysteries of every type of mix processing, from simple EQ and compression through to advanced spectral dynamics... more
Nick HighamHe is a brilliant writer and one of the most famous people in the world for popularising mathematics. (Source)
Ante ShodaThis is written by a professor of mathematics from the United Kingdom, and it describes a number of mathematical breakthroughs and their consequences related to engineering and the practical usage of mathematics in machines and other things that we use every day. It’s a great introduction to the underlying principles of engineering. (Source)
Personalia
When I was young, a fortune-teller told me that an old woman who wanted to die had accidentally become lodged in my body. Slowly, over time,... more
At the nearby Hotel Ottawa Resort on the shore of Lake Michigan, twenty-three-year-old Anna Nicholson is trying to ease the pain of a broken engagement to a wealthy Chicago... more
Dara Wier's loose sonnets insist on a living language in the face of death, cycling and vibrant as the water that runs through them.
. . . Assigned to
Adventure said the motto on our buttons. The last thing we knew
Before we left with our satchels concerned how love withdraws
Moving backward taking with it everything, our names, this way.
Dara Wier... more
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
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- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Julian T. Brolaski is the author of Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), and co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari... more
"An excellent text ... The postulates of quantum mechanics and the mathematical underpinnings are discussed in a clear, succinct manner." (American Scientist)
"No matter how gently one introduces students to the concept of Dirac's bras and kets, many are turned off. Shankar attacks the problem head-on in the first chapter, and in a very informal style suggests that there is nothing to be frightened of." (Physics Bulletin)
Reviews of the Second Edition:
"This massive text of 700 and odd pages has indeed an excellent... more
Eric Weinstein[Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)
Jed watched over the elitist Skylar when nobody else seemed to care. As a chubby black kid from the wrong side of town, he's completely shocked when the beautiful rich girl actually wants to... more
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Russell later revised some of the content of The Universal One in The Secret of Light and A New Concept of the Universe. Students of the Russell science should be aware of the historic sequence of Walter Russell’s books of science, and note the various changes in details which Walter Russell himself made.
Nikola Tesla told Walter Russell to hide his cosmogony from the world... more
Thin Kimono continues Michael Earl Craig's singular breed of brilliant absurdist poetry, utterly and masterfully slanting the realities of daily existence.
Michael Earl Craig is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006) and Can You Relax in My House (Fence Books, 2002). He... more
Dungo explores the beauty and complexity of his relationship with his partner as they face her prolonged battle with cancer. With his passion for surfing uniting many narratives, he intertwines his own story with those of some of the great heroes of surf. less
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
• Presents new scientific evidence revealing the cause of the end of the last ice age and the cycles of geological events and species extinctions that followed
• Connects physical data to the dramatic earth changes recounted in oral traditions around the world
• Describes the impending danger from a continuing cycle of catastrophes and extinctions
There are a number of puzzling mysteries in the history of Earth that have yet to be... more
Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's... more
Julia EnthovenFor non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. (Source)
At an Esalen Institute meeting in 1976, tai... more
Born to a family of seekers, Jaimal Yogis left home at sixteen to surf in Hawaii and join a monastery—an adventure he chronicled in Saltwater Buddha. Now, in his early twenties, his heart is broken and he’s lost his way. Hitting the road again, he lands in a... more
In "The 5th Wave," Cassie finds herself in a world devastated by alien attack, desperate to save herself and find her lost brother. As the onslaught from the Others the beings that look human and kill anyone they see continues, Cassie's mission is to stay alone and stay alive. But then she meets Evan Walker, who may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself.... more
The famous story of a Japanese boy who must face life after escaping the tidal wave destruction of his family and village. less
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Constellating four central topics—ghosts, colors, animals, and bees—in highly attuned prose, Dorothea Lasky explores the powers and complexities of the lyric, “metaphysical I,” which she exposes as one of the central expressions of human wildness. In deceptively simple language carrying profound insights directly to readers—with a sense that is at once bold and subtle—Lasky serves as an encouraging guide through the startling, sometimes dangerous, always... more
Contents include:
Kinetic theory of gases
Elementary particles
Spin of the electron and Paul's principle
The nuclear atom
Wave-corpuscles more
this night
they all seemed asleep
for a while the stark shadows
held me
only my mind moved
wildly behind my eyes
until I heard a tiny
song... more
With... more
JESSE is just twelve years old when his dad dies and his mum moves him from the Sunshine Coast in Australia, to a village in Wales where it never stops raining. And that’s where his luck really runs out.
He’s stuck with a grieving mother, classmates who won’t accept him, and worst of all - no-one to go surfing with. Until he meets John. Cool, handsome, confident. He’s head boy at the nearby private school, and a keen surfer. Jesse is so keen to make... more
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Fans of Lydia Davis and Miranda July will delight in this short prose from a beloved and cutting-edge poet. Here are thirty stories that deliver the soft touch and the sucker punch with stunning aplomb. Ducks, physicists, detectives, and The New York Times all make appearances.
From “The Dart and the Drill”:
I do not believe that when my brother pierced my skull with a succession of darts thrown from... more
Black Wave illuminates two critical factors that had a direct influence on why survival rates varied so much... more
Steven GubserPolchinki’s book stands as a very different achievement. It’s something which he spent years writing and refining, so it’s this gorgeously edited and refined book. He also retains an impressive website where he’s caught all the errors in the equations, and corrected them. It is a work of tremendous care and detail, but it doesn’t quite have that quality of Green, Schwarz, Witten of being the... (Source)
David Larsen’s graduate studies in Comparative Literature ran parallel to years of activity in the San Francisco Bay Area’s experimental poetry community, culminating in a verse collection The Thorn. During the 2011 uprising in Egypt he was a Fulbright Scholar... more
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Now, in The Great Wave, Fischer has done it again, marshaling an astonishing array of historical facts in lucid and compelling prose to outline a history of prices--"the history of change," as Fischer puts it--covering the dazzling sweep of Western history from the medieval glory of Chartres to the modern day.
Going far... more
- Quantum vs. classical physics
- A look at the smallest known particles
- How the tiniest particles behave both as particles and waves
- The famous... more
• Explains how modern science has rediscovered the Akashic Field of perennial philosophy
• New edition updates ongoing scientific studies, presents new research inspired by the first edition, and includes new case studies and a section on animal telepathy
Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record.... more
Don't have time to read the top Wave books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.