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Carlo Rovelli's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Carlo Rovelli recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Carlo Rovelli's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
The Buddhist saint Nagarjuna, who lived in South India in approximately the second century CE, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahayana Buddhist philosopher. His many works include texts addressed to lay audiences, letters of advice to kings, and a set of penetrating metaphysical and epistemological treatises. His greatest philosophical work, the Mulamadhyamikakarika—read and studied by philosophers in all major Buddhist schools of Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea—is one of the most influential works in the history of Indian philosophy. Now, in The Fundamental... more
Recommended by Carlo Rovelli, and 1 others.

Carlo RovelliNagarjuna’s philosophy is centred on the idea of the interdependence of all things and the absence of autonomous essence of anything. (Source)

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2
Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way around? What does quantum mechanics really tell us about the world? In this important and accessible book, Huw Price throws fascinating new light on some of the great mysteries of modern physics, and connects them in a wholly original way.
Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time. Why, for example, does disorder always increase, as required by the second law of thermodynamics? Price shows that, for over a century, most physicists have thought about these problems the wrong...
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Recommended by Carlo Rovelli, and 1 others.

Carlo RovelliI consider Huw Price one of the best living philosophers and I have learned a lot from several of his books. (Source)

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3

The Direction of Time

Ever a source of philosophical conjecture and debate, the concept of time represents the beating heart of physics. This final work by the distinguished physicist Hans Reichenbach represents the culmination and integration of a lifetime's philosophical contributions and inquiries into the analysis of time. The result is an outstanding overview of such qualitative, or topological, attributes of time as order and direction.
Beginning with a discussion of the emotive significance of time, Reichenbach turns to an examination of the time order of mechanics, the time direction of thermodynamics...
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Recommended by Carlo Rovelli, and 1 others.

Carlo RovelliReichenbach analysed the implications of discoveries about time made by physicists with the clarity that characterises analytical philosophy at its best. (Source)

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4

The Complete Odes and Epodes

Horace (65-8 B.C.) is one of the most important and brilliant poets of the Augustan Age of Latin literature whose influence on European literature is unparalleled. Steeped in allusion to contemporary affairs, Horace's verse is best read in terms of his changing relationship to the public sphere. While the Odes are subtle and allusive, the Epodes are robust and coarse in their celebrations of sex and tirades against political leaders. This edition also includes the Secular Hymn and Suetonius's "Life of Horace." less
Recommended by Carlo Rovelli, and 1 others.

Carlo RovelliHorace is the great cantor of time, of the effect of the flight of time upon our deepest emotions. (Source)

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5
For this complete, authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of 'À la recherche du temps perdu' (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). less

Alain de BottonAbout a search for how you can stop wasting your life and start to appreciate life and live fully. (Source)

Carlo RovelliProust’s reflection on the nature of time is deep and spread over his writing. (Source)

Viktor Mayer-SchönbergerA famous masterpiece which is an excruciatingly detailed chronicle of Proust’s life in which every single element and thought is captured and retold. (Source)

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