I know it's my job as a librarian to pretend to know everything, but just between you and me, I'm kinda stupid. I need things explained to me nice and simple in an entertaining fashion before I'll bother remembering them. That's why I'm glad there are so many books that take all the knowledge of the universe and compress it into quotable chunks I can use on friends and strangers.
Bill Bryson's gentle sense of humor helped me greatly in getting through A Short History of Nearly Everything, which plunges into the vast array of sciences to find the best explanations for all the stuff in the universe. The book gets extra points for constantly reminding me that, despite everything scientists currently know, the world is still a mystery waiting to be explored.
Before Why Things Break, I thought that things fell apart because somebody dropped them, but now I know the difference between strong and antifragile. It's made me a better man.
In college, I liked to joke that although I enjoyed philosophy, I only enjoyed it in theory. Nobody ever laughed, but my point remains the same. As much as I think I like philosophy, the second I start reading the stuff, my eyes glaze over and I completely forget when, where, who, what, why and how I am. Luckily, there's a good series by Paul Strathern called Philosophers in 90 Minutes, which will almost convince you that philosophy isn't so hard after all. Marx in 90 Minutes even had me thinking I was smart.
If you're in the mood to learn without too much of a struggle, these books make it easy to get educated.
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