If you are interested, here are most of the books I’ve read/listened to on biology and related topics. They are important, because only in biology do we learn what it is to be human — we are rational animals, after all; animals that evolved in nature through millions of years of adaptation.
Most of the books are good; some aren’t so good. Even some of the good ones have some bad or misinformed ideas in them. As always, we have to keep our thinking in reality, do our research, and judge what we read accordingly.
If you want a few to start with, here is a small selection of good ones (but not an exhaustive list of the good ones and not necessarily “the best”):
The Soul of a Horse by Joe Camp
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
The Hidden Half of Nature by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé
Coyote America by Dan Flores
Heart of a Lion by William Stolzenburg
Why We Get Sick by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams
An Epidemic of Absence by Moises Velasquez-Manoff
Farmacology by Daphne Miller MD
Secrets of Sleep by Craig H. Heller
And now, the full list is:
Brain Myths Exploded by The Great Courses, Indre Viskontas
Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Missing Microbes by Martin J. Blaser
The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal
NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman
This Is Your Brain on Parasites by Kathleen McAuliffe
American Serengeti by Dan Flores
When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Susan McCarthy
Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky
The Beekeeper’s Lament by Hannah Nordhaus
The Seeds of Life by Edward Dolnick
Bat Count by Anna Forrester
How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) by Lyudmila Trut, Lee Alan Dugatkin
The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin, Richard Panek
Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Heart of a Lion by William Stolzenburg
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca by Donald Chipman Ph.D.
Dust Bowl by Donald Worster
The Serengeti Rules by Sean B. Carroll
Soul of An Octopus by Sy Montgomery
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca by Robin Varnum
Go Wild by John J. Ratey, Richard Manning
A User’s Guide to the Brain by John J. Ratey
Total Cat Mojo by Jackson Galaxy, Bobby Rock, Mikel Delgado
A Feathered River Across the Sky by Joel Greenberg
Farmacology by Daphne Miller MD
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee
A Naturalist at Large by Bernd Heinrich
Immune by Catherine Carver
The Neanderthals Rediscovered by Dimitra Papagianni, Michael A. Morse
The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca by Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca
Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcombe
Ancient Civilizations of North America by Edwin Barnhart, The Great Courses
In Search of Nature by Edward O. Wilson
Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment by Jody Butterfield, Allan Savory
Dirt Is Good by Jack Gilbert PhD, Rob Knight PhD, Sandra Blakeslee
The Disease Delusion by Dr. Jeffrey S. Bland, Dr. Mark Hyman
An Epidemic of Absence by Moises Velasquez-Manoff
The Human Superorganism by Rodney Dietert PhD
The Salt Fix by Dr. James DiNicolantonio
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Beaks, Bones, and Bird Songs by Roder Lederer
The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin
Life on a Little Known Planet by Howard Evans
Consciousness and the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene
Girls on the Edge by Leonard Sax
Adventures in Being Human by Gavin Francis
Brainfluence by Roger Dooley
Scientific Secrets for Raising Kids Who Thrive by Peter M. Vishton
The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey
Life by John Brockman
Scale by Geoffrey West
The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman
The Songs of Trees by David Haskell
Growing a Revolution by David Montgomery
Epigenetics by Richard Francis
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Young
Under the Sea by Rachel Carson
What I Learned From Tickling Apes by Frans De Waal
The Wood for the Trees by Richard Forty
Gifts of the Crow by John Marzluff & Tony Angell
1491 by Charles Mann
Complexity and Chaos by Dr. Roger White
A Revolution Down on the Farm by Paul Conkin
Tides by Jonathan White
PEMF by Bryant Meyers
Radiation bt Robert Gale & Eric Lax
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
Disconnect by Devra Davis
Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich
The Tree by Colin Tudge
Life’s Ratchet by Peter Hoffman
The Nature Fix by Florence Williams
Coyote America by Dan Flores
The Old Way by Elizabeth Thomas
The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson
Animal Wise by Virginia Morell
The Rocks Don’t Lie by David Montgomery
Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin
Songs of Western Birds by Donal Borror
The Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs by Stokes, Stokes, Elliot, & Colver
The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
Dirt by David Montgomery
A Natural History of North American Trees by Donald Culross Beattie
Bird Sense by Tim Birkhead
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben and Jane Billinghurst
Earth Moved by Amy Stewart
The Modern Scholar: Geology by Professor Kate Zeigler=
The Hidden Half of Nature by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé
The Story of Earth by Robert M. Hazen
The Modern Scholar: The Biology of Birds by Professor John Kricher
The Armchair Birder by John Yow
Summer World by Bernd Heinrich
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
Ecological Planet by Professor John Richer
Winter World by Bernd Heinrich
The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell
Eat the Yolks by Liz Wolfe and Diane Sanfilippo BS NC
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and Linda Lear
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
Biology: The Science of Life by Stephen Nowicki
The Science of Integrative Medicine by Brent A. Bauer
The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence
Zoobiquity by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman
Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina
Horsemanship Through Life by Mark Rashid and Eric Adams
Brain Maker by David Perlmutter and Kristin Loberg
What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins
Nature in Horsemanship by Mark Rashid and Crissi McDonald
Ceasar Milan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog by Cesar Millan
Rewire by by Richard O’Connor
Your Brain at Work by by David Rock
Secrets of Sleep by Craig H. Heller
Philosophic Issues in Aristotle’s Biology by James Lennox and Alan Gotthelf
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
If a Lion Could Talk by Stephen Budiansky
The Character of Cats by Stephen Budiansky
The Nature of Horses by Stephen Budiansky
The Truth About Dogs by Stephen Budiansky
The Soul of a Horse by Joe Camp
Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham
Darwin’s Ghost by Steve Jones
Why We Get Sick by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky