Interesting books and movies
(* means not suitable for ages approx. 16 or under, ** means also suitable for middle school students, otherwise generally for ages 14-99)
updated January 2025

Books

YouTube STEM videos

Movies and TV

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BOOKS

General non-fiction books (alphabetical by title)

Alex and Me:  How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence - and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process, by Irene Pepperberg
Arrest-Proof Yourself by Dale Carson and Wes Denham.  What to do, and more importantly, what to NOT do to keep from attracting attention of the police.  A must-read for teenagers, young adults, parents of teenagers and young adults, and anyone involved in political protests.  If you (or a loved one) is already in jail, read his other book Arrested: What to Do When Your Loved One's in Jail by Wes Denham
Beaverland by Leila Philip.  North America used to be home to tens of millions of beavers, who shaped the land around rivers into something very different that what we see today.  Fascinating mix of history, zoology, politics, and looks at how restoring beavers tp the environment can make it healthier
Bright Lights, No City:  An African Adventure on Bad Roads with a Brother and a Very Weird Business Plan by Max Alexander.  Entrepreneurs in Ghana start a company to provide electricity to remote villages with a system for distributing and recharging batteries for cell phones and other devices. 
Camels, Skulls, and Cobras:  A Wild Ride Across India, by Jim Wiltens.  An American and a Brit buy camels and ride them for months across India, meeting interesting people and having adventures.  Get to know northern India without risking Delhi Belly.
Child of the Jungle by Savine Kuegler.  The daughter of missionaries grows up living with a tribe in new Guinea.
* Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year by Harvey Cox. Written by a Baptist professor of theology at Harvard who is married to a Jewish woman. Learn more about your faith, other peoples' faith, and the historical background behind both.
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, by Sam Kean.  Little-known factoids and stories about the elements.
Do Your Ears Pop in Space? and 500 Other Surprising Questions About Space Travel, by R. Mike Mullane.  A retired astronaut's answers to people's FAQs.
Dogsong (or the juvenile book Wintersong) by Gary Paulsen.  He trains dogs to race in the Iditarod and everything goes wrong
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice for All Creation:  The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex, by Olivia Judson.  Fun facts about sex in the insect world and other critters.
The Elephant Whisperer:  My Life with the Herd in the African Wild, by Lawrence Anthony.  Anecdotes from a game warden in southern Africa. 
Energy for Future Presidents:  The Science Behind the Headlines, by UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller.  Looks at the feasibility and impact of various types of energy, including the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown, Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill, to see how their true impact contrasts with the view in the popular press.  Written in a chatty, entertaining style, I couldn't put this book down.
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling.  Entertaining and informative look at statistics and people's perceptions of reality.  By the founder of DollarStreet.org
The Falcon and the Snowman by Robert Lindsey. A rebellious Southern California teen becomes a Russian spy.  If you enjoy it, read the sequel The Flight of the Falcon
The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone.  How most of the foods we take for granted were first introduced to the USA.  Combination of travelogue, science, and adventure
* Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.  Fascinating mix of social sciences and hard sciences to explain why certain countries are more advanced than others.  A must-read.
How We Got Here:  A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets by Andy Kessler.  The interplay between inventions, finance, technology, and history.  Who gets rich, the inventors or the investors, and why?
How to Invent Everything:  a Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler by Ryan North.  Light-hearted explanation of how things work and how to make them, like glass, gunpowder, and smelting iron ore. 
*Infidel by Ayyaan Hirsi Ali.  The author grows up as a fundamentalist Muslim in a Somali refugee camp, emigrates to the Netherlands, and gets elected to the Netherlands State Assembly.  Examines the clash of culture between the third world and the developed world, and the clash between modern and fundamentalist Islam.  If you enjoy this book, read her sequel Nomad.
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, disastrous climb of Mt. Everest
Japanland:  A Year in Search of Wa [Harmony] by Karin Muller.  An American woman spends a year in Japan learning about Japanese culture while making a documentary film.
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain.  He apprentices to a pilot on a sternwheeler.  Full of wry humor.
The Lunatics are Running the Asylum:  Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, by Alan Cooper.  Written in 2004 so the examples are dated, but device designers still make terrible user interfaces.  Must-read for anyone designing products for use by non-experts.
The Man Who Never Was by Ewen Montagu.  A little-known but fascinating counter-espionage operation during World War II.
The Mother Tongue:  English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson.  The history of the English language.  Fun for word nuts.
Napoleon's Buttons:  How 17 Molecules Changed History, by Penny Le Couteur.   The impact of certain substances on history, and our world today
** Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat.  A naturalist studies wolves in the Canadian arctic.  Light-hearted and entertaining.
* Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody.  An American woman held hostage in Iran tries to escape.
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  Fascinating story behind the food we eat.  Traces food from farm to table, stopping along the way to examine the politics of farm subsidies and the phoniness of the "organic" label on food.  A must-read.
The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck.  In 2011, two men, three mules, and a covered wagon travel the length of the Oregon Trail.  Mix of adventure, history, horsemanship and interesting people.
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler.  The author spent the years 1998-1999 teaching English in a small town in provincial China.  Fascinating glimpse into another culture.  
Sex Lives of Cannibals:  Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost.  By a Canadian who spent two years living on tiny islands in the South Pacific.  His adventures are told with a sardonic humor.  Great armchair travel.  If you enjoy it, also read Getting Stoned with Savages:  A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu
The Ship Who Wouldn't Float by Farley Mowat.  A landlubber restores a traditional sailing ship with hilarious consequences
Stiff:  the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach.  What happens to cadavers
Substitute:  Going to School with a Thousand Kids, by Nicholson Baker.  Thinking of becoming a teacher?  Want to know what it's like teaching K-12 nowadays?
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, by Richard Feynman, memoirs of the Nobel-prize-winning physicist.  My favorite chapter is the one on lock-picking.  If you like it, read the sequels What Do You Care What Other People Think and More Adventures of a Curious Character.  Also check out his non-fiction books including Six Easy Pieces:  Essentials of Physics
Theo Gray's Mad Science:  Experiments You Can Do at Home - Put Probably Shouldn't, by Theodore Gray.  Do most of these outdoors, please!
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond.  A noted anthropologist shows how humans, chimps and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) are much more similar than you might realize
Ticking Clock:  Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes by Ira Rosen.  For fans of the TV news show. 
Travels on my Elephant by Mark Shand.  A British expatriate purchases an elephant and travels around India on it, meeting interesting people.
Why Won't You Apologize?  Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts by Harriet Lerner.  Excellent book to help heal relationships and psyches. 
Word by Word:  The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper.  A dictionary editor explains how the definitions of words are created and how they change over time.  A must-read for word lovers.
The Word Detective by John Simpson who was the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.  For word-lovers and people who enjoy etymology
The World in a Grain:  The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization by Vince Beiser. We use sand for everything from glass to cement to computer chips, but few people understand the complexities of obtaining it and using it.  Fascinating mix of science, geography, geopolitics, and engineering.
* The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Fascinating mix of ecology and history. What would the world be like if there were no people?
Under Alien Skies:  A Sightseers Guide to the Universe, by Philip Plait.  The current state of knowledge of the Sun, Moon, Asteroids, Saturn, Pluto, exoplanets, other solar systems, nebulas and black holes, with no prior knowledge needed
World War C:  Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One, by Dr. Sanjay Gupta (read excerpt of chapter 4)  excellent overview of what happened and why
** The World's Great Stories: 55 Legends that Live Forever by Louis Untermeyer.  Very short retellings of classic tales, designed for middle-school students, but worth reading by anyone.
Yeager:  An Autobiography by Chuck Yeager (he broke the Mach 1 sound barrier) A country boy from a small town joins the Air Force and becomes a daring test pilot
Zero:  The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife.  How the concepts of zero and infinity were invented and resisted by historical and geopolitical forces. Full of  fascinating facts

Non-fiction books about economics, geopolitics, and their impact on society (alphabetical by title)

Adrift:  America in 100 Charts by Scott Galloway.  A political economic perspective on how the country has changed from the 1960s to the year 2022.  Written by a professor of marketing at NYU's business school.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Collin Woodard.  The characteristics of various regions of the US and why they developed that way.  Fascinating mix of history and cultural anthropology.  Think you understand the red state/blue state divide?  Think again. 
A Colony in a Nation by journalist Chris Hayes.  The origins of the mass incarceration system, caste segregation, and racial segregation in the US.  Did you know that the Boston Tea Party was sparked by lowering (not raising) the taxes on tea?
Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic.  Pulitzer-prize-winning investigative reporter Eric Eyre takes on the corrupt medical and political establishment in West Virginia. 
*The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea.  Harrowing account of illegal immigrants crossing the desert to the USA.  If you find it interesting, also read Enrique's Journey A boy travels from Honduras the the USA to be reunited with his mother.  Not for the squeamish.
Don't Think of an Elephant:  Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff (get the second edition).  The choice of words you use in a political debate strongly influences the outcome. 
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken.  Examines 100 different types of technology and methods for combating global warming.
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.  Finding patterns in data from Google searches and what you can learn from them - much more than you might think.
A Fine Mess:  A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System, by T. R. Reid.  Should be required reading for every American.  We all gripe about the byzantine tax code, but how do other countries tax their citizens?  What could we do instead?  Non-partisan, written in an entertaining style, chock-full of nuggets of history. 
Hand to Mouth:  Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado.  Should be required reading for people raised and living in suburbia.  An honest portrayal of the life of the working poor. 
Just Mercy:  A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, which assists prisoners who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime to be exonerated. 
Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple.  Life in the underclass and why it persists as it does, written by a British psychiatrist who serves in a slum hospital and prison. 
On the Clock:  What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane, by Emily Guendelsberger. A journalist spends a month each working in an Amazon warehouse, a call center and McDonalds.  The working conditions are even worse than you could possibly imagine. 
Strangers in Their Own Land:  Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Rochshild.  Fascinating look at red state voters and what makes them vote the way they do.
Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World's Prosperity Depends on It by Zachary Karabell.  Think you understand free trade and protectionism?  Think again.
Thank You for Being Late:  An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by the noted economist Thomas Friedman.  Examined how geopolitics is heavily influenced by our rapidly-changing pace of innovation and climate change, contrasted with people's slow ability to handle and accept such change. 
To End a Presidency:  the Power of Impeachment by noted Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe.  The history and implementation of impeachment, and its potential impact
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy:  An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of the World Trade, (2nd edition) by Pietra Rivoli.  Globalization from an economic and geopolitical perspective.
Wars, Guns, and Votes:  Democracy in Dangerous Places by Paul Collier.  Examines different types of government in the Third World.  Fascinating mix of economics, political science, history, and current events.  Many of his well-researched findings will surprise you.  A must-read for anyone interested in international relations or how to break the cycle of poverty in developing countries.  If you enjoy it, read his previous book The Bottom Billion.
The World of Mexican Migrants: The Rock and the Hard Place by Judith Adler Hellman.  Insight into illegal immigration.


Humor

Molvania, Phaic Tan or San Sombrero by Santo Cilauro.  Fake "travel guides" to non-existent countries.  The more you've traveled, the funnier they are.
America's Dumbest Criminals by Daniel Butler or The Darwin Awards by Wendy Northcutt.  How to remove yourself from the gene pool by doing really dumb things.
Dave Barry Does Japan, Dave Barry in Cyberspace, or Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway .  Very funny.
Selected short stories by James Thurber, appearing in The Thurber Carnival and other Thurber short story collections.  My favorites:  The Night the Bed Fell, The Day the Dam Broke, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and The Dog that Bit People.

Fun fiction books

The Princess Bride by William Goldman.  Swashbuckling adventure, even better than the movie!
*Infinity Hold by Barry Longyear, violent convicts dumped on a planet invent a government out of anarchy
And Then There Were None (also titled Ten Little Indians) by Agatha Christie.  Classic murder mystery.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, If you think sci-fi is trash, you haven't read these!  The best sci-fi short stories ever written.  If you like them, also read Volumes 2A, 2B, 3 and 4.  My favorites in Volume One are Nightfall, Arena, Mimsy Were the Borogroves, and Flowers for Algernon.
A few short stories by Rudyard Kipling from the collection Just So Stories.  My favorites:  The Elephant's Child and How the Alphabet Was Made

Historical fiction

* QB VII by Leon Uris.  An eminent doctor is accused of collaboration with Nazis during World War II.
Hawaii by James Michener.  Fictionalized epic history of Hawaii.  Skip the opening chapter on geology.  
The Source  by James Michener.  Epic historical fiction about Israel/Palestine.  Helps to understand the current situation there.
Centennial by James Michener.  Epic historical fiction about Colorado.  Skip the opening chapter on geology and dinosaurs.  
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence.  Play based on the Scopes monkey trial. Or watch the excellent movie starring Spencer Tracy.
Roots by Alex Haley, the fictionalized epic history of a black American family tracing its roots back to Africa.
The Widows of Malabar Hill (and its sequels) by Sujata Massey.  Set in Bombay in the 1920s, a young woman lawyer gets sucked into murder and cultural misunderstandings

Compare the current failed attempt at nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan to their post-WW-II counterparts in Germany and Italy in the excellent historical fiction novels Armageddon by Leon Uris (Germany) or A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (Italy).  While fiction, they took actual historical occurrences and retold them as if they had happened to fictional characters.  Like Iraq, Germany and Italy were recently cobbled together from smaller entities speaking different languages and, in the case of Germany, different religions.  

Classic fiction books (links to e-text are given for material no longer under copyright protection)

Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.  (if you like it, also read the sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).  Both books have been subject to bans and censorship for their use of language and attitude that were common in the mid-1800s, but is no longer politically correct.
Animal Farm by George Orwell.  Social commentary
The Bible - rather than read the entire thing, you might find a kid's version which recounts the most popular stories from both Testaments.  The King James translation isn't very accurate, but is poetic and the most-quoted.  Different translations preserve the meaning better.  My preferred translation for the Old Testament is The Living Torah (translated by Aryeh Kaplan), which is translated for accuracy (not poetry) and has lots of explanatory footnotes.  I can also recommend Asimov's Guide to the Bible written by the noted Boston University professor, polymath, and science fiction novelist. 
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  Dystopia
**Call of the Wild and/or White Fang by Jack London.  Sled dogs and men in the Yukon gold rush era
*A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.  Violent dystopia.  Not for the squeamish
The Crucible by Arthur Miller.  Play about Salem witch trials that indicted McCarthyism
The Food of the Gods by H. G. Wells.  Sci-fi classic about Frankenfood, written in 1904.
Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov (read in order).  Classic sci-fi trilogy.
**The Gift of the Magi, short story by O. Henry.  The ultimate irony.  The Last Leaf is another of his excellent stories
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck.  Follows the fortunes of a family of peasants in pre-Revolution China
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (not to be confused with the awful movie with a totally different plot).  Excellent short story collection.  If you like it, also read The Rest of the Robots, or the combination The Complete Robot, which contains both earlier books.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.  The original muckracker's 1906 exposé of the Chicago stockyards.  Led to the passage of the Food and Drug Act.  
Kim by Rudyard Kipling, the adventures of a poor orphan in India in the 1800s.
The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke.  Collection of classic sci-fi short stories.  Make sure to read the title story and The Star.  The cult film 2001:  A Space Odyssey was based on the story The Sentinel.
1984 by George Orwell.  Authoritarian dystopia.  A must-read.
The Once and Future King by T.H. White.  A humorous (but very long) retelling of the King Arthur legend.  The basis for the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone.
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.  Who is mentally ill and who is sane in this crazy world?
Any famous play by William Shakespeare.  Watch the movie version or read a synopsis first to help you understand it.
**Any Sherlock Holmes short stories and novelettes  by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Find a collection and read several, in any order.  The Complete Sherlock Holmes has them all in chronological order.
** Short stories by Mark Twain.  My favorites are The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg,  The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,  and The £1,000,000 Note
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Very different from the Disney movie.  Skip the numerous sequels.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Growing up in the segregated South
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.  Pirates, buried treasure and adventure on the high seas.  Quaint language.

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YouTube STEM videos:

Why are railroad rails shaped like that?  Everything you wanted to know about rails and railroad wheels.  Much more interesting than you expect.
Other videos from Practical Engineering's YouTube channel
Glitter bomb to deter porch pirates, from Mark Rober
Dozens of talks sponsored by the MIT Club of Northern California

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Classic drama:  

Casablanca, classic Humphrey Bogart romance-during-the-war film. 
Doctor Zhivago, epic about a man whose life is disrupted by the Russian Revolution
** Fantasia (the 1940 original), amazing hand-drawn animation set to classical music.  If you like it, also see Fantasia 2000
Gone With the Wind, epic set during the Civil War.  An American icon.
*The Great Escape, Allied POWs during WW II engineer an escape.  All-star cast.
Lawrence of Arabia, epic struggle for Arab independence from the British during WW I. More than 3 hours long
The Magnificent Seven, quintessential Western with an all-star cast.  Based on the Akira Kurosawa film The Seven Samurai, but faster-paced and much more accessible to Western audiences.
*Schindlers List, multiple-Oscar-winning movie about the Holocaust.  Rated R - might give you nightmares
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Gold prospectors strike it rich. Or do they?  John Ford directs Humphrey Bogart.  Slow-paced but worth watching
Twelve Angry Men, jurors deliberate on a murder case.  Must-see performance by Henry Fonda.  No special effects, fancy sets, sex, or violence.  Just excellent acting and a marvelous script.
** The Wizard of Oz, an icon of Americana.

Scary:  (Unless you really like the genre, one of these Alfred Hitchcock films is plenty.)

Vertigo, Rear Window, *Psycho

Funny:  

Airplane, satirizes disaster films, particularly Airport.
** Arsenic and Old Lace. Two sweet old ladies have a deadly secret. 
* Blazing Saddles.  Spoof on western movies and also spoofing race relations.  Profanity and the n-bomb make it unsuitable for pre-teens
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by The Reduced Shakespeare Company.  Spoofs of the Bard's plays
** The Gold Rush Classic silent film starring Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp in the Alaska gold rush.  Slow-paced by modern standards, but well worth watching.
** Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Screwball 1960s comedy with an all-star cast.  A must-see.  Starts slowly but picks up steam once the characters are introduced.
** Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, classic 1960s romantic comedy.  
Any movie featuring the Marx Brothers such as A Night at the Opera or Monkey Business.  All are slow by modern standards, so be patient and wait for the funny parts.
** The Music Box 15-minute short film featuring Laurel and Hardy moving a piano up an endless flight of stairs.  Slapstick at its finest.  View online
** assorted Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, or Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons.  Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, etc.
* The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe.  Comedy spy caper.  Make sure to get the version in French with English subtitles, not the awful remake in English with Tom Hanks.  You can see the French trailer (no subtitles).
Top Secret, makes fun of war movies and Elvis movies at the same time.  Campy and very, very funny.
West Bank Story.  Re-telling of the classic musical West Side Story with Palestinians and Israelis instead of Puerto Ricans and white homeboys. View online  It helps to have seen the movie West Side Story.
 

Will become classics:  

** Raiders of the Lost Ark now renamed Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Swashbuckling adventure.  If you like it, watch all the sequels
** Back to the Future.  A fun time-travel romp but don't take the "science" seriously.  If you like it, watch both sequels.
Dave.  A look at Presidential politics through the eyes of an ordinary, decent American.  Features cameos from famous politicians and news reporters.  Fun yet thought-provoking.
Big. A 13-year-old boy wishes he were grown up. His wish comes true, but he's not ready for the adult world.
Outsourced.  An American businessman is sent to India to run an outsourcing operation.  Thoughtful but humorous look at culture clash.