Steven Pinker, Mary Beard, Rebecca Solnit and others reveal the books that made them see the world differently
Shortly after publishing my book The Better Angels of Our Natureon the historical decline of violence, I attended a conference sponsored by a foreign policy magazine at which a journalist asked me: “What would it take to eliminate extreme poverty worldwide?” Thinking it was a trick question, I quipped: “Redefine ‘poverty’.
But it had already set me off on a new track. I had never before thought of asking that kind of question about the Romans. What didI am not sure that the answers I came up with were any more correct than those of Douglas herself. But her book showed me how to ask different questions – and it showed that a book doesn’t have to be right to be important.Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern .
To see the effect through numbers that the production of meat and meat-related products has on the environment was a revelation. A quarter of the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change comes from food. Just giving up food from cows could have a massive impact. Bridle’s book changed how I eat. I am an aspiring vegan, which means I still can’t resist cheese. But perhaps I don’t need to be perfect. It just takes millions doing their bit imperfectly.
Poetry and politics are often treated as entirely separate matters; part of Marcos’s genius was to see that there was no great politic without poetry. Jim Al-Khalili is the University of Surrey’s distinguished chair in theoretical physics, a broadcaster and author of books including The World According to Physics and The Joy of Science .by Naomi Klein didn’t just change my mind, it hurled it into a different orbit, giving me an entirely new perspective on how the globalised world works.
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