What we are reading
Books going round this year
Mine, and whatever the class adds. Nothing here is required and nobody is expected to buy anything. Every one of these is in the library or on my shelf, and you are welcome to borrow it.
The shelf is read from the class list each time this page opens, so it loads here when your browser runs the page script.
While you are here: the question of the day, the archive, and the day-by-day notes for AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Physics C, Conceptual Physics, and Physics and Engineering Research.
Books on Our Minds
From time to time I will add the books I am reading, or plan to read, along with short accounts of what I took away from the ones I have finished. Add your own if you like, as well as your notes on them. I would love to hear about what you are reading.
Reading now
Getting Learning Right: The Promise of Higher Education
Chris W. Gallagher, Kristi Girdharry and Kevin G. Smith
Mr. Tuna, added Oct 9, 2026
Three teachers argue that a college should be judged by what its students actually learn, and set out what it would take to find that out.
Why Machines Learn
Mr. Tuna, added Aug 22, 2026
Machines learn by finding patterns in data, just like you do when recognizing faces or handwriting. This book explains the algorithms behind AI and machine learning in ways that actually make sense.
Embodied Intelligence: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Natural, Artificial, and Hybrid Systems
Edited by Sheila L. Macrine, Jennifer M. B. Fugate, Arsen Abdulali and Josie Hughes
Mr. Tuna, added Aug 22, 2026
A collection asking what it changes to say that thinking is done by a body and not only by a brain. Researchers from neuroscience, psychology, robotics and engineering argue the case from their own side of it, so the disagreements stay visible.
Next on the shelf
Biological War: A Scenario
Annie Jacobsen
Mr. Tuna, added Oct 9, 2026
A minute by minute account of how a biological attack would unfold, built from the plans the people responsible actually keep.
That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing
Adam Szetela
Mr. Tuna, added Oct 9, 2026
A look at how outrage online and the culture wars are changing which books reach the shelf and which never do.
Infinity of Worlds
Mr. Tuna, added Oct 9, 2026
This book explores how physicists discovered that our universe might be just one among countless others. It explains parallel worlds, quantum mechanics, and the mind-bending math that suggests infinite possibilities exist beyond what we can see.
Anxiety and the Equation: Understanding Boltzmann’s Entropy
Eric Johnson
Mr. Tuna, added Oct 9, 2026
Boltzmann’s equation for entropy is carved on his gravestone. Johnson explains what it means, and tells the story of the man who wrote it, including the anxiety that followed him through the argument.
The Engine of Scientific Discovery: How New Methods and Tools Spark Major Breakthroughs
Mr. Tuna, added Oct 9, 2026
Scientific breakthroughs often depend less on brilliant ideas than on having the right tools to test them. This book explores how new instruments and methods have repeatedly transformed what scientists can discover and understand.
Finished
The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic
Malcolm Gladwell
Mr. Tuna, added Oct 11, 2026, with notes
Gladwell asks why the United States has far more homicides than comparable countries, and argues the problem has been misread. He builds the case from stories rather than statistics, which is what makes it readable.
What Stayed with Me
Started Oct 10, 2026. Finished Oct 12, 2026.
The Second Amendment was written at a time when law enforcement as we know it did not exist. Citizens were called on to form militias and protect their own communities. The exact wording is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Why do ordinary citizens need assault rifles when almost every town has a police department of its own? Why do children have easy access to guns while adults struggle to open a bottle of aspirin?
Violence and crime get mixed up with each other, and they are not the same thing. Crime is committed everywhere in the world. What sets the United States apart is the violence, and above all the gun violence.
Many European countries keep far more police officers per head of population than the United States does, and they still record a small fraction of the homicides.
The number of deaths caused by guns has been going down. The number of shootings has not. The book argues that the change in the gap was due to medical progress rather than a social one: trauma response has improved, partly because American trauma surgeons get more practice with gunshot wounds than anyone should have to.
For what it is worth, I am not convinced by that last one. A 2017 paper in the American Journal of Public Health, called Constant Lethality of Gunshot Injuries From Firearm Assault, went back over the same years and found that the drop is not really there. The raw numbers do fall, from 25 percent of gunshot assault victims dying in 2003 to 18 percent in 2012. The authors trace that fall to which hospitals happened to be in the reporting sample and to a change in how cases of unknown circumstance were coded. Correct for both and the number is 22 percent in both years. The mechanism still sounds right to me. I would just like to see it shown rather than assumed.
Second Kind of Impossible
Mr. Tuna, added Sep 28, 2026
A researcher discovers a seemingly impossible crystal structure and spends decades pursuing scientific proof. If you wonder whether scientists actually give up on wild ideas or keep fighting for them, this true story shows how persistence and curiosity drive real discovery.
Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution
Lee Smolin
Mr. Tuna, added Sep 28, 2026
Smolin argues that quantum mechanics is not finished, and that the theory describes what we measure without saying what is actually there. He sides with Einstein on that complaint and goes looking for what comes next.
Beyond Weird
Philip Ball
Mr. Tuna, added Sep 20, 2026
Beyond Weird explores how quantum mechanics actually works and why it seems so strange to our everyday intuition. Ball examines the real science behind quantum weirdness without relying on mystical explanations or pop science myths.
Shallows
Mr. Tuna, added Sep 7, 2026
A book about how the internet is rewiring our brains and changing the way we think and remember. If you wonder why you cannot focus like you used to, this explains why.
Inattention Economy
nakamura
Mr. Tuna, added Aug 22, 2026
A look at how our attention has become a commodity in the digital age. This book explores why companies compete for your focus and what happens when distraction becomes the default. Perfect for understanding the technology shaping your daily life.
Becoming Martian
Scott Solomon, foreword by Scott Kelly
Mr. Tuna, added Aug 20, 2026
Becoming Martian explores the scientific and engineering challenges that humans would face if we actually tried to live on Mars.