Recently, I achieved a milestone by completing 50 blog posts focused on books. Most of these posts are reviews, while others take the format of “10 Things I Learned from This Book.” My journey into writing about books began in 2019 during my Master’s degree. Since relocating to Canada, my access to books has significantly improved. Initially, I had the resources available at the university campus, and later, I explored the local library networks. I made sure to get library cards from each city I lived in: first in Vancouver with the Vancouver Public Library, then in Kelowna with the Okanagan Regional Library, and finally in Langley with the Fraser Valley Regional Library. The majority of the books listed below are sourced from these libraries.
Here’s a list of the books I’ve read, along with links:
- Maphead
- Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy
- The Castle of Otranto
- Clean Car Wars: How Honda and Toyota are Winning the Battle of the Eco-Friendly Autos
- Shackleton: Antarctic Odyssey
- Let it Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy
- Saladin: The Life, The Legend, and the Islamic Empire
- The Engineer in History
- Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
- Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century
- China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century’s First Great Epidemic
- Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
- At the Mountains of Madness
- How to be an Explorer of the World
- A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations
- Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing
- The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
- Coal
- A Brief History of Creation: Science and the Search for the Origin of Life
- Simply Electrifying: The Technology that Transformed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk
- Apollo’s Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings
- Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything
- The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution
- Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures
- Genghis Khan: And the Making of the Modern World
- After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort
- Jerusalem: The Biography
- Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil
- The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World’s Most Important Company
- Einstein’s Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe
- The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia
- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
- The Story of Buildings
- The Age of Wood
- The Last Days of the Incas
- Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
- Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest
- The Great American Railroad: The History of Trains in America
- Building Canada
- Space Race: The Epic Battle Between America and the Soviet Union for Dominance in Space
- White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India
- Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas
- Forgotten Muslim Empires of South India: Bahmani Empire, Madurai, Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda & Mysore Sultanates
- The Nuclear Barons: The Chilling Story of How a Small Band of Scientists, Generals, Politicians, and Businessmen Created the Life-and-Death Issue Confronting Us Today—Our Nuclear World
- How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything in Between
- España: A Brief History of Spain
- The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine
- How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens
- The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
Here are my library cards:
