Ask HN: Summer reading

What recent non-fiction books should you recommend for someone interested in science & technology?

My book is three years old now, but it's still relevant. The Geek Atlas: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do

Longitude is a good book http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080271529X

Two essay with opposite views on the relationship between innovation, employment and prosperity, Race Against The Machine [1], and The Great Stagnation [2].

[1] Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

In "Race Against the Machine", economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee ask the question: Could technology be destroying jobs? They then expand on that to explore whether advancing information technology might be an important contributor to the current unemployment disaster. The authors argue very convincingly that the answer to both questions is YES.

http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005...

[2] The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better.

Cowen's central idea is that the pace of innovation has slowed, and that we are now on a "technological plateau" that makes further growth challenging. If you consider technology in the broad sense (energy, transportation, home, etc), this makes sense as things have not changed a lot in recent decades. However, I think it is also true that progress has been highly concentrated in information technology and communications, and that things continue to advance rapidly in this area. Cowen notes this but seems to feel that the Internet is the only really major innovation. http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Stagnation-Low-Hanging-ebook...

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson is a great summer read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Every...