By David Wharton | 8 years ago

Ever since Oprah started stamping her name across the front of books, celebrity book recommendations have been all the rage. I think you’ll agree that the merit of those recommendations depends entirely on the person doing the recommending. If a writer I respect steers his fans toward a particular book, I’ll generally at least add it to my Amazon wishlist for future reference. If, on the other hand, somebody like Snooki suggests I check out this or that bestseller, my interest is probably going to last only slightly longer than the time it takes me to marvel at the fact that she can read.

And while printing the name of noted science advocate and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on the cover of a book might not move as many copies as Oprah’s blessing, I’d be a lot moe likely to pay attention to his suggestions. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a Neil deGrasse Tyson Book Club at the moment, so I’ll just have to stick with these eight books he suggests we all owe it to ourselves to read.

The list came in response to a question posed to Tyson by a Reddit user. Specifically, the question was, “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” Shockingly, nothing by John Grisham, Dan Brown, or Nicholas Sparks appears on the list. Here are Tyson’s suggestions, along with his brief explanations of why he picked each one. In his own words, “If you read all of the [below] works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.” They also include links to free eBook copies, so you’ve got no excuse to procrastinate.