Sociologists can write well. So the choices from this reading list are pretty good. First up are two books which really make you think about our place in history: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David Anthony and Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler. Anthony’s book is one of several that combines linguistics and paleo DNA analysis to reach back in time to a world before written histories. The story is of the Paleo Indo Europeans (PIEs) who gave much of the West and south Asia not only its language - which Nicholas Ostler describes - but also much of its genetic inheritance. Using DNA analysis it can be revealed that the PIEs spread rapidly throughout Europe, Iran, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent about 5000 years ago, pulled by horses on wheeled battle chariots. They killed most of the men and raped most of the women they encountered resulting in a massive genetic shift. Ostler’s book is less sinister and is a wonderful history of language development and well worth reading.

Lost Christianities by Bart D. Ehrman is one of many books about early Christianity and describes the battles that were fought by early Christians for the truth about Jesus and his relationship with God. We now think that there is only one truth, but in reality there were multiple truths and the truth we believe in now is the one that emerged victorious after centuries of in fighting.

Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism looks at what is needed to create a totalitarian state - people who are too lazy or frightened to push back and fight back. Writing over half a century ago Arendt provides an important reminder that we need to remain vigilant against the power of the state. Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam chronicles the rise and rise of Islam in Europe as a result of policies that no European voter voted for. Finally, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity and Hans Roslings posthumously published Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things…show that the world is actually a much nicer place than we realise and that violence has decreased and prosperity has increased over time by nearly every measure both on a macro and micro scale.

The full list is below:

The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity

Steven Pinker

A Monk's Guide to Happiness: Meditation in the 21st Century

Gelong Thubten, Yellow Kite

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

Murray, Douglas

Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

Fukuyama, Francis

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things…

Hans Rosling

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

Kaufmann, Eric

The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

Peters, Prof Steve

How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century

Dikötter, Frank

The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults

Jensen, Frances E.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English

John McWhorter,

Social: Why our brains are wired to connect

Lieberman, Matthew D.

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past

Reich, David

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

Anthony, David W.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Pinker, Steven

The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition

Daniel N. Robinson, The Great Courses

How to Debate the Left on ISLAM (Freedom of Expression, Western Civilisation, Islamisation, Political Correctness, Cultural Marxism)

Paul Nielsen

The Consolation of Philosophy (Oxford World's Classics)

Boethius

The Gulag Archipelago [Abridged] (Harvill Press Editions)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Peterson, Jordan B.

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

Douglas Murray

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Harari, Yuval Noah

Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All

David Fitzgerald

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Reza Aslan

History Future Now

Fischer, Tristan

Locke: Two Treatises of Government Student edition (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

John Locke

Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings: "Social Contract" and Other Later Political Writings v. 2 (Cambridge Texts in the Hi

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised student edition (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

Tuck, Richard

Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World's Classics)

Dalley, Stephanie

Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era

Wagner, Tony

Norse Mythology: The Norse Gods: Thor, Odin and Loki, the Nine Worlds and the Old Norse Myths - 3rd Edition

Simon Hawthorne

36 Books That Changed the World

The Great Courses

The Good Book: A Secular Bible

A. C. Grayling

The Establishment: And how they get away with it

Jones, Owen

The Republic: The Influential Classic (Capstone Classics)

Plato

Shapeshifters: Tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses

Mitchell, Adrian

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

Stanley McChrystal

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Haidt, Jonathan

On the Shortness of Life (Penguin Great Ideas)

Seneca

The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution, 1381-1926

McLynn, Frank

Ideas That Changed the World

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe

Paul: The Mind of the Apostle

A. N. Wilson

Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions Book 42)

E. P. Sanders

30-Second Philosophies: The 50 Most Thought-provoking Philosophies, Each Explained in Half a Minute

Stephen Law, Julian Baggini, Barry Loewer

The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes

Steven Pinker

30-second Theories: The 50 Most Thought-provoking Theories in Science

Paul Parsons, Martin Rees, Susan Blackmore, Christian Jarrett

Greek Gods and Heroes

Robert Graves

The Penal Colony

Richard Herley

A History of the World in 100 Objects

Neil MacGregor

Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House

Mark Halperin, John Heilemann

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West

Christopher Caldwell

The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language

M. J. Harper

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know about Them)

Bart D. Ehrman

Whose Word is It?: The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why

Bart D. Ehrman

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

Nicholas Ostler

The Stuff of Thought:: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Penguin Press Science)

Steven Pinker

Letter to a Christian Nation

Sam Harris (Author)

The Bible: The Biography

Karen Armstrong (Author)

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

John Gray (Author)

Jesus of Nazareth

Pope Benedict XVI (Author)

Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health

L.Ron Hubbard (Author)

Who Are We?: America's Great Debate

Samuel P. Huntington (Author)

The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion

Robert Spencer (Author)

The Force of Reason

Oriana Fallaci (Author)

Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

Noam Chomsky (Author)

The Koran (Penguin Classics)

N.J. Dawood (Translator)

The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West

Toby E. Huff (Author)

Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The

Robert Spencer (Author)

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

Richard Leigh, et al

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt

How Children Fail

John Holt

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes

Alfie Kohn

Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr

Stephen B. Oates

The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

Lee Strobel

When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome

Richard E. Rubenstein, Michelle Brook (Editor)

Lost Christianities

Bart D. Ehrman

The Affluent Society (Penguin Business)

John Kenneth Galbraith (Introduction)