Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Sarah-Jayne Blakemore recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Saturday

From the pen of a master — the #1 bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Atonement — comes an astonishing novel that captures the fine balance of happiness and the unforeseen threats that can destroy it. A brilliant, thrilling page-turner that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Saturday is a masterful novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central...
more
Recommended by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, and 1 others.

Sarah-Jayne BlakemoreMcEwan spent many months shadowing neurosurgeons at the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

2
Written by one of the world's leading neuroscientists, Making Up the Mind is the first accessible account of experimental studies showing how the brain creates our mental world.

Uses evidence from brain imaging, psychological experiments and studies of patients to explore the relationship between the mind and the brain
Demonstrates that our knowledge of both the mental and physical comes to us through models created by our brain
Shows how the brain makes communication of ideas from one mind to another possible
less
Recommended by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Dorothy Rowe, and 2 others.

Sarah-Jayne BlakemoreIt’s about consciousness, and how we are conscious, and how our brains enable us to be conscious, and to have awareness of the world around us. (Source)

Dorothy RoweThis first book is by Chris Frith, Making up the Mind, How the Brain Creates our Mental World. Everything that I have written has been based on the proposition that what determines our behaviour isn’t what happens to us but how we interpret what happens to us. The basis of that is what neuroscientists have been showing over the last 20-odd years, which is that the way our brain operates means... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

3
The updated edition of this classic account of autism includes a new chapter outlining recent developments in neuropsychological research, and overviews one of the most important theoretical and practical consequences of Frith's original insights into this puzzling condition.

Updated edition of this classic account of autism.
Includes new sections covering practical and theoretical developments, and a chapter on recent investigations of the neurological basis of psychological impairments in autism.
Accessible to a broad general readership.
less
Recommended by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, and 1 others.

Sarah-Jayne BlakemorePrior to Frith’s work a lot of people used to think autism was caused by parents not being warm enough (for which, by the way there is absolutely no evidence). (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

4
The informative and witty expose of the "bad science" we are all subjected to, called "one of the essential reads of the year" by New Scientist.

We are obsessed with our health. And yet — from the media's "world-expert microbiologist" with a mail-order Ph.D. in his garden shed laboratory, and via multiple health scares and miracle cures — we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory, and sometimes even misleading information. Until now. Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the questionable science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases, and missed...
more

Timothy FerrissI agree wholeheartedly with a lot of the co-opted science, which people can read a book called Bad Science, which is by a doctor named Ben Goldacre. It’s great. (Source)

Tim HarfordThis book changed the way I thought about my own writing and it changed the way I thought about the world. It really is one of the best books I have ever read. (Source)

Sarah-Jayne BlakemoreIt’s just a brilliant book, and he’s a fearless defender of science. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

5
"I have discovered a truly marvelous proof, which this margin is too narrow to contain". With these tantalizing words the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple, yet the finest mathematical minds would be baffled for more than three and a half centuries.Fermat's Last Theorem became the Holy Grail of mathematics. Whole and colorful lives were devoted, and even sacrificed, to finding a solution. Leonhard Euler, the greatest mathematician of the 18th century, had to... more
Recommended by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Kirk Borne, and 2 others.

Sarah-Jayne BlakemoreThe book is great because Simon Singh has this ability to write about the driest and most complex scientific or mathematical concepts and issues, and somehow make them come alive. (Source)

Kirk BorneNew Perspective on Fermat's Last Theorem: https://t.co/YeaHQ6iadB by @granvilleDSC @DataScienceCtrl #abdsc #Mathematics See the best-selling book "Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem": https://t.co/dqenmvUw0A by @SLSingh https://t.co/deyMhQTQLU (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.