Genre Spanning Non-Fiction Books

I tend to like non-fiction books spanning across genres and branches of studies. Below is a showcase of some fascinating such books I have read and enjoyed organized in a four set Venn Diagram.

Venn DiagramsA Venn diagram or set diagram is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of sets. Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn.

The four major sets for the Venn diagram above are organized as:

1. Humanities (Vertical Blue Toned Column)
2. Social Sciences (Vertical Green Toned Column)
3. Natural Sciences (Horizontal Yellow Toned Column)
4. Formal Sciences (Horizontal Orange Column)

Where Genres meet the colors merge to reflect this. To give an example, Godel, Escher, Bach; An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter is book that spans across, Mathematics, Computing (Formal sciences), Music, Fine Arts, Religion (Humanities), Physics (Natural Science). Therefore it is at the intersection of these three sets: Humanities, Natural Science, Formal Science.

Four-set Venn diagram of cross genre non-fiction books

Below are the links to more information on these showcased books in the Venn Diagram:

Below are the list of the books and their authors:

• The Story of Art; Enrst Gombrich
• The Language Instinct; Steven Pinker
• Philosophy Bites; David Edmonds, Nigel Warburton
• Freakonomics; Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
• Banksy Wall and Piece; Banksy
• The Other Side of the Couch; Gary Small, Gigi Vorgan
• Fabric of the Cosmos; Brian Greene
• The Universe in a Single Atom; Dalai Lama
• A Short History of Nearly Everything; Bill Bryson
• Guns, Germs and Steel; Jared Diamond
• Longitude; Dava Sobel
• Seven Daughters of Eve; Bryan Sykes
• Six Pieces, Six Not so Easy Pieces; Richard Feynman
• Godel, Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; Douglas Hofstadter
• The God Delusion; Richard Dawkins
• The Singularity is Near; Ray Kurzweil
• The Road to Reality; Roger Penrose
• On Intelligence; Jeff Hawkins
• Chaos: Making a New Science; James Gleick
• Journey Through Genius; William Dunham
• Fermat’s Enigma; Simon Singh
• Prime Obsession; John Derbyshire
• The Information; James Gleick
• The Black Swan; Nicholas Nassim Taleb
• Big Data: A Revolution; Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Kenneth Cukier
• Godel’s Proof;  Ernest Nagel, James R. Newman, Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Tractatus Logico Philosophicus; Ludwig Wittgenstein

PS: I used the below categorization for each of these sets:

Humanities

• History
• Linguistics
• Literature
• Performing arts
• Philosophy
• Religion
• Visual arts

Social sciences

• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Area studies
• Cultural and ethnic studies
• Economics
• Gender and sexuality studies
• Geography
• Political science
• Psychology
• Sociology

Natural sciences

• Space sciences
• Earth sciences
• Life sciences
• Chemistry
• Physics

Formal sciences

• Computer sciences
• Logic
• Mathematics
• Statistics
• Systems science