Stocking Fillers

The Dunphy book is still the best one imo. Probably one of the first books of it’s type and still the best. All about the 73/74 season which is of course a great season.
Another one that is really good is Robin Friday: the Best Footballer You Never Knew, a biography of ex Reading, Cardiff player Robin Friday. A bit disturbing but a seriously good read and very thought-provoking.
UTG!

I'd recommend a subscription to the Blizzard.

Pointless by Jeff Connor.

He reports on a season with East Stirlingshire.

I loved it.

Yes, you’re right about a whole world of interesting topics and some football books, even most are dull. But those are usually the ghost written autobiographical books about footballers and those take dullness to a new level. But there are some, probably very few where, although perhaps about football, are about all the things you put in your 2nd paragraph but have a football context. Usually written by good authors.

The very best of them are about success, ultimate failure and the reasons for it, they are about perseverance in the face of long odds, they are about overcoming big obstacles, they are about dreams fulfilled and dreams shattered, they can be about financial success and financial failures and the reasons for that. They can be about tragedy or unexpected success as well. So whilst I’d agree with some of what you’ve said there are a few gems out there which can stay with you for some time if you can find them.

BTW, if you are looking for a good book about those things in your 2nd paragraph I’d recommend “Dan Gretton: I, You, We, Them” about those very big questions that you identified. It may not be from the point of view that you would wholly support but it’s a very thought provoking but easy to read book. It’s near to a 1000 pages and took me over a month so needs a bit of perseverance and time (obviously).

(You may wish to ignore this but I read it last Jan/Feb and whilst I disagreed with some aspects of it, it challenged some of my previous thoughts and feelings and at the end was very glad I read it 😉)

UTG!

To divert from from football to cricket, Runs in the Memory: County Cricket in the 1950s by Stephen Chalke is full of characters and lifestyle from a 50’s golden age many of us never lived, so understandably curious about. For a general social history of the same era in Britain, David Kynaston’s books starting in 1945 and to 1979 is equally readable.

For a readable catch all book of aesthetics and psychology, the history of philosophy, science and literature - the Art of Memory, Frances Yates. It’s on the premise we don’t have to remember, we can look it up, but historically, often without even access to books, architecture, crafts, the sciences relied on memory as an art form, so through this premise opens a different window on history.    

Eh? You lost me there BG.
UTG!

This will worry you even more, I like Sagan, a lot.

Very much 'of his time' and the presentation doesn't age at all well, but the way in which things are kept at a level where they can be understood without having to stop constantly and research what to the presenter is just part of his daily dialogue is excellent.

I would like to cite Lawrence Krauss also, and for his academic work I will, but until the suggestions of inappropriate behaviour are dealt with I'll stop short of recommending that anybody go out of their way to buy anything by him. If you want a laugh, don't mind watching him whilst those accusations still stand, and have an hour free, find his debate with William Lane Craig. It's an absolute bloodbath, that's how you prepare for and deliver your argument in a debate.

Ref Kerauoc. Anybody who claims to be a Catholic has a lot to answer for. And before people get their knickers in a twist, I didn't say that Catholics are, by default, bad people, it's the institution that's rotten to the core.

Look what you can accomplish when you apply yourself, foolly.
A-

Kerauoc pretty much Buddhist at the end, I think.       

I’ll accept science and presentation can date.  The Corduroy jacket may come back into fashion if global warming gives us dry springs and autumns to match California’s.  

As a fine illustration what I mean as difference between (sometimes heavy) real science and the creative stuff bordering fiction (easier to read), all clearer when the same person jumps between both examples.
Richard Feynman.

Amazing scientist, yet all the wives who divorced him said trying to have conversation with him at breakfast, his heads somewhere else, calculating calculation, like Organ Morgan playing his favourite Bach. But His Feynman caltech lectures on physics in the early 60s are timeless faultless introduction to building up the basics to thinking in the world of physics. Making the clever stuff easier to learn.  And not just in my opinion. I used to keep a copy in the closet, never waste five minute sit down when you can multitask.

However when he attempts to blend the science with social commentary in The Meaning of It All, discusses everything from the church and education to war, from flying saucers to faith healing, it’s nothing short of embarrassing. Rather than inspire any lead from it, he comes across as a blundering third way Blairite (Blair/Bush war in the Middle East for example has still arguably killed more people than COVID-19).  

Sure there are questions of ethics in all science, Feynman himself worked on the bomb. And when science contradicted church orthodoxy not all the history is good.  But it may be the scientists themselves are not best to turn to untangle the ethical questions, more like they are the playful kittens making a mess, others need to do the tidying up.     

What manual do you suggest for tidying up the ethical mess science brings us?   Which writer is master/mistress of this field?