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I'd like to give you my two cents as well on how to proceed here. If nothing else, this will be a second opinion. If I could redo my physics education, this is how I'd want it done.

If you are truly wanting to learn these fields in depth I cannot stress how important it is to actually work problems out of these books, not just read them. There is a certain understanding that comes from struggling with problems that you just can't get by reading the material. On that note, I would recommend getting the Schaum's outline to whatever subject you are studying if you can find one. They are great books with hundreds of solved problems and sample problems for you to try with the answers in the back. When you get to the point you can't find Schaums anymore, I would recommend getting as many solutions manuals as possible. The problems will get very tough, and it's nice to verify that you did the problem correctly or are on the right track, or even just look over solutions to problems you decide not to try.

Basics

I second Stewart's Calculus cover to cover (except the final chapter on differential equations) and Halliday, Resnick and Walker's Fundamentals of Physics. Not all sections from HRW are necessary, but be sure you have the fundamentals of mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, and thermal physics down at the level of HRW.

Once you're done with this move on to studying differential equations. Many physics theorems are stated in terms of differential equations so really getting the hang of these is key to moving on. Differential equations are often taught as two separate classes, one covering ordinary differential equations and one covering partial differential equations. In my opinion, a good introductory textbook to ODEs is one by Morris Tenenbaum and Harry Pollard. That said, there is another book by V. I. Arnold that I would recommend you get as well. The Arnold book may be a bit more mathematical than you are looking for, but it was written as an introductory text to ODEs and you will have a deeper understanding of ODEs after reading it than your typical introductory textbook. This deeper understanding will be useful if you delve into the nitty-gritty parts of classical mechanics. For partial differential equations I recommend the book by Haberman. It will give you a good understanding of different methods you can use to solve PDEs, and is very much geared towards problem-solving.

From there, I would get a decent book on Linear Algebra. I used the one by Leon. I can't guarantee that it's the best book out there, but I think it will get the job done.

This should cover most of the mathematical training you need to move onto the intermediate level physics textbooks. There will be some things that are missing, but those are usually covered explicitly in the intermediate texts that use them (i.e. the Delta function). Still, if you're looking for a good mathematical reference, my recommendation is Lua. It may be a good idea to go over some basic complex analysis from this book, though it is not necessary to move on.

Intermediate

At this stage you need to do intermediate level classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal physics at the very least. For electromagnetism, Griffiths hands down. In my opinion, the best pedagogical book for intermediate classical mechanics is Fowles and Cassidy. Once you've read these two books you will have a much deeper understanding of the stuff you learned in HRW. When you're going through the mechanics book pay particular attention to generalized coordinates and Lagrangians. Those become pretty central later on. There is also a very old book by Robert Becker that I think is great. It's problems are tough, and it goes into concepts that aren't typically covered much in depth in other intermediate mechanics books such as statics. I don't think you'll find a torrent for this, but it is 5 bucks on Amazon. That said, I don't think Becker is necessary. For quantum, I cannot recommend Zettili highly enough. Get this book. Tons of worked out examples. In my opinion, Zettili is the best quantum book out there at this level. Finally for thermal physics I would use Mandl. This book is merely sufficient, but I don't know of a book that I liked better.

This is the bare minimum. However, if you find a particular subject interesting, delve into it at this point. If you want to learn Solid State physics there's Kittel. Want to do more Optics? How about Hecht. General relativity? Even that should be accessible with Schutz. Play around here before moving on. A lot of very fascinating things should be accessible to you, at least to a degree, at this point.

Advanced

Before moving on to physics, it is once again time to take up the mathematics. Pick up Arfken and Weber. It covers a great many topics. However, at times it is not the best pedagogical book so you may need some supplemental material on whatever it is you are studying. I would at least read the sections on coordinate transformations, vector analysis, tensors, complex analysis, Green's functions, and the various special functions. Some of this may be a bit of a review, but there are some things Arfken and Weber go into that I didn't see during my undergraduate education even with the topics that I was reviewing. Hell, it may be a good idea to go through the differential equations material in there as well. Again, you may need some supplemental material while doing this. For special functions, a great little book to go along with this is Lebedev.

Beyond this, I think every physicist at the bare minimum needs to take graduate level quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. For quantum, I recommend Cohen-Tannoudji. This is a great book. It's easy to understand, has many supplemental sections to help further your understanding, is pretty comprehensive, and has more worked examples than a vast majority of graduate text-books. That said, the problems in this book are LONG. Not horrendously hard, mind you, but they do take a long time.

Unfortunately, Cohen-Tannoudji is the only great graduate-level text I can think of. The textbooks in other subjects just don't measure up in my opinion. When you take Classical mechanics I would get Goldstein as a reference but a better book in my opinion is Jose/Saletan as it takes a geometrical approach to the subject from the very beginning. At some point I also think it's worth going through Arnold's treatise on Classical. It's very mathematical and very difficult, but I think once you make it through you will have as deep an understanding as you could hope for in the subject.

I really like this idea. And I think it is possible. I have written about something relevant, namely free will within determinism. let me explain:

When we make a decision we have no direct access to how our braincells behaved to arrive at said decision. This is therefore a spectre level zero decision.

We can then scan our brain during spectre zero, and then analyze the data from our brain scan to determine what processes led to the decision. And make a new decision. This is spectre level 1.

We can then look at the brain scan from spectre 1, to make decision spectre 2, etc.

From doing this, you can have a deterministic universe and still have some form of control over your decisions, your decisions are still deterministic but you can at least avoid any decision you find is caused by bad reasoning.

But the good thing with the spectre system is that you can learn from it even as a theoretical brain-teaser. Because you know each decision is slightly different, the data from the previous brain scan is slightly different, the time and place is different, the memory you have from the previous level is there, so the odds of making the same decision twice in a row is not completely 100 percent. So one could argue that we will change our mind an infinite number of times to decide all possible decisions at some point through the infinite spectre levels. This coupled with some complex logic makes us able to make certain arguments. Lets say you have measured a river to a width of 10 feet within 1 inch uncertainty, so you know the bridge has to be at least 10 feet 1 inch for your bridge to be necessary length no matter what. The amount of different lengths you can make is infinite, so you could go up the spectre tree an infinite levels and never decide what size between 9 feet 11 inches and 10 feet 1 inch you should pick. But, you have data which allows you to not have to go an infinite years pondering the question. In other situations we simply have no such data, lets say on what religion to choose. So at the very least you could benefit from lets say NOT finding yourself blowing yourself up in a car bomb to achieve eternal life, because you know through this spectre logic that you shouldn't take any one of the infinite decisions too seriously to stick with them forever, because you have insufficient data to perform a spectre decision-tree. And thus you avoid some of the pitfalls in a deterministic universe.

Furthermore, we can reason that each decision up the spectre tree is of higher quality, higher value, than the previous level. Because you put more energy into that decision than the one before. Its as if you make a chess computer think 2 moves into the future instead of just 1, and then you make it think 3 moves, 4 moves, etc. The more energy the chess computer can spend on weighing all the possible decisions against each other, the better it plays. And thus we can reason that we can apply the same practice to humans.

For instance. I wanted to improve the transportation plan for Norway, long ago. I will now go through a series of decisions, or rather solutions, I came up with, starting with the first and lowest energy solution, ending in the highest energy solution. Which has far more benefit at a fraction of the cost of the others.

1. We can spend billions more on transportation.
   
2. We can test intersections against roundabouts, one-way street systems and traffic light programming, and more, to pick the solutions which make more efficient traffic-flow.
   
3. We can use a computer algorithm to decide road placement, road standard and the above, to achieve a more efficient system. Lets say it ends up putting gravel roads in some suburbs so that we save on that cost and don't have to put tarmac bumps in to limit speed, so that we can put concrete on high-traffic areas so that the time between each maintenance cycle goes up and there is less congestion due to lanes closed for maintenance. The system would also put roads where they provide the most efficient traffic flow for the least amount of money, by simply calculating the cost and benefit of all possible road placements (like a chess computer calculating as many moves into the future as you are willing to wait for).
   
4. We could split the work-force into two. Carpenters, plumbers and electricians need to be at work at the same time but not at the same as doctors, nurses and surgeons. So these two groups might be in different groups. Group A goes to work at eight 'O clock in the morning, group B goes to work at ten or twelve depending on your nation's rush-hour period (if the rush-hour is just 2 hours you only need to separate the groups by just over 2 hours, if rush hour is three hours you need up towards 4 hours separation). They do a normal 8 hour work-day and go back home in separate time periods. This doubles the transportation capacity of a nation, for zero cost. it can be taken to extremes with more groups and allocating services like postal services and garbage collection and certain transportation of goods to other periods not within the rush-hour periods.
   
   This shows that the more energy you put into a problem, the benefit goes up. I dread to think how many solutions go unnoticed because we just take the first spectre zero solution we think of and go with that. One can further increase benefit by using time in ones pursuit of a solution (technological or not) by looking into cognitive biases (1) and fallacious reasoning (2).
   
   
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
   
   
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
   
   I only realized the third solution when I realized that humans tend to lean towards solutions that are for lack of a better word "impressive". To explain what I mean; When tested by Mythbusters the pointed stick arrow and the pointed stone arrow-head arrow, was the same in lethality, because the depth of the penetration was the same and that is the overall predictor of whether or not you hit vital arteries or organs when hunting. Yet it takes hours to produce one stone arrow-head not including the arrow itself, and minutes to make a pointed stick arrow in its entirety, so people favors the far more costly method with marginal (if any) benefit. Time that could have been spent hunting instead. But this paper shows something interesting: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/3/1050.full
   
   It shows that when given the same 5 dollar wine, with a different price-tag, in brain-scans the parts of the brain associated with pleasure, was more active when drinking the 5 dollar wine with the fake 45 dollar price-tag. One could reason that this is why the tenderloin is experienced so differently from other meat from the same animal, even when the two have the same tenderness. Because you spent days hunting for one animal and got hundreds of pounds of other meat, and just a couple pounds of tenderloin. So the tenderloin is the stone arrow-head. Its potentially no better than the other meat, but the cost of it is so high that we value it more. Because if you can afford to give that away to a girl, and produce stone arrow-heads, you must have the hunting skill and prowess to be able to waste calories, and therefore pairing up with you is a good bet that children will survive. I reason that it is the same with most solutions we come up with. And only having thought about the problem of transportation on-and-off for years, did I eventually realize the free solution. And even though it is now out there, I don't expect anyone to use it. Because its too cheap. Politicians as well as the rest of us like the billion dollar projects, the billion dollar solutions, because if we can afford that it proves our attractiveness in evolutionary terms.
   
   So if you want to make that book, I would go into evolution (Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a good starting point), behavioral psychology (Dan Ariely's books is a good start), and of course my own book. Which covers several more such high-energy solution step by step from low energy. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XP5Z3W4
   
   The series Connections by James Burke is also very informative about technological history. Often technological development just happens because two people meet by random accident, and then they happen to tell each other about something which either one can use to combine with something else that person knows, to improve a technology. Lets say the perfume spray nozzle used in the first diesel engines, or the furnaces made to melt glass which happened to be hot enough for making good steel without anyone previously knowing that they were hot enough for that.

Einstein I would say wait a little bit, he assumes a pretty decent mathematical background in his readers, so it can get a bit tricky.

Hawking, meh. The man's a genius but he's not good at explaining physics to laypeople imo. His books seem to state things without any indication of how physicists arrived at those conclusions, so they're a bit of a head scratcher for newbies.

I would say DeGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox and Michio Kaku are fairly easy jumping off points, but you'll soon get tired of hearing the same analogies. When that happens, move onto the slightly deeper books of Brian Greene and John Gribbin. Leave authors like Leonard Susskind, Roger Penrose and Max Tegmark until later, they're pretty heavy.

All of the above are pop science/astrophysics books that deal in exciting, puzzling things at the frontier of knowledge. If you're just looking for a grounding in more mundane everyday physics then you can do a lot worse than to take the free math and physics courses over at Khan Academy and then follow them up with the more advanced free ones at The Theoretical Minimum site. If you knuckle down through those you'll be at undergrad level physics by the end of it, which is honestly about as far as you can go with self teaching imo.

I found it useful to learn the history of things too. Understanding how conclusions were drawn makes the crazy-sounding theories much easier to comprehend. Bill Bryson's book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is a great overview, and you can follow it up with books specific to the different eras of discovery... Recentering the Universe was a good one for the earliest eras of Copernicus and Galileo. James Gleick's Isaac Newton covers the classical mechanics era. Faraday, Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field takes you the next step. Then you can get onto Einstein and relativity, of which there are a million and one choices. Then onto quantum mechanics, of which there are even more choices... :-)

Hope that helps.

There are a lot of good suggestions in here, but I'm wondering if any of them are really applicable to what you want to do. An electrodynamics book like Griffiths will come at magnetism from the perspective of field and/or tensor mathematics. A solid state book like Kittel or Ashcroft and Mermin would come at it starting from a phenomenological perspective and moving into things like local moments and band structure. I'm guessing here, but it seems like what you want is more of an idea of the interaction of magnetism and materials or observable phenomena. Either of those approaches would get you there, but it wouldn't be the most direct approach and it would be a lot more work than you need to put in if that's all you want. They would also both require a lot more math than it seems like you're really comfortable with, and both topics are complex enough that physics/chemistry/MSE students struggle with them without good instructors (and sometimes even with them).

Instead of starting with any of those, I'd suggest you look at some lower level, phenomenology and observation based works. Nicola Spaldin's Magnetic Materials: Fundamentals and Applications might be a good place to start. It's pretty low level: I think a motivated undergrad could deal with it after taking a year of freshman physics, but I think that's what you want, at least to start with. It gives a good overview of different kinds of magnetism and the different kinds of magnetic materials, as well as field generation and detection.

Incidentally, if you decide to be a masochist and go with a solid state book, I think Ashcroft & Mermin is a better text than Kittel. Kittel spent 50 years and eight editions trying to fit the new developments in the field into the book without making it significantly thicker, so Ashcroft has a narrower scope but covers what it does have in more depth. I find the writing style clearer and more accessible as well.

"An elegant universe" by Brian Greene is a good read. It leans more towards string/superstring theory. "The science of interstellar" also touches on some concepts related to quantum mechanics.

I know that you asked for books but "PBS Spacetime" is a YouTube channel that does a great job explaining quantum mechanics. "Veritasium" is another great channel with a few videos explaining phenomena as well. I posted links below. Physics is dope. Happy hunting!

An elegant universe:
https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/039333810X

The science of interstellar:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393351378/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502885214&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+physics+of+interstellar&dpPl=1&dpID=41Ii8OmMy0L&ref=plSrch

PBS Spacetime:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g

Veritasium:
https://m.youtube.com/user/1veritasium

I actually see a lot of parallels between your situation and where I found myself at your age. It was 14 or 15 that I really developed an interest in science, because before that I hadn't really been properly exposed before that. Fast forward 6 or 7 years, I'm now a third year university student studying physics and I love it; I'll be applying to PhD programs next fall.

Like you, astronomy (by which I broadly mean astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, etc.) was what really caught my attention. In school, I liked all the sciences and had always been good at math (calculus was by far one of my favorite high school courses because the science can be pretty watered down).

If you're interested in learning more about astrophysics, I would recommend any one of a number of books. The first book on the topic that I read was Simon Singh's Big Bang; I read a couple Brian Greene books, namely The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos; I read Roger Penrose's Cycles of Time, and finally Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Also, I bought a book by Hawking and one by Michio Kaku that, to this day, sit on a shelf at my parents' house unread. I would recommend Singh's book as a nice book that should be at your level, and in fact it was the one recommended to me by some professors who I bugged with questions about the universe when I was around your age. Also, Bryson's book is a good survey look at a lot of different scientific topics, not just astrophysics/cosmology specific; I enjoyed it quite a lot.

As far as reaching out to people, I would recommend trying to connect with some scientists via email. That's what I did, and they were more responsive than I expected (realize that some of the people will simply not respond, probably because your email will get buried in their inbox, not out of any ill-will towards you).

At this point, I'll just stop writing because you've more than likely stopped reading, but if you are still reading this, I'd be more than happy to talk with you about science, what parts interest(ed) me, etc.

One thing you might want to take a look at is an introductory historical geology textbook.

I read an older edition of this (http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Geology-Reed-Wicander/dp/1111987297) and it was generally pretty good. Very expensive there, but I'm sure a PDF is available for free with a bit of looking.

It covers the very basics of many fields (plate tectonics, Earth composition and structure, radiometric dating techniques) and then moves through major time periods of Earth's history, including dinosaurs and all sorts of other organisms.

You might find it somewhat unsatisfying in that it is covering such a vast amount of material that it can't go too in-depth proving its points every step of the way, but it does a pretty good job considering it's scope, and has lots of good photos of fossils and/or diagrams.

As a single book aimed at understanding Earth's history, I'm not sure you could do much better.

The Feynman lectures are really good, and they will take you from basic physics to quantum mechanics.

Get yourself a good groundwork in physics before you worry about flashy things like relativity. The ability to spout out fancy words about fancy-sounding fields really means nothing if you don't actually understand what you are talking about.

Now, this said, once you are ready to dive into quantum mechanics, I'd personally recommend Griffiths.

As a chemical engineer specialized in electron microscopy, I am partial to solid-state physics and physics at the atomic scale, so if you are interested in such small things, I would recommend Callister as an introductory book (it is basically the bible of materials science, and is an excellent beginner book and reference) and Kasap as a very readable book on solid-state physics.

With any such books, unless you are using the book for a class and it is required that you have a particular version, don't worry about getting the newest edition. An older edition will generally save you a lot of money if you purchase a hard copy. That said, it is easy enough to find most of them digitally if you are so inclined.

I'm not qualified to make a recommendation on basic physics, but here are some of the best examples of science writing I've come across for the other subjects you've listed:

1. Scientific History and Chemistry - The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson. This book is about Joseph Priestley, and his contribution to the discovery of oxygen. Priestley was incredibly prolific, and made a ton of contributions to completely unrelated fields. It also touches on why science started to really take off at this point in history, and the necessary conditions for good science to occur.
   
   
2. Natural Sciences - Why Evolution Is True. Jerry Coyne takes a college-level biology class on evolution, and condenses it into a single book. It is very easy to understand, even if you don't have a biology background.
   
   
3. Scientific History and Astronomy - The Big Bang by Simon Singh. This is probably the best popular science book I've ever read. A lot of these books will tell you how scientists think the universe works, and stop there. This book is different, it explains the reasons why scientists think the universe is a particular way, and lays out the history of how these ideas changed during the development of astronomy.

I find that science history and biography gives a good understanding of scientific methods, and when written for the lay-person, doesn't get so bogged down in technical jargon.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
  
• Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick
  (Also check out his biographies of Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman)
  
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
  
  And here are a few on my to read list:
  
  
• Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society - Bill Bryson
  
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari
  
• The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine - Lindsey Fitzharris
  
• Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus - Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy
  
• The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring - Richard Preston
  
• The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science - Richard Holmes
  
• The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution - David Wootton
  
  I hope that helps.

Science didn't start at some specific point. The word science is only a few hundred years old, but people have been doing science for thousands. Different people and institutions placed different levels of importance on scientific thinking. It fluctuates through history, and probably beyond.

We do have a history of science, and it is absolutely fascinating.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson's star talk radio has a few episodes on the history of science, they are a real treat.

The most fun way to learn about the timeline of discovery is Timeline: Discoveries, for 2-8 players

https://www.amazon.com/Asmodee-TIM02-Timeline-Discoveries/dp/2914849850

> Could you recommend something covering the history of earth in general.

I recommend Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. It's a great read, easy to follow, and gives a pretty decent overview of, well, everything. If you want details on the math and physics, look elsewhere as this is not a textbook. But it's a nice intro.

I think of it as the Sophie's World of science. (Another great book i'd highly recommend.)

Bill Bryson also has some other books covering various topics (mostly travel and history). I haven't read them all, but the ones i have are excellent.

I can offer a general layman's overview of you like (global studies ftw)

I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at but:

"Humans comprise about 100 million tonnes of the Earth's dry biomass, domesticated animals about 700 million tonnes, ..."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_%28ecology%29

I think human lifestyle might be a bigger issue. If you include indirect human usage like domesticated animals (and the resulting sewage pools) etc.

You might really like this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Without-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312427905

Edit: hopefully as technology progresses we can be less disruptive towards our environment. I'm convinced that bio diversity will be a huge scientific/economic boom in terms of finding out what kind of genetic/mathematical/physical models work well as trial tested by time/evolution (granted they're not all winners but...) A lot of solid architecture and medicine has come straight out of nature. Seems like a shame we're just pissing it away for short term goals/benefits.

I also look forward to the day all science merged into one and there's something better out there to run society than what humans/computers/programs are limited to at the moment.

Definitely not the biggest, but very impressive is Robert Evans, amateur astronomer, found a record number (42) of supernovae...with his 10” home telescope...in his backyard.

In Bill Bryson’s book, A Brief History of Nearly Everything, he discribes how incredibly hard this feat actually is. “To understand what a feat this is, imagine a standard dining room table covered in a black tablecloth and someone throwing a handful of salt across it. The scattered grains can be thought of as a galaxy. Now imagine fifteen hundred more tables like the first one — enough to fill a Wal-Mart parking lot, say, or to make a single line two miles long — each with a random array of salt across it. Now add one grain of salt to any table and let Bob Evans walk among them. At a glance he will spot it. That grain of salt is the supernova.”

Evans has also been quoted as saying "There's something satisfying, I think, about the idea of light travelling for millions of years through space and just at the right moment as it reaches Earth someone looks at the right bit of sky and sees it. It just seems right that an event of that magnitude should be witnessed."

Check out "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. It's right up your alley. It's a history of science and scientific thought. It discussess almost all of the major scientific thought processes and when, how, and who was involved in their discoveries, the rival thoughts at the time, how it changed our world, and also covers scientists lost to time or scientists whose theories were taken by others. It's also really, really entertaining to read. It's like a really entertaining history book but about science and scientific thought. It's pretty dang accurate and specific, but not so precise as to wear you down or confuse you. Really approachable, REALLY informative, and perfect for someone who feels that their science AND history knowledge is lacking.

The psychological reasons why people believe this kind of stuff are pretty easy to explain. For example see my post in this thread about confirmation bias and the look-elsewhere effect. It also might be worth mentioning that human perception is a bit of a mess; experimenting with psychedelics can be helpful in getting a sense of this, or maybe reading some Oliver Sacks. Basically there is pretty good scientific evidence that you can't always trust what you think you see. Finally, you do have a good question in there that I think is worth taking seriously: "why not?" Besides philosophical issues with mind-body dualism, I'd respond "Because there is simply no scientific evidence for it whatsoever." If there were a separate world of ghosts that could interact with our world, they would presumably be detectable through any of many extremely sensitive scientific experiments.

David Griffiths' textbooks on E&M and quantum mechanics were easily the best textbooks I had as an undergrad. Clear, concise, refreshingly informal, and even a dash of humor.

Here's my rough list of textbook recommendations. There are a ton of Dover paperbacks that I didn't put on here, since they're not as widely used, but they are really great and really cheap.

Amazon search for Dover Books on mathematics

There's also this great list of undergraduate books in math that has become sort of famous: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm

Pre-Calculus / Problem-Solving

• The Art of Problem Solving - Lehoczky/Ruczyk - in two volumes, both have full solutions available separately
  
  Calculus
  
  
• Calculus - Stewart - ignore the bad reviews, it's very clear and covers all of basic calculus well - it's just the book that most intro students use and as a consequence gets a bad rap
  
  
• Calculus - Spivak - this will take your understanding of calculus to the next level
  
  
• Calculus - Apostol - there are two volumes and they are very comprehensive, albeit difficult
  
  Linear Algebra
  
  
• Linear Algebra - Lay
  
  
• Linear Algebra Done Right - Axler
  
  Differential Equations
  
  
• Elementary Differential Equations - Boyce/DePrima
  
  
• Ordinary Differential Equations - Tenenbaum
  
  Number Theory
  
  
• Number Theory - Pommersheim for a change of pace and proof skills
  
  Proof-Writing
  
  
• Transition to Higher Mathematics - Dumas/McCarthy - helps to bridge the gap between "lower" and higher math
  
  Analysis
  
  
• The Way of Analysis - Strichartz
  
• Principles of Mathematical Analysis - Rudin
  
• Real and Complex Analysis - Rudin
  
  Complex Analysis
  
  
• Complex Analysis - Ahlfors
  
  Functional Analysis
  
  
• Functional Analysis - Rudin
  
  
• Introductory Functional Analysis with Applications - Kreyszig
  
  Partial Differential Equations
  
  
• Partial Differential Equations for Scientists and Engineers - Farlow
  
  Higher-dimensional Calculus and Differential Geometry
  
  
• Calculus on Manifolds - Spivak - for a modern take on multivariable calculus
  
  
• Differential Geometry - Kreyszig
  
  Abstract Algebra
  
  
• A First Course in Abstract Algebra - Fraleigh
  
• Abtract Algebra - Dummit and Foote
  
  Geometry
  
  
• The Elements - Euclid - for culture and for understanding where math has come from, plus it's still an awesome book after all these years; don't need to go through all of it
  
• Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries - Greenberg
  
  Topology
  
  
• Introduction to Topology - Mendelson
  
  
• Topology - Munkres
  
  Set Theory and Logic
  
  
• Introduction to Set Theory - Hrbacek/Jech
  
  
• Elements of Set Theory - Enderton
  
  
• Mathematical Logic - Kleene
  
  
• Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis - Cohen
  
  Combinatorics / Discrete Math
  
  
• Combinatorics - Cameron
  
  
• Concrete Math - Graham/Knuth/Patashnik
  
  
• Discrete Math - Biggs
  
  Graph Theory
  
  
• A First Course in Graph Theory - Chartrand/Zhang
  
  P. S., if you Google search any of the topics above, you are likely to find many resources. You can find a lot of lecture notes by searching, say, "real analysis lecture notes filetype:pdf site:.edu"
  

This book will answer all those questions (and many others) in great detail. A really interesting thought experiment. I highly recommend it.

I am sure you have heard a thousand things.
A Short History of Nearly Everything is a great read. It covers everything from our solar system/universe to geology. It's written in a easy to understand way and if there are sections that you don't find interesting (I didn't care for the geology section) you can easily skip them.

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene did a pretty good job of covering high-level physics concepts up through string theory.

I like pretty much anything Brian Greene writes. He's a layman's physicist, and is very good at explaining exactly what you are asking for. Try The Fabric of the Cosmos. In fact, I think there was a PBS Nova series of the same name that he hosted.

Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan

This book focuses mostly on supernatural phenomena, like ghosts, ESP, alien abductions, etc., and not the more political issues you raised above, but it's also an excellent intro to how our brains work (not like you think they do) and critical thinking about objective truths. It focuses more on the question of why people believe these things, not specifically on debunking them, and a lot of that is applicable to the issues listed above.

There are two main EM theories, which wikipedia lists under Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness. The particular one I was asking about is Johnjoe McFadden's CEMI theory. There are papers of his cited at the open (which link to accessible PDFs).

If these aren't scientific or detailed enough, then I apologize; that would mean that the 'theory' is not that fleshed out, and in my ignorance I cannot accurate assess the state of it. His page goes over more the details of the physics. Again I am not capable of assessing its depth.

However Susan Pockett has another EM theory of consciousness and has written an entire book about it. I have not read the book and cannot account for the detailedness of it.

An electronic device consisting of a number of 'cnodes' that are both classically connected by wires, like logic gates in computers, but also act as antenna that tune into the EM field the entire system makes, seems a relatively easy contraption to put together, so it seems like this would be an eminently testable theory.

For an interesting more philosophical perspective (that I sometimes wish more posters here had access to) I'd recommend Space, Time and Einstein by Jay Kennedy.

If I may recommend a book that offers a good grounding for this:

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark-ebook/dp/B004W0I00Q/

Try a historical geology class.
Here's a [historical geology textbook] (http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Geology-Reed-Wicander/dp/1111987297) used for several, and a freebie historical book, although this looks like a combination of Physical and Historical more than strictly historical.

Course slides with excellent diagrams for the basic principles of how rocks are deposited.

List of Internet resources for historical geology

Two things, (1) I'm going to recommend mostly books and not textbooks, since you're going to read plenty of those in the future. And (2) I'm going to only focus on the area of cognitive psychology & neuroscience. With that being said:

Beginner:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales By Oliver Sacks

Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives By Dean Buonomano

Kludge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Mind By Gary Marcus

The Trouble with Testosterone: And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament By Robert M. Sapolsky

The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers By Daniel L. Schacter

Intermediate: (I'm going to throw this in here, because reading the beginner texts will not allow you to really follow the advanced texts.)

Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind By Michael S. Gazzaniga, Richard B. Ivry & George R. Mangun

Advanced:

The Prefrontal Cortex By Joaquin Fuster

The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness By J. Allan Hobson

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning By Keith J. Holyoak & Robert G. Morrison

I don't exactly have time to make a detailed post right now, but I recommend grabbing a copy of The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It covers this exact subject.


https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312427905

Bill Brysons "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is a good place to start.

http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X

You might be interested in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Without-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312427905

• The Emperor of All Maladies
  
  
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
  
  For a thriller treatment of infections diseases, the following are a nice read
  
  
• Microbe: Are We Ready For The Next Plague?
  
  
• The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus
  
  I'm inclined to also suggest the works of Simon Singh, to whom I was introduced by his book on math and cryptography - The Code Book. But he has also written about cosmology and "alternative" medicine. The later got him involved in a landmark libel lawsuit in the UK. For that reason, there is probably more than the usual bit of politics you'd expect in a popular science book. However, in the post-truth era of Donald Trump and company, that maybe fitting if bitter medicine.
  
  Edit: As someone who may not have the best scientific background, one might be prone to confuse science with pseudoscience. Even today, there is no shortage of low quality literature on UFOs and parapsychology. As such, Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is highly recommended.