---
title: "Seven more essentials for your humanist bookshelf"
date: "2026-09-10T18:12:07+01:00"
modified: "2026-09-17T18:40:34+01:00"
url: "https://humanists.uk/2026/09/10/seven-more-essentials-for-your-humanist-bookshelf/"
post_id: 198296
categories: ["News", "Northern Ireland", "Wales"]
---

# Seven more essentials for your humanist bookshelf

![](https://i0.wp.com/humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/78-1.png?resize=1200%2C628&ssl=1)**How do we make sense of the world, care for one another, and find meaning in our lives?**

This selection for the [\#HumanistBookshelf](https://humanists.uk/humanistbookshelf) explores those questions through science, memoir, children’s non-fiction, anthropology, and historical fiction. From the universe beyond human sight to the conversations families have about right and wrong, these seven books take up the themes of clear thinking, being good, living well, and being curious.

#### **A book to question what’s really behind the cure:** ***The God Effect*** **by Colin Brewer**

What connects the reassurance of a medical consultation with the comfort of a religious ritual? In *The God Effect: How Suggestion and Ritual Shape Religion and Medicine through Placebo Responses*, psychiatrist Colin Brewer examines the role of expectation, suggestion, and trust in both settings. Drawing on medical history and his clinical experience, he discusses treatments that improved people’s sense of wellbeing without necessarily changing their underlying condition.

Brewer extends this investigation to prayer, hypnosis, homoeopathy, and psychoanalysis, questioning how practitioners explain the effects of their work. His central argument is that placebo responses can help account for experiences attributed to religious or therapeutic powers. Throughout, the book considers the distinction between feeling better and establishing why a treatment or ritual appears to work. [Imprint Academic](https://www.imprint.co.uk/product/brewer/)

#### **A book to see what one act of rescue can build:** ***The Boy with the Knapsack*** **by Alf Dubs**

In June 1939, six-year-old Alf Dubs arrived at London’s Liverpool Street station after escaping Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia on the Kindertransport. *The Boy with the Knapsack* follows the life that unfolded from that journey, tracing his experiences as a refugee, MP, campaigner, and member of the House of Lords.

The memoir moves through seven decades of British public life, including Dubs’s years representing Battersea, his leadership of the Refugee Council, and his work as a Northern Ireland minister during the period of the Good Friday Agreement. Alongside this political history runs the story of his advocacy for human rights and refugees. His account brings together childhood displacement and a career concerned with how governments and communities respond to people seeking safety. [Bonnier Books](https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/news-and-media/ithaka-press-to-publish-fascinating-first-hand-account-from-lord-alf-dubs-one-of-britains-best-loved-political-figures/)

#### **A book to see the universe beyond what your eyes can catch** ***Invisible Rainbows: The Unseen Universe Beyond Our Senses*** **by Alfredo Carpineti**

The colours we can see reveal only part of the universe. In *Invisible Rainbows*, astrophysicist and science communicator Alfredo Carpineti explores what lies beyond human vision, from cosmic explosions detected through gamma rays to galaxies observed using radio waves. The book follows the ways astronomers have learnt to gather information that our unaided senses cannot provide.

Alongside this account of astronomical discovery are conversations with LGBTQIA+ scientists from around the world. Carpineti introduces their research and examines contributions that have often received less attention than the discoveries themselves. These two strands connect the question of what becomes visible in the universe with the question of who becomes visible within science, exploring how identity and experience can influence the ways people approach their work. [Eye Books Group](https://www.eyebooksgroup.com/products/invisible-rainbows)

#### **A book to get your brain ready for the AI age:** ***The 21st Century Brain*** **by Hannah Critchlow**

How might we prepare ourselves – and our children – for a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence? Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow approaches this question through research into the human brain, examining the capacities involved in learning, adapting, making decisions, and working with others.

*The 21st Century Brain* combines explanations of neuroscience with practical exercises, covering emotional understanding, imagination, flexible thinking, resilience, and planning for the future. Critchlow also considers intuition and social connection, placing relationships alongside individual thinking skills in her account of how people navigate change. The book’s organising argument is that preparing for technological developments involves cultivating human capabilities. Its focus is on how those capabilities can be understood and developed in everyday life. [Penguin](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/470415/the-21st-century-brain-by-critchlow-dr-hannah/9781911709961)

#### **A book to answer big questions from small humanists:** ***What is Humanism?*** **by Michael Rosen and Annemarie Young**

How do people decide what is right and wrong without believing in a god? Written for children in upper primary and lower secondary education, Michael Rosen and Annemarie Young’s *What is Humanism?* introduces the questions behind a non-religious approach to life. It explores humanist views on ethics, the origins of life, and the relationship between religion and the state, as well as how people mark births, marriages, and deaths.

Contributions from figures including Stephen Fry, Philip Pullman, Jim Al-Khalili, and Shappi Khorsandi describe their own beliefs and priorities. The book encourages young readers to consider these questions for themselves. For parents and children reading together, its subjects provide starting points for conversations about belief, responsibility, and how people can live alongside others whose outlook differs from their own. [Hachette](https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/michael-rosen-2/what-is-humanism-how-do-you-live-without-a-god-and-other-big-questions-for-kids/9781526305169/)

#### **A book to help acknowledge our mortality:** ***An Honest Death: Life’s End and Humanist Funerals*** **by Matthew Engelke**

What does a funeral look like when it makes no promise of an afterlife? In *An Honest Death*, anthropologist Matthew Engelke examines how humanist celebrants remember the dead and support the living through non-religious ceremonies. His research focuses on celebrants associated with the British Humanist Association, now Humanists UK, and included training as a celebrant himself.

The book follows the work of creating ceremonies that reflect the person who has died, including decisions about language and music. Engelke explores the commitment to acknowledging death without religious reassurance, and the questions this raises about sincerity, ritual, and meaning. He also examines tensions between humanism’s emphasis on reason and the physical reality of mortality, asking how an understanding of life as finite finds expression in the ways people say goodbye. [Princeton’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion](https://csr.princeton.edu/events/2026/honest-death).

#### **A book to lose yourself in ancient power and ambition** ***The Goddess Queen*** **by Alice Roberts**

As rivalries weaken the Roman Republic, Egypt’s wealth offers little protection from its dependence on Rome. Against this background, Alice Roberts’s historical novel follows Cleopatra as she seeks to recover Egypt’s power, and Antonius, a Roman commander whose ambitions become entangled with her own.

Their intersecting stories place political authority, military power, and the future of Egypt at the centre of the narrative. Cleopatra faces the task of defending her kingdom’s interests while Antonius pursues the possibility of renewed influence and empire. Their relationship carries consequences for both, with his involvement offering the prospect of support as well as danger. Through these two figures, *The Goddess Queen* tells a story of competing ambitions at a moment when the balance of power in the ancient Mediterranean is changing. [Simon & Schuster](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Goddess-Queen/Alice-Roberts/9781398563056)

#### Notes

Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by 150,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.