Errors of Observation and Their Treatment, J. Topping, Chapman & Hall (1972)

One of the earliest books I remember looking at when I was a freshman at University College Cardiff.  The edition that I have in front of me is the 1972 fourth edition and is a 1985 reprint.  Thus, this is the edition that I originally looked at when learning about error propagation.  A short book at 118 pages, but I prefer it to the now standard An Introduction to Error Analysis by J.R. Taylor.  Topping's book and the similar book by N.C. Barford cover more ground in far less space.  There is much to be said for older books - many of which are around 100 pages in length.  There are newer, longer books, but they don't necessarily improve on the content of the older shorter books.

This book, for me always brings to mind Dr. Ray Hine, who ran the Part 1 labs when I was a freshman in Physics at University College, Cardiff in 1975.  He said, on occasion, that he wanted to make sure that he left the mark of the Physics Department on us as we went forward in life.  In my case, he certainly succeeded, I will never forget his teaching, and his teaching influences mine down to this very day.

Thus this book may not mean as much to you as it does to me, but if you want to learn about error propagation in calculations, this is an excellent place to start.  The fourth edition is still the current edition.  There are many used copies out there, and the Science Paperbacks series was well made.

The Death of Expertise - Tom Nichols, Oxford University Press (2017)

The essential ideas of this book appeared in The Federalist in 2014.  The book is an expansion of the article. The contents of the book are:

Introduction: The Death of Expertise
Chapter 1: Experts and Citizens
Chapter 2: How Conversation Became Exhausting
Chapter 3: Higher Education: The Customer Is Always Right
Chapter 4: Let me Google that for You:  How Unlimited Information is making us dumber
Chapter 5: The "New" New Journalism and Lots of iIt
Chapter 6: When Experts are Wrong
Conclusion: Experts and Democracy

The book discussed the decline of the public scholar, and the rise of the belief that all opinions are equally valid.   A book well worth reading, though if you read the article, you will learn all about the thesis of the book.  The book contains more examples, and explores consequences.  Example include the anti-vaxx  movement, grade inflation, politics, and a host of others.  The section on the Dunning-Kruger effect - the dumber you are the more confident you are that you're not actually dumb - is a highlight.  If you don't read the book, read the article.