An incomplete list, if you’re interested—incomplete because I did not think anyone would be interested at the time I self-published the first book, and thus did not take appropriately detailed records—of books I read while I was contemplating subjects and themes for the Atlas series:
Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began by Guido Tonelli
“Death Comes (and Comes and Comes) to the Quantum Physicist” by Rivka Ricky Galchen in The Believer (available online at thebeliever.net)
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
Man and His Symbols by Carl G. Jung
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever by Adam Leith Gollner
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
Republic by Plato
Zeno’s Paradox: Unraveling the Ancient Mystery Behind the Science of Space and Time by Joseph Mazur
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others translated by Stephanie Dalley
What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy by Thomas Nagel
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries) by Dimitri Gutas