Anything from Sagan: Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God could convert the Pope to agnosticism.
Stephen Ray Gould: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin: will both challenge every preconceived notion you've had, link seemingly impossibly unrelated phenomenon together using similar models and patterns, and leave with a much more intuitive understanding about complexity, randomness, and chaotic systems.
A Briefer History of Time: For those who truly would like to exalt their personal God of the Gaps to the small unit.
I would put this down as my best book ever. It contains one of the most important ideas (IMO) for a scientist to keep in mind:
“But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.”
The Cosmos series, which was on PBS when I was a kid IS the reason I went into science.
This author is by far my favorite. Everything he wrote was amazing and made me think so deeply about things.
I recommend Dragons of Eden especially because it sheds light on how fabric of our culture is woven by old thoughts that are recycled in interesting ways. The Demon Haunted World does a good job at explaining how we have to escape magical thinking and be more rational about how we approach life.
After seeing Carl Sagan's Cosmos I got and read the coffee table book "Cosmos" I really liked it at the time(about 10-12 yo). It was pretty influential but I do not know if I could sit through the book again.
Stephen Ray Gould: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin: will both challenge every preconceived notion you've had, link seemingly impossibly unrelated phenomenon together using similar models and patterns, and leave with a much more intuitive understanding about complexity, randomness, and chaotic systems.
A Briefer History of Time: For those who truly would like to exalt their personal God of the Gaps to the small unit.