Superficially, this book looks like one that I would enjoy (if not for your anti-recommendation causing me to steer clear). Because of this, I would wager that you would have an interesting answer to “if someone was considering the above book, what’s a book you would recommend they read instead?”.

In the spirit of “take a book, leave a book”, one of my favourite non-fiction books for a general audience is “Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life”. This recommendation is beyond the topic of the current thread, but in terms of enjoyable books that made me feel smarter, I love this one; I read it as a biochemistry undergraduate, and I was surprised at how much I learned from it.