A Scienticity Reading List
A friend asked me for some recommendations for popular science books she might read. Here is one such list. It is 16 titles I culled from the "Top-Rated Books" [link] in the Scienticity Book-Note Collection of books that I have read and found enjoyable, informative, and memorable. Most of the notes in the links are ones that I have written, so this is very much a personal list — but these books make great reading!
Also, since I'm embarrassingly behind in writing notes about books I've read, these are all titles that I've read a few years ago, but I claim that the very fond memories I have now just demonstrate their lasting value. One thing that this list emphatically is not: it is not my list in of the best in recent publishing. Most of these books have been around for a few years, or longer, but they've proven their value in my mind.
- Arthur Allen, Vaccine : The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 523 pages with notes and index. [note]
- Richard B. Alley, The Two-Mile Time Machine : Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future. Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2000. 229 pages, with appendices, "Sources and Related Information", and index; illustrated. [note]
- Wallace Arthur, Creatures of Accident : The Rise of the Animal Kingdom. New York, Hill and Wang, 2006. x + 255 pages, with glossary, "further reading", and index. [note]
- Philip Ball, Bright Earth : Art and the Invention of Color. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. 382 pages, 66 color plates. [note]
- Clark Blaise, Time Lord : Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time. London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000. viii + 246 pages. [note]
- Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful : The New Science of Evo Devo. New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 2005. 350 pages with "Sources and Further Reading" and index; illustrated with drawings and color plates. [note]
- Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale : A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution; with additional research by Yan Wong. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 673 pages. [note]
- Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1995. 586 pages. [note]
- Simon Garfield, Mauve : How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World. New York : W. W. Norton, 2001. 222 pages. [note]
- Scott Huler, Defining the Wind : The Beaufort Scale, and How a Nineteenth-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry. New York : Crown Publishers, 2004. 290 pages, illustrated, with appendix, "notes on sources", and index. [note]
- John H. Lienhard, Inventing Modern : Growing up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003. 292+ix pages, illustrated, with notes and index. [note]
- Henry Petroski. Success Through Failure : The Paradox of Design. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2006. xii + 235 pages. [note]
- Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York : Simon & Schuster, 1986. 886 pages. [note]
- Oliver W. Sacks, Uncle Tungsten : Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. viii + 337 pages. [note]
- James Schwartz, In Pursuit of the Gene : From Darwin to DNA. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press 2008. xiii + 370 pages, with notes and index; illustrated. [note]
- Simon Winchester, The Map that Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology. New York : HarperCollins, 2001. xix + 329 pages; illustrated, with glossary, "Sources and Recommended Reading", and index. [note]
In: All, Books, Personal Notebook, Speaking of Science