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Apr 24, 2021 · 24 April 2021. A fantastic science book can wow you, entertain you and change the way you think, all over the course of a few hundred pages. It can also act as a source of inspiration. We have...
Jan 15, 2024 · Philip Ball, author of How Life Works, on what makes a great popular science book, plus our reading list of books that make the cut. What is the secret of the most successful popular science books? There isn’t one, to tell the truth – but at the same time, it’s a formulation that works pretty well.
- Pan Macmillan
- Under A White Sky:The Nature of The Future, by Elizabeth Kolbert
- The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis
- Finding The Mother Tree: Discovering The Wisdom of The Forest, by Suzanne Simard
- The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration, by Sarah Everts
- The God Equation: The Quest For A Theory of Everything, by Michio Kaku
- Fuzz: When Nature Breaks The Law, by Mary Roach
- P Time: A Journey Through 4.5 Billion Years of Our Planet, by Riley Black
- Life’S Edge: The Search For What It Means to Be Alive, by Carl Zimmer
- Beloved Beasts: Fighting For Life in An Age of Extinction, by Michelle Nijhuis
Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the wild ways scientists are solving complicated environmental problems in Under a White Sky. As Kolbert notes, humans have directly transformed more than half of the ice-free land on Earth, and indirectly transformed the other half—with many negative consequences in need of fixing. She takes the...
The Premonition, by Michael Lewis, is a thriller, though you know from the start its heroes lose. The book follows several public servants and scientists who saw Covid-19 coming, and did everything within their powers to stop the virus from spreading in the United States. Lewis sticks to his brand: He parachutes readers into the lives of unconventi...
Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard penned our favorite book by a scientist this year with her deeply personal and engaging Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. Simard grew up in Canada in a logging family and, at age 20, worked as a seasonal employee for a logging company. But even early on, she had a sense that clear-cutting...
We are all sweating, at least a little, all the time. That’s a good thing. For one thing, sweat keeps our hot-running mammalian bodies from overheating—but there’s much more to the salty discharge than that. In The Joy of Sweat, science journalist Sarah Everts has composed a strange and wonderful tribute to the bodily effluvia that keep us cool and...
In The God Equation,theoretical physicist Michio Kaku writes about his almost lifelong mission to find what he calls the “Holy Grail of physics,” a “theory of everything.” His ultimate goal is to write an equation that encompasses the whole of physics and that can explain everything from the Big Bang to the end of the universe. Such an idea started...
Of all of the authors on our list this year, Mary Roach is the one we most want to have a beer with. In her amusing book Fuzz, she interviews and accompanies experts—from a wildlife biologist tracking mountain lions to a biowarfare specialist studying toxic peas—to learn how they deal with instances of animals and plants “breaking the law.” Roach h...
Our top pick for a coffee table book this year is Riley Black’sDeep Time. Conceiving of the stretch of time since the formation of the universe is difficult. This book helps the reader do so by picking out key historical moments—like the dawn of the dinosaurs and the disappearance of Doggerland, connecting Great Britain to continental Europe—and of...
We seem to intuitively know the difference between living things and inorganic matter—but as award-winning science writer Carl Zimmer makes abundantly clear in Life’s Edge, that boundary is not as sharp as one might imagine. Is a blood cell alive? What about a virus? Or a fertilized egg? The notion of death turns out to be equally fuzzy. Tiny tardi...
In Beloved Beasts, Michelle Nijhuis takes a compelling look at the history of the conservation movement since the late 19th century. The author weaves an intricate story by detailing the efforts of key conservationists—complex individuals who Nijhuis writes sometimes “did the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong re...
Jun 21, 2010 · That, I believe, is what makes a popular science book exciting to non-specialists and laymen: in reading the book they are not merely learning about science, but are witnessing a portion of the lively scientific exchange. The reader is put within the scientific conversation itself.
3 days ago · The most recommended scientific books in our interviews include Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, Richard Dawkins 's The Blind Watchmaker, and of course Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Other popular recommended science writers include Steven Strogatz , Hannah Fry and Gaia Vince.
Dec 7, 2022 · For a deep look into reproductive anatomy or a memoir connecting music to physics, check out some of Smithsonian magazine’s favorite science books of 2022. An Immense World: How Animal Senses...
