Every year starting in November or so, I start to highlight various "year's best science books" lists I find around the web.
Typically, one of the last is the long list for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. Since it's a juried award, they need time to actually read the darn things. Yes, I know what that's like.
In any case, here's their list:
- What the nose knows: The science of scent in everyday life by Avery Gilbert
- Bad science by Ben Goldacre
- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science by Richard Holmes
- Living with Enza: The forgotten story of Britain and the great flu pandemic of 1918 by Mark Honigsbaum
- Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the great debate about the nature of reality by Manjit Kumar
- Strange fruit: Why both sides are wrong in the race debate by Kenan Malik
- Decoding the heavens: Solving the mystery of the world's first computer by Jo Marchant
- The drunkard's walk: How randomness rules our lives by Leonard Mlodinow
- Physics for future presidents: The science behind the headlines by Richard A Muller
- Your inner fish: The amazing discovery of our 375-million-year-old ancestor by Neil Shubin
- Ice, mud and blood: Lessons from climates past by Chris Turney
- Microcosm: E. coli and the new science of life by Carl Zimmer
- The universe in a mirror: The saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the visionaries who built it by Robert Zimmerman
This is definitely a list I'll use for some collection development.
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