Best Science Books 2011: New York Times Notable Books

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.

Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.

All the previous 2011 lists are here.

This post includes the following: New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2011.

• The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
• The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son by Ian Brown
• Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
• The Information: A History. A Theory. A Flood by James Gleick
• Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World by Lisa Randall
• Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn
• The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't covered, please let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot ca or in the comments.

I am picking up a lot of lists from Largehearted Boy.

The summary post for 2010 books is here and all the posts for 2010 can be found here. For 2009, it's here and here.

For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation. Deciding what is and isn't a science book is squishy at best, especially at the margins, but in the end I pick books that seem broadly about science and technology rather than something else completely. Lists of business, history or nature books are among the tricky ones.

And if you wish to support my humble list-making efforts, run on over to Amazon, take a look at Steve Jobs and consider picking that one up or something else from the lists.