Best Science Books 2012: The Independent

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 2012 lists are here.

This post includes the following: Books of the Year 2012: Natural history, .

• Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird by Tim Birkhead
• Fighting for Birds: 25 Years in Nature Conservation by Mark Avery
• My Garden & Other Animals by Mike Dilger
• Field Guide to the Micro-Moths of Great Britain and Ireland by Phil Sterling, Mark Parsons, Richard Lewington
• Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One by Arthur MacGregor
• Tubes: behind the scenes at the internet by Andrew Blum
• A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton

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 most of my lists from Largehearted Boy.

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 or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or maybe even something else from today's list.