Best Science Book 2014: Cocktail Party Physics

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

And here we are in 2014!

As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.

Today's list is Cocktail Party Physics My Favorite Physics Books of 2014.

• The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle Over General Relativity by Pedro Ferreira
• Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything by Amanda Gefte
• Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvelous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World by Mark Miodownik
• What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
• The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne
• The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew by Alan Lightman
• The Mathematician’s Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer
• Sonic Wonderland: a Scientific Odyssey of Sound by Trevor Cox
• The Science of Shakespeare: A New Look at the Playwright’s Universe by Dan Falk
• Cosmigraphics by Michael Benson
• Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality by Max Tegmark
• The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the All-There-Is by Robert Trotta
• Wizards, Aliens and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction by Charles Adler

And check out my previous 2014 lists here!

Many of the lists I use are sourced via the Largehearted Boy master list.

(Astute readers will notice that I kind of petered out on this project last year and never got around to the end of year summary. The last few years I ended up featuring dozens of lists, virtually every list I could find that had science books on it. While it was kind of cool to be so comprehensive, not to mention that it gave the summary posts a certain statistical weight, it was also way more work than I had really envisioned way back in 2008 or so when I started doing this. As a result, I'm only going to highlight particularly large or noteworthy lists this year and forgo any kind of end of year summary. Basically, all the fun but not so much of the drudgery.)