the great pop-sci book project

I recently received an email from a grandmother asking for book recommendations for her gifted granddaughter, who shows considerable talent in math and physics. That request, plus the recent book meme floating about teh Internetz listing some of the great books in Western literature got me thinking about compiling a similar meme thing for popular science books. The emphasis here is on "popular": books that are engaging and accessible to a truly general reader, ideally with a strong narrative component. (Weighty tomes delving into the minutiae of a given field need not apply, although one must make a few exceptions for books that were truly influential.)

In an ideal world, of course, one wouldn't need to compile a separate list for science-y books, because the Powers That Be that decide such things would have greater knowledge of, and respect for, the many talented writers out there who choose to write about science. While we're waiting for our long-overdue integration back into the general bookworld -- and broader culture at large -- to take place, I took a superficial inventory of the many books on science scattered about our apartment and compiled the following working list. We have some obvious biases -- physics, math and science history, with the odd foray into forensics and chemistry -- plus, a few notable fictional works that have a history of inspiring present and future scientists. (I also asked my pal Lee Kotther for a few of her suggestions.)

Alas, many of my books are still in storage. So I know I'm missing many significant titles. But one has to start somewhere. Ergo, I offer the following popular science book list, in no particular order. The rules, as always are simple:

1. Highlight those you've read in full
2. Asterisk those you intend to read
3. Add any additional popular science books you think belong on the list
4. Link back to me (leave links or suggested additions in the comments, if you prefer) so I can keep track of everyone's additions. Then we can compile it all into one giant "Top 100" popular science books list, with room for honorable mentions. (I, for one, have some quirky choices in the list below.) Voila! We'll have awesome resource for general readers interested in delving into the fascinating world of science!

0. Principia, Isaac Newton

Oh, just kidding. Granted, it's an influential work that pretty much founded modern physics, but has anybody read the Principia in its entirety lately? Really? How about De Revolutionibus? If so, do you not have a life? Seriously, Newton would turn over in his grave in horror at any inclusion of his masterpiece in a list of popular science books. Which is why I'm starting with....

1. Micrographia, Robert Hooke [I've looked at the pretty pictures, but that's not exactly "reading"]
2. *The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
3. Never at Rest, Richard Westfall
4. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
5. Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
6. The Devil's Doctor, Philip Ball
7. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
8. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
9. *Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
10. 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
11. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
12. Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
13. Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
14. Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
15. *A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
16. A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes
17. Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
19. Universal Foam, Sidney Perkowitz
20. Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman
21. The Code Book, Simon Singh
22. The Elements of Murder, John Emsley
23. *Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer
24. Time's Arrow, Martin Amis
25. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson
26. Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman
27. *Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
28. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine
29. A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
30. The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
31. E=mc<2>, David Bodanis
32. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife
33. *Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
34. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin
35. Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
36. *Apollo's Fire, Michael Sims
37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
38. Fermat's Last Theorem, Amir Aczel
39. Stiff, Mary Roach
40. Astroturf, M.G. Lord
41. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
42. Longitude, Dava Sobel
43. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
44. The Mummy Congress, Heather Pringle
45. The Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio
46. Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay
47. *This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
48. The Executioner's Current, Richard Moran
49. Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
50. *Pythagorus' Trousers, Margaret Wertheim
51. Neuromancer, William Gibson
52. The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
53. The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
54. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
55. Einstein's Clocks and Poincare's Maps, Peter Galison
56. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
57. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
58. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
59. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
60. *Consilience, E.O. Wilson
61. Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
62. Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
63. Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel
64. The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
65. Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
66. Storm World, Chris Mooney
67. The Carbon Age, Eric Roston
68. The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind
69. Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
70. From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
71. Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
72. Chaos, James Gleick
73. *Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
74. The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
75. Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais

My bias for books with a strong narrative is patently obvious, isn't it? Correct my imbalances (you know you want to! What are some of your faves?

Comments

[Martin R]

A couple I really like:
Mendelev's Dream by Paul Strathern (2001) - a great story of how the agme of Solitaire helped Dimitri M develop the Periodic Table
and
The View from the Center of the Universe - Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams - a great intro to cosmology by one of the originators of the CDM model of the universe that speaks to the general reader on many levels.

[smithee]

Don't forget The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, it stars Leibniz, Newton, Hooke, Oldenburg etc.

[Fred Kiesche]

I read Neal Stephenson's "The Baroque Cycle", can I substitute that for Newton?

Didn't notice much mention of Brian Greene there...

I'll have to work up a list. In the meantime, I've hit many of the titles and some similar titles. See Ye Olde Blog, click on the "Reading" category and check the various "Year in Books" listings. I've been mixing non-fiction (mostly science) and SF in quantities for years...

(Off to the store to buy the latest Brian Greene, speaking of, having found I've already bought the one Jennifer Ouellette that looked interesting, how embarassing is that!)

[A.Ray]

I think this ones were not mentioned yet:

- Musicophilia , Oliver Sacks
- Cosmos, Carl Sagan
- Any book by Philip Ball
- The men who loved only numbers :Paul Erdös, Paul Hoffman
- Passeio Aleatorio, Nuno Crato (http://www.gradiva.pt/livro.asp?L=2166). Although the author was awarded by the European Mathemathical society the "Public Awareness of Mathematics" award in 2003 and by the EU the "European Science Award-science communicator of the year" in 2008, the book is not translated in foreign languages (only Portuguese editions). "Passeio aleatorio" (Random walk) is a deeply interesting random walk through different fields of maths.
- Engines of creation, Eric Drexler
- Descartes error, Antonio Damásio
- Flatterland, Ian Stewart ( If you know Flatland you know what it is about).
- Intellectual impostures, Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont

[antiquarianbook]

Very good list, but I would also add:

The Selfish Gene, Dawkins
The Coming Plague, Laurie Garrett
Jacob Bronowski,The Ascent of Man
Man's Place in Nature, Thomas Huxley

[Jeff Aaronson]

Very nice list. Just read a new one that definitely deserves a spot:
"How to Defeat Your Own Clone: And Other Tips for Surviving the Biotech Revolution" (cloning, biotech, and pop culture galore!)