Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer has cast a baleful eye on the various lists of the world’s greatest books, and decided that we really need is a list of the world’s greatest popular-science books. I think the goal is to find the top 100, but many nominations are pouring in from around the internets, and I suspect that a cool thousand will be rounded up without much problem.
We played this game once ourselves, but like basketball, this is a game that can be enjoyed over and over. So pop over and leave your own suggestions, or just leave them here. To prime the pump, off the top of my head here is a list of books I would nominate. A variety of criteria come into play; originality, readability, clarity, and influence — but just because a work appears here doesn’t mean that it scores highly on all four counts.
- Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
- Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hoftstadter
- Cosmos, Carl Sagan
- Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison
- How the Universe Got Its Spots, Janna Levin
- Chronos, Etienne Klein
- The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
- The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen J. Gould
- Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
- The Inflationary Universe, Alan Guth
- The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
- Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
- The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick
- The Double Helix, James Watson
- Prisoner’s Dilemma, William Poundstone
- The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
- One, Two, Three… Infinity, George Gamow
- Warmth Disperses and Time Passes, Hans Christian Von Baeyer
- Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point, Huw Price
- A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
- At Home in the Universe, Stuart Kauffman
- Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
- Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
- The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
- The Mathematical Experience, Davies and Hersh
- The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
- Beamtimes and Lifetimes, Sharon Traweek
- The Diversity of Life, E.O. Wilson
- The Emperor’s New Mind, Roger Penrose
- Longitude, Dava Sobel
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
- Flatland, Edwin Abbott
- The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch
- Nobel Dreams, Gary Taubes
I didn’t peek at anyone else’s lists, but I admit that I did peek at my own bookshelves.
The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard Lewontin
We will easily top 1000, which is why I’m putting together a “master list” incorporating EVERYONE’s suggestions, to complement the “Top 100” we eventually come up with. (“We” is an inner cabal who’ve agreed to sift through everything and develop a balanced Top 100.)
Matt, you’ll be pleased to hear that you’re the second or third person to recommend Lewontin. 🙂 So many books, so little time to read….
Another branch of science, but “The Coming Plague” is a fabulous book. Though it has its problems, “Scourge” (about smallpox) is also interesting and fairly clear in its science.
Shouldn’t “Wrinkles In Time” by George Smoot and Keay Davidson be on the list? That was the first book I ever read that discussed the cosmic background.
I thought It might have never been read in the US but Dover published What is Relativity? By Lev Landau, from where I learned my first concepts of the subject. Still recall the diagrams when I try to get right the dilation of time and the contraction of space. I was 15 (too old for sure)
How about “The Road to Reality” by Roger Penrose — a bit tough for those rusty in math, but a good read otherwise.
You’ve got an impressive list already, but I would add:
“Longing for the Harmonies” by Frank Wilczek and Betsy Devine
“The Dancing Universe” by Marcelo Gleiser
“Isaac Newton” by James Gleick
Although I doubt it’s been translated to English, I’d also like to add
“Stjärnor och äpplen som faller” by Ulf Danielsson
who is our favorite popular-science-writing physicist in Sweden.
“Ever Since Darwin: Reflections on Natural History”
by Stephen Jay Gould
“In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity”
by Daniel Kevles
‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ by Charles Darwin. Publish 1859, and never out of print.
Oh, and ‘Bully for Brontosaurus’ by Stephen Jay Gould.
The three science of the discworld books are awesome, both as an introduction to science books and discworld novels. The topics range from space elevators to the specifics of evolution.
I’ve always been a fan of Charles Seife, particularly “Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea”
Naked Economics (Charles Wheelan)
Consciousness Explained (Daniel Dennet)
Also, Atom, by Issac Asimov (a bit dated, but still excellent).
Fermat’s Enigma 😀 Made me love math…
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What is Mathematics? by Courant and Robbins.
Something by Martin Gardner, maybe Aha! Insight (on problem-solving) and Aha! Gotcha (on paradoxes, mathematical and logical).
Microbe Hunters, by Paul de Kruif — a lively history of microbiology, with the caveat that it was written in the 20’s and contains some jarring racial slurs.
And even though it’s a children’s book: The Way Things Work, by David Macaulay.
Just about everything by Stephen Jay Gould, except ‘Rocks of Ages’ (‘Non-Overlapping Magisteria’… *FEH!*. Talk about fence-sitting…)
Much as I loved it, calling ‘The Road to Reality’ popular science is stretching it beyond the limit, I think. Remember that ‘A Brief History of Time’ was/is considered difficult by most…
“The Self-made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature” by Philip Ball
“Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics” by Ruth Sime
“From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves” by Emilio Segre
“From X-rays to Quarks” by Emilio Segre
“Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life” by Richard Jones
“Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes
And what ’bout “The Selfish Gene” by Dawkins? The most awesome popular-science (and not only popular) book ever writen;)
The first science-themed books I ever read outside of school were by Dawkins.
Surely QED, – the book transcription of Feynman’s famous popular science lectures on the subject – should be on the list.
What is the Name of this Book? by Raymond Smullyan: An entertaining introduction to logic via increasingly challenging problems; a very good workout for the brain.
Infinity and the Mind by Rudy Rucker: A mixed bag overall, but contains a really wonderful description of Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers.
Abel’s Proof by Peter Pesic: A marvellous exposition of Abel’s proof that there is no general solution in radicals to polynomial equations of the 5th degree (and higher), and also what Galois cooked up from this result.
Darkness at Night by Edward Harrison: Explains the history of our ideas behind the darkness of the night sky, dispelling a few annoyingly persistent myths about it along the way.
From X-Rays to Quarks by Emilio Segre: The best history of modern physics I’ve read; it really nails home the point about the importance of experiments.
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins: From the greatest pop-science writer of them all, here is a superb explanation of the Darwinian theory of evolution. The clarity is unsurpassed. Read his The Selfish Gene as well.
Thirty Years that Shook Physics by George Gamov
What is life? (Erwin Schrödinger)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_Life%3F_(Schr%C3%B6dinger)
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (Oliver Sachs)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat