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.
Recently read “The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter” by Helen Quinn and Yossi Nir… and Susskinds “The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics”…
Loved tham both…
But over all Brian Greene’s “Elegant Universe” is the best overall primer for science addiction… It was a gateway drug of sorts for me…
-j-
“Genius” by James Gleick.
“The Scientist As Rebel” by Freeman Dyson.
Can we vote for deletions? SJ Gould’s “Mismeasure of Man” is politically actuated pseudo-science at its worst.
Electromagnetism for Engineers: An Introductory Course (Textbooks in Electrical & Electronic Engineering) by P. Hammond.
Claire C Smith
Oh, ok it’s popular science. Fault. Mine.
The Wonder Book of Science, Third edition, Harry Golding. It inspires.
Claire
The Nature of the Physical World by Eddington. Dated, but still a fun read.
Also, Relativity by Einstein.
When I was in 1st grade the school was giving away books. I found a 4th grade science book with an artists conception of the solar system. I would sit and stare at it for literally hours. It also had a picture of Venus and the moon side by side. My Father told me the moon was much smaller than Venus and asked, so why does the moon look bigger? I was 6 years old. I racked my brains and had no answer. He said because the moon is much closer and the planet Venus is much further away. I slapped a metaphorical head and was hooked on learning. Any book or learning is based on a eureka moment like that.
The Stars by H. A. Rey. Started it all for me.
Light from the Depths of Time Rudolf Kippenhahn is one of the best starts in astrophysics and cosmology for the layman. Use the dreams of Mr. Meyer in the same way Gamow used Mr. Tompkins.
“Disturbing the Universe” and all other books by Freeman Dyson. Old as they are, his books are very topical with good advice on space exploration and nuclear energy. He explains that he is paid enormously well for his expert advice which is always ignored.
“The Glass Giant of Palomar” David O. Woodbury two reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/glass-giant-Palomar-David-Woodbury/dp/0396019196
That is the extent of my reading in science and other topics. Will be glad to have a list of 1000.
I liked the book by Vilenkin, “Many Worlds in One.”
I haven’t finished, but really adore so far, “The Road to Reality” by Roger Penrose. This must be the only popular science book that makes a serious effort to teach the reader some deep concepts. There are many things in there I wish my HS teachers would have explained… I would have been even more into math.
Neither of these, I guess, score well for “influence.”
Some of my favorites… “Out of the Sky” by Ninninger, Hoyle’s “Frontiers of Astronomy” and “The nature of the Universe” (barring the chapters on steady-state cosmology), Willy Ley’s “Satelliets, rockets and outer space” influenced a generation (in the eary 50’s that is); Sobel’s “Longitude” is brilliant, as well as
Gingerich “The book nobody read”.
The books that got me into physics and astronomy are the amazingly thorough and astonishingly well written series “Light and color in the outdoors” by
Marcel Minnaert, definitely my number 1.
I find the lack of books by John Barrow disturbing. 🙂
When I was a child and adolescent, I spend days reading and re-reading “The world within the world” , “Theories of Everything” and “Pi in the Sky”. They were a formidable, fascinating introduction to cosmology and physics, and extremly well written.
Also, I would endorse the three Dawkins essentials: “The Selfish Gene”, “The Blind Watchmaker” and “The Extended Phenotype”.
Its Steven Weinberg and not Stephen Weinberg !
I am amazed that “Dreams of a Final Theory” is not on the list
Fixed Weinberg’s name.
I didn’t personally include more than one book by any one author, and I think The First Three Minutes is more important than Dreams of a Final Theory.
Currently, I am reading
The Calculus Gallery by William Dunham,a very enjoyable tour of the historical development of calculus presenting mathematical milestones, their beautiful proofs and their discoverers. It’s all very well presented and at about 200 pages, should not take too long to read. There is some serious math in there, yet I still would shelve it in the popular section.
Is it possible to publish such a list on a simple community platform allowing to vote a book up or down?
I suppose voting would require registration.
Registered users could also add books.
There should be no double entries though.
Would be a lot of fun! And produce a real and readable list.
I must put in a word for the completely un-famous, but completely fabulous, “Relativity Visualized” by Lewis Carroll Epstein.
“Chaos” by James Gleick.
Agree with previous commentators that any list should have the books by Freeman Dyson, especially “Disturbing The Universe”. For me though, the number one book is Sagan’s “Cosmic Connection” which I think was even better than “Cosmos”.
Robert Wright’s book on evolutionary psychology : “The Moral Animal”
“Your inner fish”–Neil Shubin
I enjoyed reading and would strongly recommend the following: 1)The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design by Leonard Susskind & 2) Hiding in the Mirror by Lawrence M. Krauss.