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 best book on relativity for laypeople (or even particle physicists for that matter) must be “General relativity from A to B” by Robert Geroch.
If you’ve omitted “Arctic Dreams”, by Barry Lopez, the whole project is a joke.
i can’t wait to see the full list… can we also have a ranking of some sort? my mailbox will likely be jammed with amazon deliveries regardless but i would still like to spend my sundays in descending order of recommended readings…
I loved the earlier 1965 version, now updated in 2001 as “The New World of Mr Tompkins: George Gamow’s Classic Mr Tompkins in Paperback” by the physicist George Gamow and now Russell Stannard. No need to travel at the speed of light to experience relativity!
Venu You’ve got my vote. ‘The Moral Animal” is great. And for evolutionary psychology I’d add some books by David Buss
“Chaos: Making a new science” By James Gleick
Do biographies of Scientists count? (Provided they discuss the scientific method)
If yes, then “Genius” by James Gleick.
I’m a little saddened that, for all his prodigious output, Asimov has not been mentioned once as a popularizer of science. IIRC, he is often attributed with making it the enterprise it is today. So no one has any kind words for “The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science”, “Only a Trillion”, “The Neutrino”, “The Left Hand of the Electron”?
Given that “popular” is the categorical criteria, it should be no surprise that i too own many of the books in Sean’s list. As someone from the other side of campus, though i cannot speak for them as a whole, i have long recognized that great books written by scientists about science are fundamentally important for work in more normative disciplines. Thus to the advancing list i humbly add some author’s not yet mentioned:
Ann and Alexander Shulgin
Richard Schultes
Albert Hoffman
Niles Eldredge
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson – underrated book about the birth of statistical and geographical analysis in epidemiology, and how it (eventually) killed the miasmic theory of disease…
Delightfully odd: Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology by Lawrence Weschler.
Here the pop-sci booklet which influenced Einstein’s imagination:
http://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/24562.html
(and here a toy from Einstein’s earlier years: http://graysonfamily.org/~dan/Halle/dscf1956.jpg )
BTW, I doubt the value of popular science books – curious kids take them as substitutes for the real thing and rarely switch to reading real science books.
Yes to “The First 3 minutes”, “The Periodic Table” & “Longitude”
Feynman’s ego ride makes the list? Surely you’re joking, Mr. Carroll.
But WHERE is the greatest popular science book ever written? I am talking, of course, about “The Second Creation” by Robert Crease and Charles Mann.
No mention of “Not Even Wrong”, I see. I suppose that the point of view is unpopular, but I found it rivetting.
“The Time and Space of Uncle Albert” by Russell Stannard. (Also “Black Holes and Uncle Albert” by the same author).
“Flatterland” by… Ian Steward, I think.
“The Dancing Wu-Li Masters” by Gary Zukov.
Showing my age – here are a few books that were missed
by younger reviewers.
‘ The Strange Story of the Quantum ‘ by Banesh Hoffmann
Dover edition 1959 – still a great read.
‘ The Character of Physical Law ‘ by Richard Feynman
MIT Press 1965 – Feynman deserves at least 2 books on the list.
‘ Knowledge and Wonder – The Natural World As Man Knows It ‘
by Victor F. Weisskopf second edition MIT Press 1979 –
arguably the best popular science book.
‘ The Cosmic Code : Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature ”
by Heinz R. Pagels Bantum 1984 – the first of three good popular
science books by Pagels .
Where is Asimov?!??!?
‘The music of the primes’ by Marcus du Sautoy.
A beautifully written book that excites and enthralls. Probably my favourite popular science (math) book of all time.
Mr Tompkins needs to be on here.
Also if you are going to put a philosophy of science book why must it be SSR? Kuhn is either widely misunderstood or wildly stupid (I tend to guess the former, but who knows?). Go with Popper or Russell, both much stronger thinkers and more influential.
I definitely agree with a previous poster that Peter Woit’s “Not Even Wrong” should be a contender.
And what about Simon Singh’s “Fermat’s Last Theorem”?
And while we’re going on maths, what about cryptography? Bruce Schneier’s “Applied Cryptography” surely would need a mention then.
I’m loth to nominate my own book – so tacky – but Sean forced me into it. 🙂 The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory, wherein, among other things, I have an outsider’s analysis of the String Wars that I’m sure all sides will find equally unpersuasive.
George
Either of the books by Richard Rhodes are indispensable and excellent:
“The Making of the Atomic Bomb”
“Dark Sun”
George, how are you going to become a famous author if you don’t mention your own book at every opportunity? When my textbook came out, I couldn’t stop yapping about it.
Here are a few more recent books for consideration. I do not
think that they have been mentioned yet by anyone else.
‘ The Machinery of Life ‘ by David S. Goodsell ,
Springer-Verlag 1993
‘ Vital Dust – The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth ‘
by Christian de Duve , Basic Books 1995
‘ The Truth of Science – Physical Theories and Reality ‘
by Roger G. Newton , Harvard University Press 1997
‘ G”odel’s Proof ‘ by Nagel and Newman ,
Revised edition 2001 edited by D. Hofstadter
New York University Press
‘ Fearful Symmetry – the search for beauty in modern physics ‘
by A. Zee , new edition 2007 Princeton University Press
Hey George, I’m most definitely an idiot, albeit an idiot with a yearning to understand modern science, so I just ordered your book from Amazon.
I agree that Feynman should not be represented by the “Surely You´re Joking” which is entertaining but hardly can be classified as a popular science book. Among his other books, “The Character of the Physcis Laws” is great, but it is “QED” that represents science popularization in its purest form, free from unnecessary jokes and metaphors. May be it is not very popular among the wide public, but we are trying to make a list of the greatest books, not of the best sold ones, right?