{"id":1832,"date":"2008-08-29T11:17:01","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T16:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/08\/29\/the-thousand-best-popular-science-books\/"},"modified":"2008-08-29T11:17:01","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T16:17:01","slug":"the-thousand-best-popular-science-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/the-thousand-best-popular-science-books\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thousand Best Popular-Science Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/twistedphysics.typepad.com\/cocktail_party_physics\/2008\/08\/the-great-pop-s.html\">Cocktail Party Physics,<\/a> Jennifer has cast a baleful eye on the various lists of the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/06\/24\/the-books-of-our-time\/\">world&#8217;s greatest books<\/a>, and decided that we really need is a list of the world&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>We played this game once <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2005\/08\/24\/greatest-popular-science-book\/\">ourselves<\/a>, but like basketball, this is a game that can be enjoyed over and over.  So <a href=\"http:\/\/twistedphysics.typepad.com\/cocktail_party_physics\/2008\/08\/the-great-pop-s.html\">pop over<\/a> 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 &#8212; but just because a work appears here doesn&#8217;t mean that it scores highly on all four counts.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/em>, Jared Diamond<\/li>\n<li><em>Godel, Escher, Bach<\/em>, Douglas Hoftstadter<\/li>\n<li><em>Cosmos<\/em>, Carl Sagan<\/li>\n<li><em>Einstein&#8217;s Clocks and Poincare&#8217;s Maps<\/em>, Peter Galison<\/li>\n<li><em>How the Universe Got Its Spots<\/em>, Janna Levin<\/li>\n<li><em>Chronos<\/em>, Etienne Klein<\/li>\n<li><em>The Language Instinct<\/em>, Steven Pinker<\/li>\n<li><em>Surely You&#8217;re Joking, Mr. Feynman<\/em>, Richard Feynman<\/li>\n<li><em>The Mismeasure of Man<\/em>, Stephen J. Gould<\/li>\n<li><em>Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos<\/em>, Dennis Overbye<\/li>\n<li><em>The Inflationary Universe<\/em>, Alan Guth<\/li>\n<li><em>The Elegant Universe<\/em>, Brian Greene<\/li>\n<li><em>Warped Passages<\/em>, Lisa Randall<\/li>\n<li><em>The Astonishing Hypothesis<\/em>, Francis Crick<\/li>\n<li><em>The Double Helix<\/em>, James Watson<\/li>\n<li><em>Prisoner&#8217;s Dilemma<\/em>, William Poundstone<\/li>\n<li><em>The Blind Watchmaker<\/em>, Richard Dawkins<\/li>\n<li><em>One, Two, Three&#8230; Infinity<\/em>, George Gamow<\/li>\n<li><em>Warmth Disperses and Time Passes<\/em>, Hans Christian Von Baeyer<\/li>\n<li><em>Time&#8217;s Arrow and Archimedes&#8217; Point<\/em>, Huw Price<\/li>\n<li><em>A Brief History of Time<\/em>, Stephen Hawking<\/li>\n<li><em>At Home in the Universe<\/em>, Stuart Kauffman<\/li>\n<li><em>Einstein&#8217;s Dreams<\/em>, Alan Lightman<\/li>\n<li><em>Black Holes and Time Warps<\/em>, Kip Thorne<\/li>\n<li><em>The First Three Minutes<\/em>, Steven Weinberg<\/li>\n<li><em>The Mathematical Experience<\/em>,  Davies and Hersh<\/li>\n<li><em>The Periodic Table<\/em>, Primo Levi<\/li>\n<li><em>Beamtimes and Lifetimes<\/em>, Sharon Traweek<\/li>\n<li><em>The Diversity of Life<\/em>, E.O. Wilson<\/li>\n<li><em>The Emperor&#8217;s New Mind<\/em>, Roger Penrose<\/li>\n<li><em>Longitude<\/em>, Dava Sobel<\/li>\n<li><em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/em>, Thomas Kuhn<\/li>\n<li><em>Flatland<\/em>, Edwin Abbott<\/li>\n<li><em>The Fabric of Reality<\/em>, David Deutsch<\/li>\n<li><em>Nobel Dreams<\/em>, Gary Taubes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t peek at anyone else&#8217;s lists, but I admit that I did peek at my own bookshelves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Cocktail Party Physics, Jennifer has cast a baleful eye on the various lists of the world&#8217;s greatest books, and decided that we really need is a list of the world&#8217;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, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-society","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}