Best Science Books 2011: The Washington Post

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure.

Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year.

All the previous 2011 lists are here.

This post includes the following: Washington Post Top 10, 50 Best Non-Fiction Books, Great photobooks of 2011.

  • Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
  • Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
  • In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy
  • Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
  • Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age by Susan Jacoby
  • Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers and Skullduggery by Jennie Erin Smith
  • Visions of Earth: Beauty, Majesty, Wonder by National Geographic
  • Ocean Soul by Brian Skerry

I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't covered, please let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot ca or in the comments.

I am picking up a lot of lists from Largehearted Boy.

The summary post for 2010 books is here and all the posts for 2010 can be found here. For 2009, it's here and here.

For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation. Deciding what is and isn't a science book is squishy at best, especially at the margins, but in the end I pick books that seem broadly about science and technology rather than something else completely. Lists of business, history or nature books are among the tricky ones.

And if you wish to support my humble list-making efforts, run on over to Amazon, take a look at Steve Jobs and consider picking that one up or something else from the lists.

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Many of these books are not about science or even the history of it.