Best Science Books 2011: Kansas City Star, Salon, Slate, Zocalo Public Square

Another bunch of lists 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:

Kansas City Star Top 100 Books of 2011

• Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation by Andrea Wulf
• The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960 by Douglas Brinkley
• Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook

Salon Best Non-fiction of 2011

• The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick

Slate Best Books 2011

• The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
• Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl

Zocalo Public Square Just Buy These 10 Books Now

• World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement by Robert P. Crease
• Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
• Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White

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.