Best Science Books 2012: Teaching Biology, Part 3

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 2012 lists are here.

This post includes the following: Top Books of 2012: History of Science, Paleontology , Zoolology.

• Islam, Science, and the Challenge of History by Ahmad Dallal
• Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth: A Celebration of Scientific Eccentricity and Self-Experimentation by Trevor Norton
• The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages by
  Nancy Marie Brown
• Science in the 20th Century and Beyond by Jon Agar
• A History of Science in Society: From Philosophy to Utility, Second Edition by Lesley B. Cormack, Andrew Ede
• Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry about What We Eat by Harvey Levenstein
• Inventing Chemistry: Herman Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts by John C. Powers
• War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, Expanded Edition by Edwin Black
• Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science by Al-Khalili
• The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence M. Principe
• The Evolution of Primate Societies by John C. Mitani, Josep Call, Peter M. Kappeler and Ryne A. Palombit
• Living in a Dangerous Climate: Climate Change and Human Evolution by Renée Hetherington
• Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature by Agustin Fuentes
• The Complete World of Human Evolution (Second Edition) by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews
• Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson
• Human Biology: An Evolutionary and Biocultural Perspective by Sara Stinson, Barry Bogin and Dennis O'Rourke
• Genetics of Original Sin: The Impact of Natural Selection on the Future of Humanity by Christian de Duve, Neil Patterson and Edward O. Wilson
• Evo-Devo of Child Growth: Treatise on Child Growth and Human Evolution by Z. Hochberg
• Origin of Our Species by Chris Stringer
• Evolving Human Nutrition: Implications for Public Health by Stanley Ulijaszek, Neil Mann and Sarah Elton
• The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex by John A. Long
• Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History by David E. Fastovsky and David B. Weishampel
• Embryos in Deep Time: The Rock Record of Biological Development by Marcelo R. Sánchez
• Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline by David Sepkoski
• Piltdown Man and Other Hoaxes: A book about Lies, Legends, and the Search for the Missing Link by Jonathan Maxwell
• Return to the Sea: The Life and Evolutionary Times of Marine Mammals by Annalisa Berta, James L. Sumich and Carl Buell
• African Genesis: Perspectives on Hominin Revolution by Dr Sally C. Reynolds and Andrew Gallagher
• A World of Insects: The Harvard University Press Reader by Ring T. Cardé, Vincent H. Resh, Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson
• Animal Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould
• Animal Eyes by Michael F. Land and Dan-Eric Nilsson
• Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind by Richard Fortey
• Learning From the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease by Rafe Sagarin
• How Not to Be Eaten: The Insects Fight Back by Dr. Gilbert Waldbauer and James Nardi
• Walking Sideways: The Remarkable World of Crabs by Judith S. Weis

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 most of my lists from Largehearted Boy.

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 or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or maybe even something else from today's list.

(I think this is the last one so I'll give it a day or two and then call it closed for purposes of the summary post. I'm hoping to have that by the end of the month.)