As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,2014 and 2015.
And here we are in 2016!
As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, public health, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.
Today's list is Science News’ favorite books of 2016.
- Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
- The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
- The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
- Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson
- Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils by Lydia Pyne
- What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves by Benjamin K. Bergen
And check out my previous 2016 lists here!
You can also check out my appearances on the Science for the People Gifts for Nerds podcasts for the last few years: 2014, 2015, 2016.
Many of the lists I use are sourced via the Largehearted Boy master list.
(Astute readers will notice that I kind of petered out on this project a couple of years ago and never got around to the end of year summary since then. Before loosing steam, I ended up featuring dozens and dozens of lists, virtually every list I could find that had science books on it. While it was kind of cool to be so comprehensive, not to mention that it gave the summary posts a certain statistical weight, it was also way more work than I had really envisioned way back in 2008 or so when I started doing this. As a result, I'm only going to highlight particularly large or noteworthy lists this year and forgo any kind of end of year summary. Basically, all the fun but not so much of the drudgery.)
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