Favourite Science Books

Wow - this one is old: December 29, 2004. It is in a need of serious updating, not to mention providing amazon links so I can earn pennies if you click and buy. But, it is still a good list nontheless:

I have picked my top ten books on politics and have posted a long list of books before, and now, as I promised, here is my list of best science books. As I struggled so much to restrict myself to just 10 books on politics, and left out so many worthy titles, this time around I decided to cheat a little. Instead of Top 10 Science Books, I will make a meta-list of my top picks of books in each of the 6 science topics. Sorry - it is almost all biology due to the professional bias. I have restricted myself to books I own, and have read (at least big chunks) relatively recently (though some are so important I waived that last criterion). Also, I will just write titles - I am too lazy and tired right now to find all the links to amazon.com and anyway, I want to move from amazon to Powells these days in order to Buy Blue [Ed.: Darn, I still have not done that!]. So just google the titles, or copy and paste into your favourite online bookseller's webpage search engine [...or find another link on this blog and go from there]. Add your own (or criticize my choices) in the comments. Here we go:

1) Genetics Explained:
Stephen Rose - Lifelines
Richard Lewontin - The Triple Helix
Evelyn Fox Keller - The Century of the Gene
David Moore - The Dependent Gene
Jonathan Marks - What it means to be 98% chimpanzee
Lewontin, Rose and Kamin - Not In Our Genes
Dorothy Nelkin and M.Susan Lindee - The DNA Mystique
Ruth Hubbard abd Elijah Wald - Exploding the Gene Myth
...and once all these arm you against the seductive rhetoric of genetics, go and see the exciting stuff that geneticists have really found:
John Medina - The Genetic Inferno
Jonathan Weiner - Time, Love, Memory

2) Evolution for the 21st Century:
Stephen Jay Gould - The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
Susan Oyama - The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution
David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober - Unto Others
Robert Brandon - Adaptation and Environment
Susan Oyama - Cycles of Contingency : Developmental Systems and Evolution
Niles Eldredge - Reinventing Darwin
Terrence Deacon - The Symbolic Species
Stephen Jay Gould - Ontogeny and Phylogeny
Stephen Jay Gould - The Wonderful Life
Joan Roughgarden - Evolution's Rainbow
Stuart Kauffman - At Home in the Universe
Carl Zimmer - Parasite Rex
Jonathan Weiner - The Beak of the Finch
Rudolf Raff - The Shape of Life
Evelyn Fox Keller and Elizabeth Lloyd - Keywords in Evolutionary Biology
Kenneth McNamara - Shapes of Time
Stephen R. Palumbi - The Evolution Explosion: How Humans Cause Rapid Evolutionary Change Misia Landau - Narratives of Human Evolution

3) Animals, Ecology and Natural History:
May Berenbaum - Buzzwords
May Berenbaum - Bugs in the System
R.J.Hoage - Perceptions of Animals in American Culture
Michael Rosenzweig - Win-Win Ecology
Matt Cartmill - A View to a Death in the Morning
Harriet Ritvo - The Animal Estate
Paul Shepard - The Others
Paul Shepard - Traces of the Omnivore
Deborah Gordon - Ants at Work
Niles Eldredge - Dominion
Stephen Budiansky -The Nature of Horses
Roger Caras - A Perfect Harmony
Keith Thomas - Man and the Natural World
Stephen Kellert - Kinship to Mastery
Julian McAllister Groves - Hearts and Minds
Alfred Crosby - Ecological Imperialism
Lester R. Brown - Eco-Economy: Building a New Economy for the Environmental Age

4) Physiology and Behavior:
Stephen Budiansky - If A Lion Could Talk
Marc Hauser - Wild Minds
Sara Shettleworth - Cognition, Evolution and Behavior
Mitchel, Thoompson and Miles - Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes and Animals
Robert Sapolsky - Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
Robert Sapolsky - The Trouble With Testosterone
Robert Sapolsky - The Primate's Memoir
Knut Schmidt-Nielsen - The Camel's Nose
Bernd Heinrich - Mind of the Raven
Eric Widmaier - Why Geese Don't Get Obese (and We Do)
J.Scott Turner - Extended Organism
Hochachka and Somero - Biochemical Adaptation
Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl - The Scientist in the Crib
Steven R. Quartz, Terrence J. Sejnowski - Liars, Lovers, and Heroes
R Jourdain - Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy : How Music Captures Our Imagination

5) Health, Medicine, Clocks, Sleep, Aging and Death:
Mary Roach - Stiff
M.Lee Goff - A Fly for the Prosecution
Hal Hellman - Great Feuds in Medicine
Michael Gershon - The Second Brain
Rudolph Nesse and George Williams - Why We Get Sick
Leonard Hayflick - How and Why We Age
Roger Gosden - Cheating Time
Sherwin Nuland - How We Die
Peter Breggin - Talking Back to Prozac
Carl Zimmer - Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How It Changed the World
Andrea Rock - The Mind at Night
Russell Foster - Rhythms of Life
Jay Dunlap, Jennifer Loros and Patricia DecCoursey - Chronobiology
John Palmer - The Living Clock
Michael Smolensky - The Body Clock Guide to Better Health
Martin Moore-Ede - The Twenty Four Hour Society
A.Alvarez - Night
William Dement - The Promise of Sleep
Stanley Coren - Sleep Thieves

6) Meta-science, Pseudo-science and Nonsense (sounds nicer than Miscellaneous or "Other"):
David Sloan Wilson - Darwin's Cathedrals
Frank Sulloway - Born to Rebel
Dean Keith Simonton - Origin of Genius
Michael Shermer - The Borderlands of Science
Steven Vogel - Cats' Paws and Catapults
Richard Lewontin - It Ain't Neccessarily So
Richard Lewontin - Biology as Ideology
R.Lewontin and R.Levin - The Dialectical Biologist
Stephen Jay Gould - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
Stephen Jay Gould - Rocks of Ages
Stephen Jay Gould - The Hedgehog, The Fox, The Magister's Pox
Stephen Jay Gould - Full House
Stephen Jay Gould - Mismeasure of Man
Clara Pinto-Correia - The Ovary of Eve
Evelyn Fox-Keller - Re-Inventing Life
Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths - Sex and Death
David Livingstone - Putting Science in its Place
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel
Michael Shermer - Why People Believe Weird Things
Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World
Richard Pennock - The Tower of Babel
Barbara Carroll Forrest and Paul R. Gross - Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design
Michael Shermer - How We Believe
Phillip Kitcher - Abusing Science
Martin Gardner - Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus