It's the big one, probably the most important "best of" list of the year -- The New York Times. Often a bit spotty on it's science-y coverage, let's see how they fare this year:
- Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership by Lewis Hyde
- Country Driving: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler
- The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food By Paul Greenberg
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles
- Long for this World: The Strange Science of Immortality by Jonathan Weiner
- The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks
- Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives by Annie Murphy Paul
- The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness by Oren Harman
- The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey
Not bad, actually. Some of them might stretch a reasonable definition of "science book" but that's ok.
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.
Earlier entries in this year's list of lists can be found here and the 2009 summary post here.
(By the way, I'm officially calling Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to top the year end summary like The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes did last year.)
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Merchants of Doubt. MUST-READ about the monetary influence and attempts at corrupting science research of Big Tobacco, followed by Big Oil, and the small minority of scientists, usually affiliated with right-wing or libertarian think tanks, who are, to be blunt, "on the take."