Best Science Books 2010: Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books

A real straggler of a list for your reading and collection development pleasure.

Earlier entries in this year's list of lists can be found here and the 2009 summary post here. The list of top books for 2010 is here. And no, I won't be recalculating the rankings at this late date.

More like this

Yes, this can be very complicated. But what should a middle-school student understand about light? You see stuff in textbooks that is either wrong or just a bunch of disconnected factoids (I like the word factoid).
He of uncertain principles asks Which do you prefer: transverse waves, or longitudinal waves? The fact builder chimes in with a
Transverse or longitudinal waves, purely as a matter of aesthetic preference? Transverse all the way, of course.