Best Science Books 2011: Library Journal

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 2011 lists are here.

This post includes the following: Library Journal Business, Consumer Health, Sci-Tech.

• In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Stephen Levy
• Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Book Collective
• Your Medical Mind: How To Decide What Is Right for You by Jerome Groopman & Pamela Hartzband
• Incognito: The Hidden Lives of the Brain by Brian Eagleman
• The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
• Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson
• Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System by Ray Jayawardhana
• The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous People Meet by Eugene Linden
• The Moral Lives of Animals by Dale Peterson
• Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It by Gary Taubes
• Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle
• The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age by Nathan Wolfe
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin

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.

The summary post for 2010 books is here and all the posts for 2010 can be found here. For 2009, it's here and here.

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 and consider picking that one up or something else from the lists.