Best Science Books 2011: San Francisco Chronicle

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: San Francisco Chronicle Biographies, Essays, History, Nature, Architecture, Travel.

• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
• South With the Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery by Lynne Cox
• Evolution by Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu,
• Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors
• My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism by David Gessner
• Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings

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.