Best Science Books 2011: Globe and Mail Gift Books

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: Globe and Mail Gift Books.

• A History of The World in 100 Weapons by Chris McNabb
• Voyages: To The New World and Beyond by Gordon Miller
• Explorers: The Most Exciting Voyages of Discovery - From the African Expeditions to the Lunar Landing by Andrea De Porti
• The Physics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection, 250 Milestones in the History of Physics by Clifford A. Pickover
• Animal Life: Secrets of the Animal World Revealed by Charlotte Uhlenbroek
• Encyclopedia of Tropical Plants: Identification and Cultivation of Over 3,000 Tropical Plants by Ahmed Fayaz
• Deceptive Beauties: The World of Wild Orchids by Christian Ziegler
• Beneath Cold Seas: The Underwater Wilderness of the Pacific Northwest by David Hall
• Science: The Definitive Visual Guide edited by Adam Hart-Davis
• Violent Earth: Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Mudslides, Tsunamis by Robert Dinwiddie et al
• The Book of the Wind: The Representation of the Invisible by Alessandro Nova
• Atlas of Oceans by John Farndon
• Frozen Planet: A World Beyond Imagination by Alastair Fothergill and Vanessa Berlowitz
• Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer & Build by Peter Goodfellow
• Auroras: Fire in the Sky by Dan Bortolotti, photos by Yuichi Takasaka
• The Human Body Close-Up by John Clancy
• The Natural World Close-Up by Giles Sparrow
• The Sacred Headwaters: The Fight to Save the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass by Wade Davis
• The Roof at the Bottom of the World: Discovering the Transantarctic Mountains by Edmund Stump

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.