Best Science Books 2011: Physics World

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: Physics World Top 10 books of 2011.

• Engineering Animals: How Life Works by Mark Denny, Alan McFadzean
• Measure of the Earth: the Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped the World by Larrie Ferreiro
• The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
• Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists and Cinema by David Kirby
• Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science by Lawrence Krauss
• Rising Force: the Magic of Magnetic Levitation by James Livingston
• Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet
• The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek
• Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss
• Hindsight and Popular Astronomy by Alan Whiting

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.