Best Science Books 2011: Kirkus Reviews

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: Kirkus Reviews.

• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch
• Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth by Curt Stager
• First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth by Marc Kaufman
• Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet by Tim F. Flannery
• Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard
• In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy
• The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks
• The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937 by David Welky
• The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America by Jonathan D. Moreno
• Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life by Martin Meredith
  
• >Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All by Paul A. Offit

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.