Best Science Books 2011: Sean M. Carroll / Cosmic Variance

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: Last-Minute Shopping List by Sean Carroll on Cosmic Variance.

• Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World by Lisa Randall
• The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
• The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins
• The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
• Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed by Carl Zimmer
• The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe by Frank Close
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch
• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
• The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch.
• Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science by Michael Nielsen
• The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions by Alex Rosenberg
• About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang by Adam Frank
• The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek

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.