Best Science Books 2011: Mother Nature Network

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: Mother Nature Network: Best green and environmental books of 2011.

• The Best Science and Nature Writing of 2011 edited by Mary Roach
• Once and Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us About the Fate of Earth's Largest Mammals by Sharon Levy
• The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and a Half a Billion Honeybees Help Feed America by Hannah Nordhaus
• Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madrigal
• Listed: Dispatches from America's Endangered Species Act by Joe Roman
• Homegrown and Handmade: A Practical Guide to More Self-Reliant Living by Deborah Niemann

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.