Best Science Books 2011: The Independent

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: The Independent Books of the Year: Science, History.

• The Quantum Universe: Everything that can happen does happen by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
• Wonders of the Universe by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen
• The Magic of Reality: How we know what's really true by Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean
• The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes by Steven Pinker
• Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet by Tim Flannery
• The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in Space by Mary Roach
• A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil Macgregor

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.