Best Science Books 2012: Brain Pickings

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 2012 lists are here.

This post includes the following: Brain Pickings.

• Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired by Till Roenneberg
• The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science by Matt Lamothe, Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski and David Macaulay
• In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World by Ian Stewart
• Ignorance: How It Drives Science by Stuart Firestein
• Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep by David K. Randall
• Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution by Theodore W. Pietsch
• Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang
• Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine by Michael Sappol, Arne Svenson and Laura Lindgren
• The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
• Big Questions from Little People: and Simple Answers from Great Minds by Gemma Elwin Harris

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 most of my lists from Largehearted Boy.

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 or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or maybe even something else from the today's list.