Best Science Books 2013: The Globe and Mail 100

It is time. The season of lists begins again!

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 I can find around the web in various media outlets.

From the beginning it’s been a pretty popular service so I’m happy to continue it.

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.

Last year's winner was Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. For 2011, it was Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs and 2010 it was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The last few years the winner have been by quite a margin over the competition, so we’ll see if there are any big winners this year as the lists appear.

In any case, the summary post for 2012 books is here and all the posts for 2012 can be found here.

This time around we have The Globe and Mail with their list of top 100. It's a great list with lots of Canadian titles featured.

• Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thompson
• Blood: The Stuff of Life by Lawrence Hill
• An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
• The Book of Immortality by Adam Leith Gollner
• The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be by J.B. MacKinnon
• Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever by Maude Barlow
• The Juggler’s Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us by Carolyn Abraham
• Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet by Ronald J. Deibert
• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
• The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius by Kristine Barnett

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.

And if you wish to support my humble list-making efforts, run on over to Amazon, take a look at Quiet or Steve Jobs or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or maybe even something else from the today's list.