Best Science Books 2014: Amazon.com Top 100 Editors Picks

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

And here we are in 2014!

As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion.

Today's list is 2014 Best Books of the Year: The Top 100 in Print Format.

• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
• What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
• A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel
• War of the Whales: A True Story by J. Horwitz
• No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald
• The Oldest Living Things in the World by Rachel Sussman
• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
• Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) by Christian Rudder
• Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness by Neil Swidey
• Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson
• Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo

And check out my previous 2014 lists here!

(Astute readers will notice that I kind of petered out on this project last year and never got around to the end of year summary. The last few years I ended up featuring dozens of lists, virtually every list I could find that had science books on it. While it was kind of cool to be so comprehensive, not to mention that it gave the summary posts a certain statistical weight, it was also way more work than I had really envisioned way back in 2008 or so when I started doing this. As a result, I'm only going to highlight particularly large or noteworthy lists this year and forgo any kind of end of year summary. Basically, all the fun but not so much of the drudgery.)