Best Science Books 2014: Financial Times

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 Financial Times Best books of 2014.

• Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance by Julia Angwin
• The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
• The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World by Russell Gold
• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
• No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald
• Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology by Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden
• Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen by Philip Ball
• Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions by Gerd Gigerenzer
• The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science by Armand Marie Leroi
• A Rough Ride to the Future by James Lovelock
• Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

And check out my previous 2014 lists here!

Many of the lists I use use are sourced via the Largehearted Boy master list.

(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.)