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 New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014.
- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
- Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra
- The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us by Diane Ackerman
- The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures by Christine Kenneally
- On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
- Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik
- This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein
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.)
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