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 Backchannel Top 10 Tech Booksof 2014 part I and II.
- The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
- The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age by Astra Taylor
- Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon by Kim Zetter
- Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One’s Looking by Christian Rudder
- Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra
- It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd
- The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr
- Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance by Julia Angwin
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
- Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman
And check out my previous 2014 lists here!
Many of the lists I 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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