Best Science Books 2015: Brain Pickings Best Science Books of 2015

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, 2013 and 2014.

And here we are in 2015!

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 Brain Pickings Best Science Books of 2015.

• On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf
• Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe by Lisa Randall
• The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua
• The Blue Whale by Jenni Desmond
• The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time by Jimena Canales
  
• >What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence edited by John Brockman
• Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future by Lauren Redniss

And check out my previous 2015 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 a couple of years ago and never got around to the end of year summary since then. Before loosing steam, I ended up featuring dozens and 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.)