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 Science Friday: The Best Science Books of 2015.
Their were two guests on the books of the year episode of Science Friday, Deborah Blum and Maria Popova. Popova's picks were already featured in the Brain Pickings post, so the items below are from Deborah Blum only.
- H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
- The Hunt for Vulcan…And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe by Thomas Levenson
- The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
- Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca Herzig
- Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science—and the World by Rachel Swaby
- The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives by Theresa Brown, RN
- Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words by Randall Munroe
- Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett
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.)
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