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 News' favorite books of 2015.
- The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf
- The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives by Stephen Buchmann
- The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss is Already in Your Gut by Tim Spector
- Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled On by Hawking Became Loved by Marcia Bartusiak
- How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction by Beth Shapiro
- The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction by Pat Shipman
- The Science of Mom: A Research-Based Guide to Your Baby's First Year by Alice Green Callahan
- Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig by Mark Essig
- Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
- Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World by Brooke Borel
- Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman
- Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English by Michael D. Gordin
- A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design by Frank Wilczek
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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