Jennifer Ouellette was inspired by the recent book "meme," and is putting together a similar list of pop-science books.
It might surprise some people, but I haven't been a big reader of pop-science books over the years. In fact, I've read few enough of the books on her list that I'm only going to copy over the ones that I have (partially) read. Bold means I finished it, italics are books I've started or skimmed, and books I intend to read someday are marked with an asterisk.
4. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
11. *The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
14. *Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
15. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
16. A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes (If this is the Rutherford biography, I've read it, and it's by Richard Reeves. There's also a Richard Rhodes writing science history books, but I haven't read any of his stuff.)
18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
26. Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman
27. Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
30. The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
33. Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
42. *Longitude, Dava Sobel (I had a very enjoyable lunch with her when she visited campus last year, which bumped her book up the queue, but I haven't got to it yet...)
43. *The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
51. Neuromancer, William Gibson
52. The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
58. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
66. Storm World, Chris Mooney
69. Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
73. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
75. *Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais
That's only 13/75 read, which isn't a great showing on my part. Of course, there are some glaring omissions from the list that I have read:
- Connections by James Burke.
- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Anthropology is a science, right?
- Relativity by Albert Einstein
- QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman. An outstanding book, which justifies his reputation.
- The Mr. Tompkins stories by George Gamow. I have it as Mr. Tompkins in Paperback, but there are several different versions.
- Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.
- Isaac Newton by James Gleick
- Uncertainty by David Lindley. A terrific book about the beginnings of quantum theory.
- The Theory of Almost Everything by Robert Oerter. The story of the Standard Model, and maybe the best modern physics book I've read.
- Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette. She's too modest to put herself on the list, but it's a great read.
- Voodoo Science by Robert Park. The bulldog of the APS takes on all manner of crankery.
- Cosmos by Carl Sagan. The tv show is what everybody remembers, but there's a book, too.
Of course, I'm sure I'm missing some obvious stuff, too. So what else should be on a canonical list of great pop-science books?
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The Lady or the Tiger by Raymond Smullyan (and several others he wrote in a similar vein)
What do you care what other people think? by Feynmann
Thinking Physics by Lewis Carroll Epstein
Asimov's Guide to Physics by Isaac Asimov
Cartoon Guide to Physics by Larry Gonick
ANYTHING by Martin Gardner!
Annals of the Former World, John McPhee. I'm quite surprised this wasn't on the list. (It did win a Pulitzer.) He's done a lot of good stuff, though some of it suffers a bit from age. I'd also recommend Curve of Binding Energy.
I have a love/hate relationship with DF Wallace's Everything and More: a Brief History of Infinity. It's a real mess of a book, but it has an idiosyncratic appeal. I guess it can be enjoyable, but it requires a lot of patience for his antics.
I'm not sure why Neuromancer is on the list. It's a good book but if we're opening up to SF there's a lot of other things I would list first.
Geology wise:
Replacing "Basin and Range" (Which is now part of "Annals of the Former World") by John McPhee I would recommend "Earth, An Intimate History" by Richard Fortey. The science is newer and better.
A couple more by Fortey are "Trilobite" and "Life" both Paleontology at its finest.
Subtitled "Eyewitness to Evolution" and "The Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth" respectively.
In the same line "Extinction" subtitled "How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago" by Douglas Erwin is a great book looking at the internals of the evidence about the Permian extinction and various ideas explaining it. Its discussion of evidence and various theories is one of the best looks at actually doing science that is still accessible to a non-specialist.
This list seems to come around every year or two. There ought to be a Wiki with an edited list with comments for each that is kept by Seed or somebody...
I had only read 14 of the list. There were a lot of important popular science books not on the list. I kind of thought is was more personal.
Thanks, Markk -- I've been looking for exactly that kind of recommendation. I was pretty sure there had to be advances in the science in 25+ years, I just didn't know where to go read about them.
I have only read six of the books on that list, and I agree that there are many others that should be there: James Burke, Jared Diamond (Collapse as well as GGS), Isaac Asimov (whom I credit with inspiring me to go into science; any of the books which compile his monthly science columns would deserve a place on the list), Larry Gonick, Martin Gardner. Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan are definitely underrepresented on that list.
It's the same problem I have with any list of the N greatest ________: Who decides, and by what criteria?
Surely Your Joking Mr Feynmann is not pop science, try his QED lectures for jokey but real science.
Short History of Nearly everything isn't farther up? I'm saddened. It's easily my favorite book.
D-Bar: the number in the list is not supposed to mean anything, according to Jennifers original post.
If you don't want to just put all of Asimov's science essay books on the list, I'd go with Asimov's New Guide to Science. It's the 4th, and final, revision of his review of, well, all of science. I found it to be amazingly effective at demonstrating how Scientific knowledge built, evolved, and accumulated over the centuries.
Not only are the numbers not supposed to mean anything, but I freely admit the list is entirely arbitrary, based on a quick perusal of our bookshelves. An actual "Top 100" list is in the making -- and it won't just reflect my limited reading matter. :)