best science books 2010
jdupuis | December 28, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--and How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity by Paul Collier
The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen
Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats by Gwynne Dyer
Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It by Anna Lappe and Bill McKibben
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New…
jdupuis | December 23, 2010Although it is perilously close to way too late, but you do have time to rush down to an actual, honest-to-goodness bookstore (or perhaps get an ebook from an estore) and maybe pick up one of these titanic suggestions from Ethan Gilsdorf on Tor.com. All great stuff for the geek in your life.
Hint, hint.
Anyways, here's what Gilsdorg suggests with his descriptions at the original post:
My Best Friend is a Wookiee: One Boy's Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy by Tony Pacitti
Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters
We, Robot: Skywalker's Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots…
jdupuis | December 22, 2010Another couple of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
I've tended not to highlight individual people's blog lists or whatever that much here, just for the sake of my sanity and so as not to go too crazy with the number of posts, but I thought that these two list were very interesting from the point of view of understanding the impact of technology on education and publishing.
Between them, these are a couple of very good places to start reading about where the media/education industrial complex is headed, for good or ill.
I'll include every item on their…
jdupuis | December 21, 2010Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Vancouver Sun
Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit by Loren Steffy
How the Scots Invented the Modern World The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It by Arthur Herman
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Largehearted Boy
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Slate
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Boston Globe
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by…
jdupuis | December 21, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. The list is a compilation of selections from all the different BB editors. I'm also only selecting 2010 books from their lists.
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python by Al Sweigart
Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks by Ben Goldacre
Where Good Ideas Come From: The…
jdupuis | December 20, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Tunguska Mystery by Vladimir Rubtsov
Coming Climate Crisis? Consider the Past, Beware the Big Fix by Claire L Parkinson
How It Ends: From You to the Universe by Chris Impey
Lake Views: This World and the Universe by Steven Weinberg
The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by…
jdupuis | December 20, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
FWIW, this tends to be the most important list for me every year in terms of collection development.
The Vertical Farm: The New Urban Agriculture by Despommier, Dickson
Not a Chimp: The Hunt for the Genes That Make Us Human by Taylor, Jeremy
Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Costs of Civilization by Wells, Spencer
The Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering in a New Era of Discovery by Finkbeiner, Ann
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness by…
jdupuis | December 17, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. This is a compilation of picks from various writers on their Culture Lab blog.
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics by Alex Bellos
Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox by Gareth Williams
The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff
The Mind's Eye by Oliver Wolf Sacks
The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can…
jdupuis | December 16, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg
Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership by Lewis Hyde
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't covered, please let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot…
jdupuis | December 15, 2010Another bunch of shorter lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Salon.com
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Concurring Opinions (Privacy books)
The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors by Hal Niedzviecki
The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick
Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger
New York Magazine
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
(The Skloot book probably deserves a special award for so often being the only science book on a list…
jdupuis | December 15, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
Packing For Mars by Mary Roach
The Legacy by David Suzuki
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg
Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by James M. Tabor
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben
Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell
Keeping…
jdupuis | December 14, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. I've cobbled this together from the critic-by-critic list I point to above.
You Are Not a Gadget: a Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self by Thomas Metzinger
The Plundered Planet by Paul Collier
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't covered, please let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot ca or in the…
jdupuis | December 13, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester
Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century by Michael Hiltzik
Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean by Julia Whitty
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Gun by C.J. Chivers
The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New…
jdupuis | December 13, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. This list is the Holiday Reading list from the Toronto Star Public Policy Forum, picked from individual lists in today's print newspaper. Bizarrely, I wasn't able to find the list online.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It by Robert Glennon
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Carbon Shift: How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada (and Our Lives) by Thomas Homer-Dixon
I'm…
jdupuis | December 10, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming by Paul Edwards
Biology is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life by Rob Carlson
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha…
jdupuis | December 7, 2010Another bunch of shorter lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
LaCrosse Tribune
Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside by Brad Steiger
Becoming a Doctor: From Student to Specialist, Doctor-Writers Share Their Experiences edited by Lee Gutkind
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom
How It Ends: From You to the Universe by Chris Impey
STLtoday
The Gun by C.J. Chivers
The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick
The Immortal Life of…
jdupuis | December 7, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. This one really annoys me because the list is solely embedded in the text of the article, with no separate listing of the titles or even bolding or italicizing the titles. But that's just me, I guess.
Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewitt
Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane
The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalised Medicine by Francis Collins
Genetic Twists of Fate by Stanley Fields & Mark Johnston
The Immortal Life of…
jdupuis | December 6, 2010Another bunch of shorter lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery and the Genius of the Royal Society edited by Bill Bryson
Chamber Four
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Quill & Quire
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by Johan Vaillant
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't…
jdupuis | December 6, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester
Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention by William Rosen
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization by Steven Solomon
And a non-science book that, for obvious reasons, looks particularly…
jdupuis | December 5, 2010Every year the Globe publishes a gift book guide separate from their regular list of notable books. Great for coffee table style books for that special someone. The list has a few non-science items that look particularly cool to me so I'll list those too. (Note that the online version is missing most of the books mentioned in the print version.)
The Native Trees of Canada By Leanne Shapton
Self Sufficiency for the 21st Century by Dick and James Strawbridge
Atlas of the World by Oxford University Press
Explorers: Great Tales of Adventure and Endurance by the Royal Geographical Society
The…