Jennifer Oullette has put together a pop-sci book meme (and John Lynch has joined in). It’s the usual thing, a long list of books and you’re supposed to highlight the ones you’ve read, this time with the theme being that they’re all about science somehow. I detect a physics bias in Ms. Oullette’s choices, however, despite the excellent beginning — and it’s to that I ascribe my poor performance. That and some weird choices: since when is Neuromancer pop-sci? Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon or Snowcrash would be better choices if we’re going to throw fiction in the mix, or Sterling’s Schismatrix. If we open the door to SF, though, the howling hordes will pour in and we’ll never get anything done.
Anyway, here’s my copy of the list:
- Micrographia, Robert Hooke
- The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
- Never at Rest, Richard Westfall
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
- Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
- The Devil’s Doctor, Philip Ball
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
- Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
- Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
- 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
- The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
- Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
- Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
- Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
- A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
- A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes
- Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
- A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
- Universal Foam, Sidney Perkowitz
- Vermeer’s Camera, Philip Steadman
- The Code Book, Simon Singh
- The Elements of Murder, John Emsley
- Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer
- Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis
- The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson
- Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
- Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
- The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine
- A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
- The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
- E=mc2, David Bodanis
- Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife
- Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
- A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin
- Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
- Apollo’s Fire, Michael Sims
- Flatland, Edward Abbott
- Fermat’s Last Theorem, Amir Aczel
- Stiff, Mary Roach
- Astroturf, M.G. Lord
- The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
- Longitude, Dava Sobel
- The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
- The Mummy Congress, Heather Pringle
- The Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio
- Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay
- This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
- The Executioner’s Current, Richard Moran
- Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
- Pythagorus’ Trousers, Margaret Wertheim
- Neuromancer, William Gibson
- The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
- The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
- Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
- Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison
- The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
- The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
- The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
- An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
- Consilience, E.O. Wilson
- Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
- Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
- Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel
- The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
- Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
- Storm World, Chris Mooney
- The Carbon Age, Eric Roston
- The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind
- Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
- From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
- Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
- Chaos, James Gleick
- Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
- The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
- Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais
Jennifer did suggest that we make additions, so let’s beef up the biology a bit with a few more off the top of my head (OK, McPhee and Rudwick are geology…but that needs bolstering, too!).
- Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski
- Basin and Range, John McPhee
- Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner
- Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod
- Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, Olivia Judson
- Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll
- Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl Zimmer
- Genome, Matt Ridley
- Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
- It Ain’t Necessarily So, Richard Lewontin
- On Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
- Phantoms in the Brain, VS Ramachandran
- The Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins
- The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth Lloyd
- The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland Judson
- The Great Devonian Controversy, Martin Rudwick
- The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
- The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
- The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard Lewontin
- Time, Love, Memory, Jonathan Weiner
- Voyaging and The Power of Place, Janet Browne
- Woman: An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier
ID has invaded sci-fi, to good effect:
http://behefails.wordpress.com
Or use this link to read about ID and Sci-fi:
http://io9.com/5042727/in-recent-scifi-novels-intelligent-design-is-truth
Glen D
Let’s see. Of these, I’ve only read:
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
Flatland, Edward Abbott
Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
Neuromancer, William Gibson
The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne (and about 30 more by Verne)
Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
Genome, Matt Ridley
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
I think one good title missing is “The Red Queen: Sex And Evolution Of The Human Nature” by Matt Ridley.
Oops. I got the Red Queen’s full title wrong. It’s “The Red Queen: Sex And The Evolution Of Human Nature”.
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan.
The name of Darwin’s contribution is incorrect?
Wow, what a list! I have 54 of those listed, 51 of which I have read, Steven Weinberg’s “The First Three Minutes” read three times, but surprised not to see his “Facing Up:Science and It’s Cultural Adversaries”. all great stuff here and am proud to have read and own them. No bragging here, but just a sincere attitude of how I encompass the world of science. Of course, we could spend days just posting comments on those wonderful books! How could one waste time with religious nonsense with these books at hand?
Thanks for the suggested additions, everyone! And yes, I acknowledged the physics bias upfront, hence the request for more suggestions. This isn’t going to be a final meme, BTW — it’s a project in progress.
So why is Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene missing? Sorry to disagree, but it changed my life more than ‘the Science of Star Trek’.
Natural Revelation, PZ Myers
But Kraus’s “Physics of Star Trek” is damned nifty.
I find from this list that I’ve only read physics and math rarely and only when they promised something entertaining (I read your Buffy book, Jennifer, because I love Buffy, e.g.), but with biology, I love the thing in itself so much that I think I’ve read every book on PZ’s list. I like that there’s an effort to spread around the wealth, too, because let’s face it, the whole Sagan, Zimmer, Dawkins, and Gould corpi could go on the list, pretty much.
I’ve recently been reading some Darwin, and it’s hard going, because of the archaic language. Words change meaning, phraseology changes too, & Darwin himself wasn’t clear about things that we now understand better.
So here’s a challenge to a literate biologist: Re-write, or do a translation of, “The Origin of the Species”, by Charles Darwin. Put in footnotes to explain the important things that we’ve learnt since Darwin’s time.
Then the Creationists could read it & realize where they’re thinking is going wrong. I think that this really needs to be done, by an authorative person. How about it, PZ?
Fidfty-plus years ago, I read “The Descent of Man”, when I was about ten, & became an atheist about two years later, because Darwin had thoroughly convinced me.
Ah, so many of those books I have on my shelf, waiting for me to open them up and start reading. Sadly though, all I can find time for these days are journal articles. Oh, I miss my books!
No such list could ever be complete or adequate without Rats, Lice and History, by Hans Zinsser.
See Steven Jones’s Darwin’s Ghost. Precisely what you’re looking for, perhaps.
How about some love for Michio Kaku and Neil Degrasse Tyson? Kaku’s “Hyperspace” and probably Tyson’s “The Sky is not the Limit” would be great adds. And I agree with #5 that Sagan’s “Cosmos” should be on the list. (Sorry, PZ, more physics books!)
I’m a big fan of Richard Feynman. I read What Do You Care What Other People Think? and Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.
The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
But several of those others are on my list to read soon.
Not much on Quantum Physics.
My favorite on the list would be Godel, Escher, Bach. It’s worth the time.
I’m just a godless liberal who knows little of science. So, I’ll have to put down my history books and start reading some science. After visiting this website a number of times, I have bought Richard Dawkins “The Selfish Gene.”
I hope that’s a good start.
Right now I am reading “Rising Tide : The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America”
Very interesting book. I highly recommend it.
By “pop-sci” do you mean “awesome”? Because then I can see how it definitely falls within the realm of “pop-sci”. I freak’n loved Neuromancer.
I am patiently waiting for PZ to publish a book. That’s a book I would purchase and read immediately.
Neuromancer is popular science, only it relates to Computer Science, and not one of those whacky experimental sciences.
#9: sjburnt
Considering this is a meme, that book would have been appropriate!
Frozen Star by George Greenstein is excellent as well. Written in 1985, it was already pretty dated by the time I got my hands on a copy, but if neutron stars, pulsars, and black holes make your toes tingle (in the good way, not in the ‘damn Canadian winters’-way), it’s worth tracking down a copy.
A bit more paleoanthropology, perhaps, and a lot more Steve Jones!
Wow, I’ve read NONE of those! Though I do have a copy of Neuromancer here to get through sometime.
That list gives me a good guide to go from, I’m always looking for books on science. Currently reading The Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer.
IMO, some of the best popular writing on scientific method plus some of the most mind-bending lectures (eg: “There is plenty of room at the bottom”) are found in two small volumes of Richard Feynman’s:
“The Pleasure of Finding Things Out” and
“The Meaning of it All”
Carl Zimmer has a new one: Microcosm
Do *not* wait for the movie!
Is Diane Ackerman’s Natural History of the Senses not scientific enough? A bit saccharine and occasionally strident, still it was a “nice” book.
LisaJ @ 13
You struck a nerve Lisa, and believe me, you should not keep putting off reading your books. The older you get the less impact they will have on your mind and outlook. I love books; they are the stored receptacles of great minds which can be delved into at your leisure for inspiration, knowledge, and history. Years ago I came across an American author from the first half of the twentieth century who has written some wonderful stuff, all easy reading, with many worthwhile ideas to impart. His name is Christopher Morley, and the book in particular worth mentioning is his light fiction “The Haunted Bookshop” which he wrote in 1919. In the book he has one of his characters expressing this condition on the love of reading: “Long ago I fell back on books as the only permanent consolers. They are the one stainless and unimpeachable achievent of the human race. It saddens me to think that I shall have to die with thousands of books unread that would have given me noble and unblemished happiness.” This chokes me up every time I read this!
Read those books Lisa before you lose the desire to do so!
It should be the entire book, “Annals of the Former World” for John McPhee.
What about Your Inner Fish? that was easily one of the best pop-sci books I’ve read. The Double Helix would be a good addition too.
Some really important books on biology are missing in the list. What about:
Towards a New Philosophy of Biology – Ernst Mayr
The Hot Zone – Richard Preston
Microbe Hunters – Paul de Kruif
Deadly Feasts – Richard Rhodes
Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature – Francis Crick
What is Life – Erwin Schrodinger
Of Molecules and Men – Francis Crick
A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness – V.S. Ramachandran
The Blank Slate – Steven Pinker
Consciousness Explained – Daniel Dennett
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory – Steven Jay Gould
The Future of Life – E.O. Wilson
This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World – Ernst Mayr
The Origins of Order – Stuart Kauffman
Finally, somewhat technical but great:
Prion Biology and Diseases – Stanley Prusiner
wow! I’m pleased to see PZ read Gödel, Escher and Bach, one of my all time favorites
*tastes*
needs more Mary Roach. her latest, Bonk (The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex) was great. and i’d put Spook (Science Tackles the Afterlife) on the list before Stiff (The Curous Lives of Human Cadavers)
I’ve only read 4 in the top group and 2 in the bottom group. Can we add in books we’ve bought but haven’t read yet? I can double my number if we can. I swear I’m going to get to Steven Pinker and Gould any minute!
But not bad for a graphic artist, actually.
I’d have to call “Guns, Germs and Steel” my favorite and most eye opening. And it was so fascinating I didn’t even realize what a bad writer Diamond was until halfway through the book.
^ “curIous”
*sigh*
What, no Asimov?
I’ve read # 4, 27, 30, 37, 42, 56, 61, 70 and 76. Even though he may be a bit dated today, I would recommend any of Isaac Asimov’s non-fiction.
With disappointment I see that Collapse by Jared Diamond isn’t listed. It really is an even bigger eye-opener than Guns, Germs, and Steel.
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory? Come on, I know just one person who actually read it, and his time could have been better spent. I just read the abstract (almost 100 pages). Someone should have done some serious editing before publication!
If we can add sci-fi to the list, can we add sci-com? I’m all about the hitchhikers guide…. (although there really is no science to it, just a drunk).
But seriously, I’ve only read 2 of the books on the list :(
I agree with Adam Cuerden — I would also add “Your Inner Fish” to the list.
And I’m truly baffled as to why “The Canon” by Natalie Angier isn’t there.
And if we count psychology — which I think we should — I am going to insist on adding “Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts,” by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Fracking brilliant. A life-changer.
Of the list that exists, here’s mine:
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Neuromancer, William Gibson (didn’t care for it, but I read it)
The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
Genome, Matt Ridley
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
Phantoms in the Brain, VS Ramachandran
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
With many more on my increasingly terrifying “to read” tower. (I am deeply ashamed of myself for not having read “Woman: An Intimate Geography” and “The Case of the Female Orgasm” already.)
(BTW, I did read “Metamagical Themas” by Hofstadter, but never got around to “Godel Escher Bach.”)
And a dissenting opinion on “Bonk.” Roach’s attitude towards sex was way too adolescent, fluctuating between snickering and being grossed out. A grown-up should be able to write about sex without going, “Ew, ick!” or falling into fits of childish giggles. And if she can’t, maybe she should write about something else. (Full review here, for anyone who’s interested.)
The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker ought to be on there.
this is great, I’ve been looking for a good list of decent pop-sci books, particularly biology though, and non-evolution related because there is a surplus of those already, still, great list!
If there’s going to be a Richard Feynman book – and there should be! – I’d go for “QED: The strange theory of light and matter”.
And what about “The tragedy of the Moon” by Isaac Asimov?
I wasn’t a huge fan of Chaos. It focused a bit too much on the personalities and the early work done in chaos theory with only the bare minimum of explanation regarding chaos theory itself. Plus it was a bit long-winded.
I don’t want to rain on this parade–there’s a lot of good stuff on all those lists–but how on earth did Krakatoa make anybody’s list of good anythings? The whole book was one long Bulwer-Lytton entry. How anyone could take an event as exciting as an entire island blowing up, and squeeze every bit of excitement out of it, leaving four-hundred-and-some-odd pages of tedious and horrific prose is beyond me. I’m sure there have been some fantastic books written on Krakatoa. Winchester’s book was not one of them.
A specific Asimov recommendation
A Short History of Chemistry
The Selfish Gene- Richard Dawkins
Any science book by Asimov is readable. Unfortunately, since the Good Doctor has been dead for some 16 years, his books are becoming dated. However, I do have Asimov’s New Guide to Science within easy reach because I do refer to it fairly often.
Thanks for the motivation Holbach! (#32). I, like you, love love my books. I really am always reading something, it’s just that these days it takes me a lot longer than I’d like to get through a book because of all of my other required reading. It’s sad :( I have a good pile that I want to read, and I wish I could get through even one a month! That was a fantastic quote too… I’ll never give up reading, as long as I’m able to, and I really sympathize with the sentiment in the quote.
Right now I’m reading Microcosm by Carl Zimmer. So far so good. He’s a fantastic writer, and I’m really impressed with how exciting he can make bacteria sound!
Oh yes, I also wanted to add my vote for adding ‘Your Inner Fish’ to the list. What a great little book that was. I read it earlier this year, and loved it. I was also lucky enough to be able to attend a book reading and interview session with Neil Shubin here in Ottawa, and he signed my book and we got a picture together :)
A couple of additions to the list:
“Everything and More”, David Foster Wallace
“Chaos – Making a New Science”, James Gleick
Actually, nearly anything by Gleick works for me.
Lisa J: I know little of science except what I gleaned in high school which was many years ago, but the book “Your Inner Fish” intrigues me. Can you recomment this to a non-scientific person?
more biology “pop sci”, though it’s as much a collection of published papers with very interesting historical and sociological commentary by the author:
Narrow Roads of Gene Land (vols 1-3), W.D. Hamilton
Qwerty, yes I would absolutely recommend ‘Your Inner Fish’ to a non-scientist. Dr. Shubin did a wonderful job of writing his book in a manner that makes it accessible really to anyone who is interested in learning more about evolution and development. It’s a great science book for all audiences. I found it to be quite the page turner too. Pick it up for sure!
The web-niche for this meme is some kind of virtually assembled bookshelf-picture, such as “Shelfari.”
Cool, I just had that idea as I was beginning to type in this (my first ever on Pharyngula!) message, and figured a social networking virtual bookshelf must already web-exist. Did some googling (tried a few stupid-megahit term combos then went “duh” and said: “virtual bookshelf”). Anyway: I can’t actually be bothered to set up an account on a lark, so down below is just a cut-away of PZ’s initial list, for me own self.
I like the idea of the meme because it is like going to somebody’s house and judging them by scanning their bookshelves. I do kind of dislike the size of the list – that virtual bookshelf thing might really come in handy if I didn’t actually have to remember to maintain it myself. I especially esteem Pinker and McPhee. Hofstadter’s great too, but I do tire of being reminded how impressed he is with his own intelligence. My inclusions are the five at the very bottom.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
Flatland, Edward Abbott
Longitude, Dava Sobel
Neuromancer, William Gibson
The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
Chaos, James Gleick
Basin and Range, John McPhee
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
The Road to Reality, Roger Penrose
A Brief History of the World, J.M. Roberts
The Beauty of Fractals Pietgen and Richter
Chariots of Apollo, Charles Pellegrino
Thanks Lisa J.
You’ve “hooked” my inner fish. I’m going to buy it. I heard about the book while watching a lecture about the Kitzmiller case on Youtube.
Oh, and I had wanted to say something about books people don’t have on their bookshelves being part of the judging process too, but got hung up in the trivia of previewing and editing. Then flush with success, I posted. ShFcDm.
I am holding out for “It’s a Fracking Cladogram” by PZ Myers…
LisaJ @ 53
Glad you like the comments and quote. I have “Microcosm” but not read it yet. Here are the other books I have by Carl Zimmer; “Soul Made Flesh: the Discovery Of the Brain- and How It Changed the World”; “At the Water’s Edge: Macroevolution and the Transformation Of Life”; “Evolution: the Triumph Of An Idea”; “Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World Of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures”. All good stuff here! I also have “Your Inner Fish”, but have yet to start that either.
And oh, so many good books to read, and so little time! I used to have a poster that pictured a young woman standing amid a pile of books with an anguished look on her face, and the caption reads: “So Many Books, So Little Time!” Oh, to be able to knock off twenty years of your life and devote that added time to read those books that you never got around to for some reason or other! My books sit there quietly and unobtrusive on the shelves, and as I pass them they seem to convey the delightful message that they are always here, ready to to transport me to another time and place. I’ll leave you with another quote by an author I cannot recall at the moment: “Next to a good friend, the best acquisition is that of a book.”
I’ve only read four of the list… but this was timely as I just finished a long fiction series and was looking unsuccessfully earlier for a good book. Saw several on the list I had forgotten about I wanted to read.
I second (or should that be third?) Microcosm – but anything by Zimmer is good. And I’d add The song of the dodo (David Quammen), The island of the colour-blind (Oliver Sacks), Mutants (Armand Marie LeRoi)…
The Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin
Although I didn’t agree with his conclusions regarding some of the native cultures, his descriptions give a good foundation for how he viewed the state of various social structures. The descriptions make me question some of things that are even now accepted in the general population as human nature instead of learned behavior.
The book is also fun to read and gives insight into some of the information presented in The Origin of Species.
“The Abacus and the Rose,” Jacob Bronowski, in Science and Human Values, New York: Harper Torch Books, 1965.
Well, I’ve read 14 off the original list (plus attended lectures by Dr. Von Bayer) and five off of PZ’s addendum. Not bad.
I’d add “In the Shadow of Man” from Jane Goodall, “Gorillas in the Mist” by Dian Fossey, “Coming of Age in Samoa” from Margaret Mead and “Lucy” from Donald Johansen. I also have a soft spot for “Connections” by James Burke. And if we are allowing fiction on the list, we must have The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. No excuses.
#68 – “Connections” by James Burke. Couldn’t agree more.
I love Sagan’s books but I wouldn’t take the one on the list if could only choose one for a desert island etc.
I’d add two more books by David Quammen:
“The Flight of the Iguana”
“Monster of God”
E. O. Wilson’s autobiography, “Naturalist”
I’m only a middle school math teacher (double major in applied math and physics) but I’m surprised at how many of these I’ve read.
2. The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
4. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
10. 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
12. Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
15. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
26. Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
27. Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
42. Longitude, Dava Sobel
53. The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
56. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
57. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
65. Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
70. From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
76. Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski
84. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
88. The Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins
92. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
93. The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
I’d add
Broca’s Brain, Carl Sagan
The Third Chimpanze, Jared Diamond
What is Man?, Mark Twain
A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach
A History of Pi, Petr Beckmann
Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, Mark Plotkin
Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner
E. O. Wilson’s autobiography, “Naturalist”
along with “Sociobiology”, for that matter.
An absolutely beautiful book with science as its inspiration is “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman. Made a huge impact on me when I read it, and I was already 30 at the time. It captures the true wonder of exploring new questions, with the great multitude of exciting possibilities out there to consider.
Another book not mentioned on the list that I loved is “King Solomon’s Ring” by Konrad Lorenz. Maybe not up to the level of some of the books, but still a fun read.
Monod? Isn’t “Chance and Necessity” a religious tract? (Teleology) I’ll admit that its been a long time since I read it, but it struck me as an attempt to reconcile the natural world and religion.
Nothing by Watson, “The Double Helix”, certainly pop-sci, or even the recent one about the RNA tie club, “Genes, Girls, and Gamow” or whatever it was called.
Heisenberg’s “Physics and Beyond” and McCormmach’s “Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist”. I’m a chemist, but quantum theory seems to me the seminal breakthrough of the first half of the 20th century, until molecular biology caught up.
I guess I’ve read about the same percentage as PZM of the original list. But, PZ, I have to say that if you haven’t read Primo Levi’s “Periodic Table” you really have a treat in store. Don’t let the title fool you, it’s not a ‘basic introduction to chemistry’; it’s a profoundly humanistic and science-savvy detective story, where the ‘detection’ concerns the nature of matter.
What I find interesting about the list is that it really is a mish mash of different kinds of writings lumped together under an essentially meaningless category of “pop sci.” There are some books that can be claimed to be popular science writing by famous scientists (Hawking, Gamow). There are similar works by journalists (Gleick, Angier) There are books that pre-date the genre entirely and should really be thought of as straight scientific works rather than popularizations (Darwin, Hooke). There are books that are not really scientific popularizations, but serious and scholarly works of history (Westfall, Rudwick). Then there are books by scientists written in a popular mode but really aimed at advancing their own scientific program at the expense of their rivals (Wilson, Gould, Pinker, Weinberg).
By what logic do they all get lumped together as ‘sci pop?” That they’re good reads? That they aren’t journal articles? That they explain some scientific principles with a minimum of jargon?
My favorites are falling in line with many other people here. I definitely would have Neil Shubin’s book on my list.
And………
As far as I am concerned, any self-respecting skeptic must include some Isaac Asimov. The man wrote more material than I can shake a stick at.
Dino @ 74
No, “Chance and Necessity” by Jacques Monod is in no way a book reconciling the natural world and religion. I quote from his book in front of me: “Monod stated his conviction that life began by the chance collision of particles of nucleic acid in the “prebiotic soup”, and that human evolution came about by a paradoxical combination of free, unpredictable mutations and the kind of necessity, or inexorable natural selection, of which Darwin spoke.” And in his own words as quoted: “Chance alone is the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty at the root of the prodigous edifice that is evolution: this central notion of modern biology is today the only one conceivable. Man knows at last that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe. His duty, like his fate, is written nowhere.”
There is no reconciliation in there whatsoever, and perhaps you are confusing him with anotherm author with almost similiar ideas. He is a favorite of mine, and as an atheist he speaks to me with sincere distaste for religion.
That they’re good reads?
yes.
That they aren’t journal articles?
yes.
That they explain some scientific principles with a minimum of jargon?
yup.
I’m sure you could think of a couple more, too.
do we have to pick one?
Well, I’ve only read a few…
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis
Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
Flatland, Edward Abbott
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Chaos, James Gleick
I’d add
Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot
Quantum Reality, Nick Herbert
Do Zinn and Chomsky work with this list or are they not “science” enough?
I second Alison. Song of the Dodo. A great book.
Roger Tory Peterson’s field guides and all the field guides influenced by him since then.
Hey, why not? We are talking science, after all.
Updating Darwin has been done:
* Darwin’s Ghost: “The Origin of Species” Updated by Steve Jones
On my to-read list.
I’ve read these. List is not complete:
* Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert L. Park
* Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner
* The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher by Lewis Thomas
* Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould
* The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas
* Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
* The Velvet Claw: A Natural History of the Carnivores by David Macdonald
* Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
* The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
* Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
* Stars, Men and Atoms by Heinz Haber
* The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
* An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas by Stephen Jay Gould
* On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz; Marjorie Kerr Wilson (tr.)
* The Fragile Species by Lewis Thomas
* Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony by Lewis Thomas
* Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
* Jacobson’s Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell by Lyall Watson
* Darwin for Beginners by Jonathan Miller, Borin Van Loon
* The Dawn of Life by J. H. Rush
* Inside the Nucleus by Irving Adler; Ruth Adler (illustrator) …and lots of other books from the Signet Science Library
* African Genesis: The Animal Origins and Nature of Man by Robert Ardrey
* The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations by Robert Ardrey
* Here Am I — Where Are You? The Behavior of the Greylag Goose by Konrad Lorenz
* Why We Run: A Natural History by Bernd Heinrich
* King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz; Marjorie Kerr Wilson (tr.)
* Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer
* The Best American Science Writing, anything in the series
* The Best American Science and Nature Writing, anything in the series
* The Marine Biology Coloring Book by Thomas M. Niesen; Wynn Kapit (ill.) (this represents a class of informative coloring books)
* Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks
* An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks
* The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
* I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
* The Living Clocks by Ritchie R. Ward
* Powers of Ten by Philip Morrison, Phylis Morrison, Charles & Ray Eames
* The Island of the Colorblind: and Cycad Island by Oliver W. Sacks
* Newton’s Madness: Further Tales of Clinical Neurology by Harold L. Klawans
* The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by Antonio R. Damasio
* The Seashell on the Mountaintop: …A New History of the Earth by Alan Cutler
* Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Strange and Fascinating Cases (forensic science) by William R. Maples
* Toronto Rocks: The Geological Legacy of the Toronto Region by Nick Eyles
* some of Isaac Asimov’s science books
* Newton’s Tyranny: The Suppressed Scientific Discoveries of Stephen Gray and John Flamsteed by David Clark
* The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe by Arthur Koestler
* Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
* The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age by Edmund Blair Bolles
* Chasing Science: Science as Spectator Sport by Frederik Pohl
* Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Do by Candace B. Pert
* After Man: A Zoology of the Future by Dougal Dixon
* Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale by Judith Hooper (in progress)
* “best of” John McPhee (don’t remember exact title)
* The Miner’s Canary: Unravelling the Mysteries of Extinction by Niles Eldredge
* Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It by Loren Eiseley
* Pigs Pigs Pigs by Lyall Watson
* At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs by Carl Zimmer
* How to Lie with Statistics (in progress)
* Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer (in progress)
To be read:
* Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human by Richard Leakey, Roger Lewin
* Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species by y Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan
* The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions by David Quammen
* The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
* Winston Churchill’s Afternoon Nap: A wide-awake inquiry into the human nature of time by Jeremy Campbell
* The Living Clocks by Ritchie R. Ward
* Why Do Buses Come in Threes? The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life by Rob Eastaway, Jeremy Wyndham
* Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles by Donald A. Norman
* The First Chimpanzee: In Search of Human Origins by John Gribbin, Jeremy Cherfas
* Great Feuds in Medicine: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever by Hal Hellman (also Great Feuds in Science)
– anything by Carl Zimmer, Oliver Sacks, or John McPhee, Lyall Watson
Here’s one I don’t see: ‘The Dinosaur Heresies’ by Robert Bakker. Some of you may not like the man himself or some of his theories, but THAT book really made a difference for me. Some of his explanations for why he thought dinosaurs were high-metabolism creatures gave me a better understanding of how paleontologists can learn what they do from such tiny hints.
In it, he goes into topics such as comparing cold-blooded vs warm-blooded population ratios for creatures today in comparison with predator-prey ratios from fossils. He also goes into bone shape and density, the shapes of bone crests compared with animals today to see how/where muscles attach.
He also did a fantastic comparison with a ceratopsian dinosaur skeleton compared to elephant/horse/rhino bones that I found utterly fascinating at the time. And the chapter where he explains why scientists no longer think the duck-billed dinosaurs were marsh-living waders and swimmers was an amazing eye-opener to me 20 years ago.
Wow. Now I have to read it again, I realize that there’s a lot I’ve forgotten now that I try to explain it.
I was going to say ‘Don’t forget ‘At the Water’s Edge’! but someone finally mentioned it. :)
I’ve read quite a few of these, but I think I’ve still missed over half of them. I’ve got a reading list now, don’t I?!
The reason for including Neuromancer was explained in the original post:
Personally, I’d prefer to keep the two categories separate and make a whole list unto itself of scientist-inspiring fiction.
I’m glad others have mentioned Neil Shubin’s ‘Your Inner Fish’ and Carl Zimmer’s ‘At the Water’s Edge’. Both wonderful and tempted into slogging through Jenny Clack’s ‘Gaining Ground’ – much tougher going but still fascinating.
I’d like to mention these: Kirschner & Gerhart: ‘The Plausibility of Life’, for fascinating, powerful ideas, particularly that the mechanisms of maintenance and repair play a role in facilitating evolution; Richard Fortey: ‘Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution’ for an example the sheer enjoyment of science, plus I’ve always loved trilobites since busting some out of discarded flagstones as a kid; Claire Nouvian: ‘The Deep’, amazing photos of a deeply strange world we’ve only recently begun to scratch the surface of; and David Unwin: ‘Pterosaurs: From Deep Time’ excellent up to date survey of what we know of a bunch of animals way cooler than non-avian dinosaurs and possibly even better fliers than the avian dinosaurs. These are all books I’d instantly go out and buy again if my copies went missing.
So far, Donald Prothero’s ‘Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matter’ is a ripping read. Interesting science and repeated kickings of creationism.
Oh NO. I’m OFFENDED by ‘Origin of THE Species’.
Richard
Oh Richard, you’re right. How did we miss that one? I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight, now that you’ve pointed that out.
The link in Richard Dawkins‘s URL field (comment #86) points to “richarddawkins.bet”, which — while I presume it’s just a simple typo — does admittedly fill my mind with dubious visions.
Oh yeah Blake, that is pretty fishy.
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned one of my favorite Dawkins’ books, “Unweaving the Rainbow.”
Back when I was a student, I had a short list of heroes: Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and John Holt (an education reformer). What they all three have in common is that they all wrote interesting non-fiction very clearly and even, I would say, very simply. Sadly, they’re all gone now, but I have found that same level of clarity and accessibility of writings in Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker.
Sorry Sarcastro @#45, I missed your post! Somebody DID mention The Dinosaur Heresies.
Dear PZ, I would be in your debt
If you’d change RichardDawkins.bet
Put some crafty mouse clicks
Into post eighty six
And insert RichardDawkins.net
What I hsve read:
Sagan: Dragons of Eden, Broca’s Brain, The Demon-Haunted World,Cosmos
Asimov: Understanding Physics, the “How did we find out about . . .” series, Asimov on Chemistry, Asimov on Physics, and many more
Gleick: Chaos
Dawkins: The River out of Eden, The Blind Watchmaker, the God Delusion
Hofstadter: Goedel, Escher, and Bach
Krauss: The Physics of Star Trek
Abbott: Flatland
Plait: Bad Astronomy
Burke: Connections
Hawking: A Brief History of Time
Harris: Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches
Gladwell: Blink, Tipping Point, Freakonomics
Ruse: The Evolution/Creation Struggle
Shermer: Why People Believe Weird Things (finishing this one up now); Why Darwin Matters
Miller: In Search of Darwin’s God
What I want to read:
Inner Fish
Prothero’s ‘Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matter’
Dawkins’ Selfish Gene
several by Carl Zimmer
Lynn Margulis, Dorian Sagan – Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species
But first up on the hit parade are:
Jared Diamond – Collapse; Guns, Germs, and Steel; and The Third Chimpanzee
Ichthyic @57,
thanks, I hadn’t realised that vol 3 of Narrow Roads was put. Guess I know what my next book purchase is likely to be.
As for that list, I agree emphatically with the recommendations of Shubin’s Your Inner Fish and everything by Carl Zimmer.
As for my own input, add:
I agree with Greta Christina. More Psychology. Of those not already listed (which, disappointingly, seems to be almost anything from the field of Psychology. At least Sacks and Pinker have made a good showing) I’ll add:
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Descartes’ Error by Antonio Damasio
Origins of the Modern Mind by Merlin Donald
Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
Momma and the Meaning of Life by Irvin Yalom
Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Happiness by Matthieu Ricard
I tried to read no. 72 “Chaos”, but found it impossible; too much personalities and not enough facts. I’d add Jared Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee” and “Collapse”. Why isn’t “The Selfish Gene” included?
“The Open Sea: The World of Plankton” and “The Open Sea: Fish and Fisheries” by Alistair Hardy.
Surely the list must include:
The Selfish Gene – Dawkins
Cosmos – Sagan
Big Bang -Singh
I highly recommend Fermat’s last theorom, although I read the Simon Singh version…
Just to avoid confusion; in the UK, Jones’ “Darwin’s Ghost” is “Almost like a Whale” and Gould’s “Full House” is “Life’s Grandeur”, apparently on the mistaken assumption that Brits are unfamiliar with poker. Poker, we know, it’s all his bleeding baseball references that are completely alien….
Other suggestions: “How Mumbo-jumbo conquered the world” by Francis Wheen.
Any of David Attenborough’s Books of the Series.
I have to put in a vote for “The Man Who Love Only Numbers”, by Paul Hoffman, about the mathematician Paul Erdös.
It’s an incredibly funny book about a great man who was also a great humanist.
Thanks for the great list, PZ!
I’ll chime in:
The God Delusion (Dawkins)
The Ancestor’s Tale (Dawkins)
The Selfish Gene (Dawkins)
Breaking the Spell (Dennett)
A River Runs Through It (Maclean)
A Sand County Almanac (Leopold)
The Dragons of Eden (Sagan)
Seabiscuit (Hillenbrand)
The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Pollan)
The Botany of Desire (Pollan)
Oranges (McPhee)
Basin and Range (McPhee)
Parasite Rex (Zimmer)
Why We Get Sick (Nesse, et al)
The Third Chimpanzee (Diamond)
Your Inner Fish (Shubin)
Genome (Ridley)
The Origins of Virtue (Ridley)
Oranges (McPhee, a triumph of concise non-fiction story-telling)
Also, not in the genre, but very good (for the general interest):
Travel/Adventure/Memoir:
Seven Years in Tibet (Harrer)
Arabian Sands (Thesiger)
No Picnic on Mt. Kenya (Benuzzi)
Into Thin Air (Krakauer)
Into the Wild (Krakauer)
Jupiter’s Travels (Simon)
One-Man Caravan (Fulton)
The Log of the Sea of Cortez (Steinbeck)
Eastern Approaches (MacLean)
Full Tilt (Murphy)
News from Tartary (Fleming)
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (Newby)
Love and War in the Appenines (Newby)
Sailing Alone Around the World (Slocum)
Two Years Before the Mast (Dana)
My Life with the Eskimo (Stefansson)
Motoring with Mohammad (Hanson)
Making the Corps (Ricks)
Enemy Combatant (Begg)
The Songlines (Chatwin)
Desert Solitaire (Abbey)
Down the River (Abbey)
One Life at a Time Please (Abbey)
Byline (Hemmingway)
Shadow Divers (Kurson)
A Year in Provence (Mayle)
Canoeing with the Cree (Sevareid)
Adventures on the Wine Route (Lynch)
Berlin Diary (Shirer)
Unweaving the Rainbow (Dawkins)
Touching the Void (Simpson)
History:
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond)
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Shirer)
The Guns of August (Tuchman)
The Outline of History (Wells)
Under the Banner of Heaven (Krakauer)
The Conquest of Mexico (Prescott)
Fiasco (Ricks)
Prince of the Marshes (Stewart)
Black Elk Speaks (Neihardt)
Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Goldhagen)
The River War (Churchill)
The Second World War (Churchill) huge, but worth the effort
The Peloponnesian War (Thucydides)
The Anabasis (Xenophon)
The Histories (Herodotus)
The Annals (Tacitus)
The Gallic War (Caesar)
Sea of Glory (Philbrick, also: In the Heart of the Sea, about the whale ship Essex, that
inspired Melville’s Moby Dick.)
Wildlife in America (Matthiessen)
Indian Country (Matthiessen)
Freedom At Midnight (Lapierre, Collins)
The Right Stuff (Wolfe)
A World Lit Only by Fire (Manchester)
Engineering in the Ancient World (Landels)
The Movement and the Sixties (Anderson)
Cod (Kurlansky)
The Survival of the Bark Canoe (McPhee)
The Geology Series (Basin and Range, etc.; Annals of the Former World is the compilation, Pulitzer winner) (McPhee)
Novels:
Any Human Heart (Boyd)
Perfume (Susskind)
Girl With a Pearl Earring (Chevalier)
Ishmael (Quinn)
Fields of Fire (Webb)
A Soldier of the Great War (Helprin)
Candide (Voltaire)
Shibumi (Trevanian)
The Summer of Katya (Trevanian)
On the Black Hill (Chatwin)
The Monkey Wrench Gang (Abbey)
Shogun (Clavell)
Taipan (Clavell)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
The Aubrey/Maturin series (O’Brian)
The Red Strangers (Huxley)
The Name of the Rose (Eco)
Kim (Kipling)
JBlilie @ 102
I just have to remark on your choice of books, particularly the nonfiction which I read almost exclusively. They are all worth reading for I have read and own most of them. One can read fiction for amusement and pleasure, but only nonfiction has the added adducement of knowledge gained. The only fiction I read are the old classics, such as Dickens, Hardy, Conrad, Twain, and so many others of that past era who seem never to pass out of maintained interest. I very rarely modern fiction (pre 1990) unless it has been reccommnended by a known author of nonfiction whom I happen to be reading at present. An example is Antony Codrescu who mentioned a book in one of his NPR essays as well worth the read. The book, “A Confederacy of Dunces” had me howling with laughter and glad that I read it. In fact I read it again just last month. Another fiction book that will leave you wimp with laughter is “The Good Soldier Svejk” by Jaroslav Hasek. A few by Christopher Morley and others that appeal to me I will read, but the great nonfiction books, especially books on Science are my interest. I have many books on Science of several disciplines, particularly Astronomy, Archaeology. the Natural Sciences and many others of a noted interest. This is where the real attainable knowledge is and I am ever so grateful for people in the Science world for dissemination that knowledge. They are all my heroes and deserve every accolade accorded them.
I’ve only read 11-12 of them. I guess Your Inner Fish is next. Here are some more:
The Wizard War by Dr. R. V. Jones
Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes
Hey, you guys have been looking at my bookshelf! By the way, if you’ve borrowed any of these from me, please return them. I have to reread most of my books as I get older to remember what I think I know.
Bodach @ 105
You let your books be borrowed? Sucker! A book doesn’t care who owns it and will be happy and useful wherever it winds up! I went through that heartbreaking ordeal years ago and now never loan books, especially when that book is lost, is out of print, and unattainable in used book stores! I myself highly regard other people’s books and will never ask to borrow a book unless is it offered, and then accord that book as some one’s treasured property and always return it in the same condition as received.
I hate long lists …
GEB, Primo Levi and possibly Flatland, though I think it may only have been a selection. I recall looking for it, but not if I ever found it.
I see I’ve been well beaten to a couple of these points (by Richard Dawkins in one case!), but I am so lazy as to cross-post my comment from Laden’s blog in its near-entirety:
The Origin of the Species
The Life of a Cell
I must deduct about 100 credibility points–from somebody–for getting these two titles wrong!!!
And, no Quammen? Song of the Dodo would be at or near the very top of my list.
And, no Steinbeck? Log from the Sea of Cortez is very highly recommended, and may be the only pop-science book ever published by a Nobel-Prize-for-Literature laureate (Nabakov never wrote a butterfly book, unfortunately).
And now the ones I’ve read: numbers 2, 4, 15, 41, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 88, 90, 93, 97, and a bunch from JBillie’s list in #102 and other lists above. I appreciate the recommendations by all!
Additions: Archie Carr, The Windward Road and So Excellent a Fishe
All of Quammen.
All of McPhee (The Founding Fish is his most biological, but for some reason a lot of McPhee-o-philes don’t like it. I loved it.)
Homer Smith, From Fish to Philosopher if you can find it.
Vonnegut, Galapagos (somebody mentioned my all-time fave Cat’s Cradle above, but Galapagos is Vonnegut’s Most Biological, and he gets it mostly right).
Could go on all day but must produce some real work…
Ooo! Also G.C> Williams’s The Pony-fish’s Glow is a nice poppy book by one of the modern ers’s great evolutionary theorists.
‘K just one more: Somebody over at the OP reminded me of Douglas Adams’s Last Chance to See. Excellent.
I think John L. Casti’s “Paradigms Lost” definitely belongs on that list.
Most of my books are in boxes at the moment, but from memory here are a few I’d like to add to the list:
“The Book of Numbers”, Conway & Guy
“The Recursive Universe”, Poundstone
“The Mind’s I”, Hofstadter & Dennett’s anthology about the nature of mind, soul and consciousness. Several of the most memorable selections come from Miedaner’s novel “The Soul of Anna Klane”.
“Journey to the Ants”, Holldobler & Wilson
John Banville’s fictionalised biographies of “Kepler” and “Doctor Copernicus”. (He also wrote one about Newton, which I haven’t read.)
“Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”, which have a lot of mathematical/logical content. You could read Martin Gardner’s annotated versions.
Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man” – already mentioned – ought to be compulsory reading for… well, everybody.
Don’t forget “Bones of Contention: the Archaeopteryx scandals” by Paul Chambers
#71 Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
Way more about bisexuality than about science. And Winterson, while she can turn a lovely phrase, is big into woo.
First off, I’d have to add Incompleteness by Rebecca Goldstein to the list. Half philosophy, half biography and all mathematical goodness. It’s also probably a good precursor to something like GEB, which needs a book-long introduction to really get into (and savor) all of it’s goodness. Of course, a degree in Mathematical Logic doesn’t hurt either…
Oh yes, I also think Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers by Jan Gullberg is an arguable addition, although it might look a little bit too much like a textbook to some people. Polya’s How to Solve It falls in a similar category, though it is certainly a classic.
My (short) list:
4 Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
18 A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
27 Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
72 Chaos, James Gleick
87 Phantoms in the Brain, VS Ramachandran
So few! Clearly I spend too much time reading either fiction or technical books (Rosenlicht, Kolmogorov, Mendelson… someday I’ll make it to Rudin!)
Vole @113,
I’ll hardly complain about your recommending Wilson/Hölldobler, but I think everybody here can handle The Ants itself rather than the watered down “Journey” version.
Holbach @103 etc.,
you and I have had our run-ins here before, but your remarks about books make me like you a great deal.
If you liked Confederacy of Dunces, try Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
You are welcome to borrow my books any time you like.
Mrs. Tilton, you don’t know me as I am a mere longtime lurker, but I’d like to meet you. (I covet your library.)
Fans of Abbott’s Flatland, which I read long ago at age 16, might like this annotated version by Ian Stewart: http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Flatland-Romance-Many-Dimensions/dp/0465011233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220054662&sr=1-1
(Sorry, I’m HTML-challenged.)
Those who are interested in mathematical biology, if there is such a thing, might enjoy Stewart’s Life’s Other Secret.
One that I read years ago: “Hot-blooded Dinosaurs.”
How could I have forgotten ‘The Botany of Desire’?
Oh yes, I remember – I loaned it to someone who then forgot what it even looked like, much less where they might have put it.. *sigh* Time to buy another copy!
It may be foolish to loan out books, but as long as they’re in print, it’s often worth the cover price to introduce a new person to them. for some people, I’ll risk it! When I discover I’m wrong they don’t get any more books from me, and I’m only out one. Even then, with any luck, someones’ horizons have been opened.
The Origin of Consciousness Through the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes.
(I admit part or all of it may not hold up when all the evidence is eventually in, but this book stimulated me to wonder about more fascinating evolutionary questions than many of those I’ve read on the list above.)
I liked “Bumblebee economics” (actually the german version, “Der Hummelstaat”).
Mrs Tilton @ 118
Thanks ever so much for the sentiments expressed. How poignant that books are such a catalyst to discover another’s character and hidden feelings. Oh yes, I have Tristram Shandy and read it at least every two years. I am very fond of these old authors as I expressed previously for they not only describe a world now removed from ours but also the characterizations that are so descriptive even to our present time. It would take considerable time to list those books that I have read and keep in my library for constant companionship to revel with any time the mood strikes me. As I have said, to read a person’s thoughts and feelings as they expressed them hundreds of years ago is a lasting and enthralling thrill.
Here is another poignant quotation on books that I have taped to my bookcase that is so descriptive of the feeling for books. What is amazing is the source of this treatise as noted at the end.
“BOOKS”
“These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes and money. If you approach them, they are not asleep, if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you. The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches, and nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it. Whosoever therefore acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, must of necessity make himself a lover of books.”
“Written by Richard deBury in 1344, more than 100 years before the invention of printing and later published in 1474.”
Isn’t that just astounding and awe inspiring? Books have been cherished and lauded throughout history. What a joy. In one segment of “Cosmos”, Carl Sagan is in the New York Public Library, in a back room on the upper floor where the old books are kept, and by way of example, is holding a small book and remarking how bboks have enriched our lives and that in this book are the thoughts of a person who lived hundreds of years ago, and yet we can still open the book and read today what he thought and expressed. Every time I watch that segment I choke with emotion. I’ll leave you with a quote from our friend Tristram Shandy.
“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine- they are the life, the soul of reading.”
Small nitpicky correction: It’s Edwin Abbott Abbott, not Edward.
The two Abbotts are repetitive, but not redundant. :D
2. The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
42. Longitude, Dava Sobel*
43. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg*
51. Neuromancer, William Gibson
54. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
55. Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison
56. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
57. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
61. Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
70. From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
81. Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll
82. Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl Zimmer
83. Genome, Matt Ridley
84. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
88. The Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins
93. The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
* still on my to be read list
ive read “The Last 3 Minutes” which is an intersting book too
adding to that list
it’s a textbook but boy what an eye-opener
Gaining Ground by Jennifer Clack
its a little out-dated written before they found Tiktaalik and that other recent one but wow everything you wanted to know about early fishapods and their lobefin ancestors
Juergen (#123) remembered a good one. Pretty much all of Bernd Heinrich’s books, in fact, belong on these lists.
There are a number of authors I’m surprised to see not listed here:
Richard Fortey (e.g.,” Life, an Unauthorized Biography” — although I think that the fun subtitle is missing from the American version), Tim Flannery (“The Future Eaters” covers much of the same ground as “Guns, Germs and Steel” with reference to Australasia, but is much better), Adrian Desmond (read “The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs” to get the history behind Bakker’s book).
However, a particular (and obscure) favorite of mine is “What if the Moon Didn’t Exist? Voyages to Earths that Might Have Been.” This book just passed one of my all-time tests, went to look for it in one of my way too many bookcases and found it had vanished , and so am ordering another copy (and this in my days of trying to lighten my book load by 90% or so).
Oh, and Caroline Pond’s “The Fats of Life”. A brilliant book on physiology and culture
I started out to recommend any science or nature books by Lyall Watson; he wrote quite a few. I have read two of them, “Jacobsen’s Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell,” and “Pigs Pigs Pigs,” which is a survey of all the pig species of the world and included his experience of raising and befriending an orphaned warthog in Africa.
But when I searched for his name to find a list of books, I found instead that he died last month! His obituary in the Guardian mentions a “versatile and telegenic life as an anthropologist, biologist, botanist, ethologist and zoologist.”
He wrote 25 books, mostly on nature but also exploring what you’d call woo: ESP and the like. So skip those.
It helps a little if you get friends to sign in your book borrowers’ notebook before you let them have a book. But I think it’s better to just buy them their own copy.
Books…. Lyall Watson apparently came up with the “Hundredth Monkey” theory:
Right after you read that, read Connie Willis’s short novel, Bellwether. It’s set in a research lab with office politics, sheep, statistics, and a dose of wry humour.
Two corrections: The books by Lyall Watson that I mentioned should have been “Jacobson’s Organ & the Remarkable Nature of Smell” and “The Whole Hog.”
Aha! Watson wasn’t talking about social example, as when you teach something new to a high-ranking monkey if you want it imitated; he was just playing fast & loose with the facts. FAIL!
**Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man” – already mentioned – ought to be compulsory reading for… well, everybody.**
Unfortunately, there is little in that book that is correct.
Gould’s allegation that Morton had doctored his skull collection was re-investigated by John Michael. Michael found very few errors & those that were found were not in the direction Gould claimed.
Michael JS 1988. A new look at Morton’s craniological research. Current Anthropology 29: 349- 54. In the 1996 edition of his book Gould completely avoids Michael’s study.
Galton (1888) observed a brain size/cognitive ability relationship. Modern MRI imaging confirms a positive correlation. Gould managed to omit a major literature review on the correlation between brain size and cognitive ability by Van Dalen (1974). In his 1996 version Gould simply deleted the whole section as the MRI evidence on brain size & IQ was obviously damaging to Gould’s position.
For an up to date analysis for the biological correlates of intelligence, see the paper by UCLA Neuroscientist, Paul Thompson, and Yale Psychologist Jeremy Gray,
“Correlations between intelligence and total brain volume
or grey matter volume have been replicated in magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) studies, to the extent that
intelligence is now commonly used as a confounding
variable in morphometric studies of disease. MRI-based
studies estimate a moderate correlation between brain
size and intelligence of 0.40 to 0.51 (REF. 28; see REF. 29
on interpreting this correlation, and REF. 30 for a
meta-analysis).” *
* ‘Neurobiology of intelligence: science and ethics’ Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, 471-482 (June 2004)
http://www.yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf
Also, see: Ankney, C. D. (2009). Whole-brain size and general mental ability: A review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119, 691-731
http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2009%20IJN.pdf
Gould’s criticism of factor analysis (and ‘g’) is flawed: see John Carroll’s review Intelligence 21, 121-134 1995 and also Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.
http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html
David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has written a textbook on factor analysis, also explains in “Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies” explains where Gould goes wrong in this area.
Gould suggests that Jews tested poorly in the 1920’s & this lead to the Immigration Act 1924. These claims are incorrect.
The idea that Jews tested poorly is actually based on a misrepresentation of a paper authored by Henry Goddard in 1917. Goddard gave IQ tests to people suspected of being mentally handicapped. He found the tests identified a number of such people from various immigrant groups, including Ashkenazi Jews. Leon Kamin in 1974 reported that Goddard had found Jews had low IQ scores. However, Goddard never found that Jews or other groups as a general population had low scores.
http://homepage.mac.com/harpend/.Public/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf
Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659-693 (2006).
The other misconception is that this contributed to the 1924 Immigration Act. However, Herrnstein & Snyderman found this was not the case (Intelligence Tests and the Immigration Act of 1924′ American Psychologist 38, September 1983).
Also, despite Gould trashing Cyril Burt, subsequent studies show that traits are significantl heritable (see studies by Robert Plomin, or Bouchard). See this recent twin study by Thompson looking at myelination, which insulates neurons and is linked to mental processing speed – reported in MIT Technology Review:
“The UCLA researchers took the study a step further by comparing the white matter architecture of identical twins, who share almost all their DNA, and fraternal twins, who share only half. Results showed that the quality of the white matter is highly genetically determined, although the influence of genetics varies by brain area. According to the findings, about 85 percent of the variation in white matter in the parietal lobe, which is involved in mathematics, logic, and visual-spatial skills, can be attributed to genetics. But only about 45 percent of the variation in the temporal lobe, which plays a central role in learning and memory, appears to be inherited.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22333/
**Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man” – already mentioned – ought to be compulsory reading for… well, everybody.**
Unfortunately, there is little in that book that is correct.
Gould’s allegation that Morton had doctored his skull collection was re-investigated by John Michael. Michael found very few errors & those that were found were not in the direction Gould claimed.
Michael JS 1988. A new look at Morton’s craniological research. Current Anthropology 29: 349- 54. In the 1996 edition of his book Gould completely avoids Michael’s study.
Galton (1888) observed a brain size/cognitive ability relationship. Modern MRI imaging confirms a positive correlation. Gould managed to omit a major literature review on the correlation between brain size and cognitive ability by Van Dalen (1974). In his 1996 version Gould simply deleted the whole section as the MRI evidence on brain size & IQ was obviously damaging to Gould’s position.
For an up to date analysis for the biological correlates of intelligence, see the paper by UCLA Neuroscientist, Paul Thompson, and Yale Psychologist Jeremy Gray,
“Correlations between intelligence and total brain volume or grey matter volume have been replicated in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, to the extent that intelligence is now commonly used as a confounding variable in morphometric studies of disease. MRI-based studies estimate a moderate correlation between brain size and intelligence of 0.40 to 0.51 (REF. 28; see REF. 29 on interpreting this correlation, and REF. 30 for a meta-analysis).” *
* ‘Neurobiology of intelligence: science and ethics’ Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, 471-482 (June 2004)
yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf
Gould’s criticism of factor analysis (and ‘g’) is flawed: see John Carroll’s review Intelligence 21, 121-134 1995 and also Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.
David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has written a textbook on factor analysis, also explains in “Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies” explains where Gould goes wrong in this area.
Gould suggests that Jews tested poorly in the 1920’s & this lead to the Immigration Act 1924. These claims are incorrect.
The idea that Jews tested poorly is actually based on a misrepresentation of a paper authored by Henry Goddard in 1917. Goddard gave IQ tests to people suspected of being mentally handicapped. He found the tests identified a number of such people from various immigrant groups, including Ashkenazi Jews. Leon Kamin in 1974 reported that Goddard had found Jews had low IQ scores. However, Goddard never found that Jews or other groups as a general population had low scores.
Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659-693 (2006).
The other misconception is that this contributed to the 1924 Immigration Act. However, Herrnstein & Snyderman found this was not the case (Intelligence Tests and the Immigration Act of 1924′ American Psychologist 38, September 1983).
Also, despite Gould trashing Cyril Burt, subsequent studies show that traits are significantl heritable (see studies by Robert Plomin, or Bouchard). See this recent twin study by Thompson looking at myelination, which insulates neurons and is linked to mental processing speed – reported in MIT Technology Review:
“The UCLA researchers took the study a step further by comparing the white matter architecture of identical twins, who share almost all their DNA, and fraternal twins, who share only half. Results showed that the quality of the white matter is highly genetically determined, although the influence of genetics varies by brain area. According to the findings, about 85 percent of the variation in white matter in the parietal lobe, which is involved in mathematics, logic, and visual-spatial skills, can be attributed to genetics. But only about 45 percent of the variation in the temporal lobe, which plays a central role in learning and memory, appears to be inherited.”