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75 Great Popular Books On Science

Aug 27, 2008
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Books, Science, Technology

Cocktail Party Physics is compiling a list, eventually to round out at 100, of good popular books on the sciences, which is to say science reading for those of us who may have political science degrees.  The books on the list must be works that explain their topics in well-written English, without too many equations and jargon.

I've read 22 of the books on this list, and agree with almost all of those I've read.  Off the top of my head, the only book I'd add would be Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, and the only book I'd remove would be Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, because while it's a fine book, I dislike its self-congratulatory tone and the more I tax my tiny uneducated brain on the matter the more I think that there's something about string theory that just doesn't add up.  Perhaps I'll have to reappraise Greene's book after September 10.

(On that note, see Not Even Wrong, a good popular (meaning readable) dissident science blog that explains the reservations some physicists have about superstring theory.)

Last 5 posts by Patrick

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5 Comments

  1. Dave  •  Aug 27, 2008 @12:14 pm

    Instance of the Fingerpost is a science book? Though I suppose it likely falls under her exception of books "that have a history of inspiring present and future scientists," whatever that means.

    I'd add Guns, Germs, and Steel to that list, as there's more than a bit of evolutionary biology there, and I found it fascinating and well-presented (though overly long).

    I'm more surprised that The Selfish Gene didn't make it on the list.

  2. Andrew  •  Aug 27, 2008 @12:29 pm

    I would add Annals of the Former World by John McPhee, an utterly compelling book about geology, a subject that I had no interest in before reading McPhee's book.

  3. Patrick  •  Aug 27, 2008 @2:19 pm

    On that note, I'll add a few more, which are ostensibly about food but actually explain science well.

    How To Read A French Fry, by Russ Parsons, explains thermodynamics and organic chemistry in detail in the context of cooking, with a number of delicious recipes illustrating the principles discussed. The book is brilliant, and the most interesting cookbook I own.

    The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, goes into detail on the history of man's interaction with the potato, the apple, the tulip, and marijuana. It's botany, history, and symbiotic evolutionary biology all in one, and a great read.

    On a non-food note, Henry Petroski's The Pencil begins with a riff on Milton Friedman's famous pencil lecture to discuss the history and practice of engineering and its social effects. Petroski is the rare engineer who explains the attraction of his practice in great prose.

  4. The M  •  Aug 28, 2008 @8:05 am

    Patrick, you've read 2.2 times as many of those books as I. I wouldn't care to comment on the applicability of those on the list, as I tend to read "hard science" books and that clouds my ability to judge what's applicable for the layman. (Plus I tend to have weird opinions on things…)

  5. Thomas Lawrence  •  Aug 29, 2008 @9:33 am

    There's some bizarre stuff on that list which doesn't even approach being what I'd think of a popular science book. I mean, Neuromancer? Great book, but sci-fi rather than pop-sci, surely?

    And Martin Amis' "Time's Arrow" is a great book, but the only thing remotely "physics" about it is that the flow of time in the book is reversed – but not for any physics-based region, just because it's an inherently interesting idea. It's a really great book I'd recommend to anybody, but…