BookTalk.org

Always looking for a good science read (that's summer reading to me).

A few that are sitting on my bookshelf that I really liked:

Richard Wolfson, Simply Einstein
James Gleick, Genius (Feynman biography)
Kip Thorne, Black Holes & Time Warps
William Dunham, Journey Through Genius
Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma
Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True

This is a bit dated, I'm afraid, but The Human Animal by Desmond Morris had a huge impact on me in university. (My memory seems to have skewed the dates, but no matter, his theories launched my interest in how anthropology and evolution conjoin.)

Cosmos by Carl Sagan and probably the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

I really loved "A Brief history of Time" and "On the Shoulders of Giants" which is a selection of works from many influencial scientists.

I got a kick out of "the Pluto Files" as well.

My favorite is Rare Earth - Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by Ward and Brownlee.

I'm now reading an oldy but a goody - The Dawn of Astronomy: A study of the temple-worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians by Sir Norman Lockyer. He was the founder of the scientific journal Nature and the discoverer of helium. His work on ancient astronomy was highly rigorous, but scientific interest in this topic has waned in more recent times.

I'm a huge physics nerd so I love The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene (I'm pretty sure that's how you spell his name).

I also really like Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, which is not a science book but is a physics inspired volume of poetry. Yep...that's right...physics poetry. It's just as strange and awesome as it sounds

I love A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

Where does the Weirdness Go? by David Lindley: a valiant attempt to explain some of the puzzles of quantum physics, and The Arrow of Time by Coveney and Highfield, which does a comparable job for the concept of time. Both these demand some work on the part of the reader, which is part of the appeal.

Oh, and Feynmann's little book on QED is also brilliant.

If you want something a little easier, practically any book by Carl Sagan passes muster. Superbly well-written, informed and enthusiastic. Broca's Brain is a personal favourite.