Science books

The Science-Book Challenge 2009 has inspired me to compile a list of science books that I would like to read, as well as some of my all-time favorites. You will notice certain themes as well as several books on the same subject.

Do you know of other not-to-be-missed tomes that should be on this list? Personal favorites? Let me know!

(* marks the ones I have already read).

Climate

• Climate Change: Picturing the Science. Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe, W. W. Norton, April 2009.
• Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat – and How to Counter It. Wallace S. Broecker and Robert Kunzig, Hill and Wang, March 2009.
• Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. David Archer, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.
• Monsoons. Jay S. Fein and Pamela L. Stephens, Wiley, 1987.
• Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary. Ray Bradley, Academic Press, 2nd edition, 2005.
• Plagues, Plows and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate. William F. Ruddiman, Princeton University Press, 2007.
• The Discovery of Global Warming. Spencer R. Weart, Harvard University Press, 2004.*
• The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate, David Archer, Princeton University Press, 2009.
• Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains. Mark Bowen, Henry Holt and Co. 2005.
• To Follow the Water: Exploring the Ocean to Discover Climate. Dallas Murphy, Basic Books, 2007.
• Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future. Peter D. Ward, Collins, 2008.

Evolution, Paleontology and Geology  (or “A Historical View of Life and the Earth”)

• A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bill Bryson, Broadway Books, 2003.
• Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History. Stephen Jay Gould, Crown, 1995.
• Earth: An Intimate History. Richard Fortey, Vintage, 2005.
• Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, The MIT Press, 2006
• Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago. Douglas H. Erwin, Princeton University Press, 2008.
• Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth. Richard Fortey, Vintage, 1999.
• Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution. Nick Lane, W.W. Norton & Co., June 2009.
• Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species. Sean B. Carroll, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February 2009.
• T. rex and The Crater of Doom. Walter Alvarez, Princeton Science Library, 1997.
• The Triple Helix: Gene Organism and Environment, Richard Lewontin, Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Why Evolution is True. Jerry A. Coyne, Viking, 2009.
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. Stephen Jay Gould, W.W. Norton & Co., 1989.

Human Biology, Evolution, and Psychology

• Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. Nicholas Wade, Penguin, 2007.
• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. Mary Roach, W. W. Norton & Co., 2008.
• Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Richard Wrangham, Basic Books, May 2009.
• Emotional Intelligence (Tenth Anniversary Edition): Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Daniel Goleman, Bantam, 2006.*
• Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC – AD 1000. Barry Cunliffe, Yale University Press, 2008.
• Fingerprints of God: the Search for the Science of Spirituality. Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Riverhead Books, 2009.
• For Better: the Science of a Good Marriage. Tara Parker-Pope, Dutton, 2010.*
• Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. Jared Diamond, Norton, 1997.*
• How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-so Stories. David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton, Columbia University Press, April 2009.
• Mothers and Others: the Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Sarah Baffer Hrdy, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, April 2009.
• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. Mary Roach, W.W. Norton & Co., 2006.
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. W.W. Norton & Co, 2004.
• The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, Basic Books, January 2009.
• The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures. Nicholas Wade, Penguin Press, 2009.
• The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Spencer Wells, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004.
• The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. Steven Pinker, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2007.*
• The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry. Bryan Sykes, W.W. Norton & Co., 2002.
• The Stuff of Thought. Steven Pinker, Allan Lane, 2007.
• Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. Andrew Newberg, Eugene D’Aquili and Vince Rause, Ballantine books, 2001.*
• Woman: An intimate Biography. Natalie Angier, Anchor Books, 1999.*

Oceans and Marine Science

• At the Water’s Edge: Macroevolution and the Transformation of Life. Carl Zimmer, Free Press, 1998.
• Chasing Science at Sea: Racing Hurricanes, Stalking Sharks, and Living Undersea with Ocean Experts. Ellen Prager, University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• Cod: A Biography of the fish that Changed the World. Mark Kurlansky, Walker and Company, 1997. *
• Our Threatened Oceans. Stephen Rahmstorf and K. Richardson, Haus Publishing, February 2009.
• Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans. Sylvia A. Earle, Fawcett Columbine, 1995. *
• Seasick: Ocean Change and the Extinction of Life. Alanna Mitchell, University of Chicago Press, 2009.
• The World is Blue. Sylvia A. Earle, National Geographic Society, 2009.
• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body. Neil Shubin, Pantheon Books, 2008 *

Physics and Mathematics

• A Brief History of Time. Stephen Hawking, Bantam 10th Anniversary Edition, 1998.
• A Briefer History of Time. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam, 2008 (an update of the above).
• Number: the Language of Science. Tobias Dantzig, Plume Books, 2007 (originally published in 1954).
• The Universe in a Nutshell. Stephen William Hawking, Bantam, 2001

Other

• 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time. Michael Brooks, Doubleday, 2008.
• Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Edward O. Wilson, Vintage, 1998.
• Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Michael Specter, Penguin Press, 2009.
• Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science Faith and Love. Dava Sobel, Penguin, 2000.
• Longitude: The True Story of A Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Dava Sobel, Walker and Co., 2007.
• Planets. Dava Sobel, Penguin, 2006.
• Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. Stuart A. Kauffman, Basic Books, 2008.
• Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy. Robert M. Hazen and James Trefil, Anchor, June 2009.
• The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basis of Science. Natalie Angier, Houghton Mifflin Harcour, 2007