Favourite Science Books?

[Laurens]

The first scientific book that I read was 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan, and it pretty much was the book that got me into science along with the TV series. Along with that I'd probably say 'The Greatest Show On Earth' and 'The Blind Watchmaker' by Richard Dawkins, 'Life' by Richard Fortey, and 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre.

Which science books have you found inspiring, informative?

 

[Deleted member 619]

A Brief History Of Time was the one that got the ball rolling. Dawkins' best work, IMO, is Climbing Mount Improbable. I didn't actually think that much of The Greatest Show On Earth, not least because it managed to completely miss some of the very best evidence for evolution.

The best popular science book I've read was Why Does E=mc2 by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. I didn't really learn anything from it, but it was such a succinct and accessible explanation of SR that it has jumped straight to the top of my recommended reading list.

The book I've had most trouble with is Roger Penrose's Road To Reality, which I have had about 6 passes at so far. Each time I read it through I understand a little more. Not for the faint-hearted.

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

I think I prefer briefer history of time, but brief was the first popular science book I owned

 

[Aught3]

The Ancestor's Tale is amazing, so far my favourite Dawkins book - but I haven't read them all.

 

[Laurens]

The Ancestor's Tale is amazing, so far my favourite Dawkins book - but I haven't read them all.

I bought that one recently I shall make a start on it soon.

 

[Deleted member 619]

The Ancestor's Tale is amazing, so far my favourite Dawkins book - but I haven't read them all.

It is an excellent book, and one that really brings home what deep time is all about in an evolutionary framework. i know Squawk favours it as well.

The only one of Dawkins' books I haven't yet read is River Out Of Eden. It's sitting waiting to be read at the moment, but I'm currently reading On The Shoulders Of Giants, to be followed by God Created The Integers, both of which are Hawking's presentations of the great works of physics and mathematics respectively.

 

[Darkchilde]

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as A Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan is by far my favorite science book. Because that is a book that sets the basics of logic and reason and makes you think.

Six Easy Pieces, and Six Not-So Easy Pieces, from Richard P. Feynman.

 

[Laurens]

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as A Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan is by far my favorite science book. Because that is a book that sets the basics of logic and reason and makes you think.

I have been looking for that book in the UK for quite some time, it doesn't seem to be available in many places (either that or I just haven't been looking hard enough).

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

From an early age, my mother had inculcated in me an interest in ornithology, astronomy and nature in general (plants, etc).

I'd already read books, such as The Naturalist's Handbook, by Geoffrey Watson, in the early seventies, which had gotten me interested in Nature for myself.

My earliest pure science books were Asimov's two-volume, Isaac Asimov's Guide to Science.

I also read Sagan's books, such as Cosmos and - of course! - The Demon-Haunted World.

If I were to recommend a general science book, it would be John Gribbin's Almost Everyone's Guide To Science - granted, this was published back in 1999 (I do wish he'd update it!) - still, it's a very readable book.

Waller's Fabulous Science (in particular), Holmes' The Age Of Wonder and, indeed, Gribbin's Science: A History 1543 - 2001 are all better than Bryson's book - no offence to him or those who prefer his one!

As for specific sciences...

Physics
Due to changes in "what's hot" in cosmology, it's difficult to give any specific one as a recommendation.

Generally, anything by John Gribbin is a good bet. Michio Kaku's books (Parallel Universes in particular) are also interesting.

Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time are both good.

Rees' Just Six Numbers is really fascinating.

Manjit Kumar's Quantum and Simon Singh's Big Bang are also very interesting.

[I haven't bought Cox's/Forsyth's Why Does E=mc2? yet - somewhat mixed reviews on Amazon.]

I'm eagerly awaiting Greene's The Hidden Reality to come out in paperback!

In fact, given that it's le dernier mot on the subject, this will probably be my de facto recommendation...

Chemistry
My current favourites are:

Nature's Building Blocks, by John Emsley
Why Chemical Reactions Happen, by James Keeler (with James Wothers)

[Most books on Amazon with what appear to be full five-stars, more often than not, turn out to have a mixed bag of reviews - both of these, however, are "all five-stars".]

If you get both of those under your belt - even just on their own - you'll have a good grasp of chemistry.

A interesting history of chemistry can be found in Paul Strathern's Mendleyev's Dream.

Biology
Virtually anything on evolution, due to all the hullabaloo over it, covers this subject.

Again, evolution is changing from the original "Darwinism" to neo-Darwinian to Modern Evolutionary Synthesis to Evo-Devo to - .... ?

Dawkins probably heads the field as a starting point: I've only read his earliest works ("Selfish", "Phenotype" and "Blind Watchmaker") not the later, and perhaps greater ones ("Ancestor", "Climbing", "River" and "Unweaving").

Although his "Greatest Show" may be a good overview - according to some - from what I've seen of the mixed reviews, I'd probably have to suggest Coyne's Why Evolution Is True along with Nick Lane's Life Ascending, to be preferred.

Shubin's Your Inner Fish and Prothero's Evolution: What The Fossils Say And Why It Matters would take care of the case for (transitional) fossils.

Carroll's books on "Evo-Devo" are also recommended - although they tend to come across somewhat less academic than the others - merely in tone rather than expertise, I hasten to add.

Another of Nick Lane's books is Oxygen, which covers biochemistry fairly well.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Deleted member 619]

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as A Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan is by far my favorite science book. Because that is a book that sets the basics of logic and reason and makes you think.

Interestingly, I never think of that as a science book, but more as a manual for critical thinking.

Six Easy Pieces, and Six Not-So Easy Pieces, from Richard P. Feynman.

Must get around to reaing both of those.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as A Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan is by far my favorite science book. Because that is a book that sets the basics of logic and reason and makes you think.

I have been looking for that book in the UK for quite some time, it doesn't seem to be available in many places (either that or I just haven't been looking hard enough).

If you're buying books in the UK, use Bookbrain.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Inferno]

A good book on History is "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond, "Only a Theory" by Kenneth Miller for an in-depth analysis of the ID claims and "Remarkable Creatures" by Sean B. Carroll on Evolution and the history of ToE.
I've enjoyed all of Dawkins books, Bryson's "A Short History Of Nearly Everything", all of Sagans, Eugenie Scotts and Hawkins books.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

A good book on History is "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond, "Only a Theory" by Kenneth Miller for an in-depth analysis of the ID claims and "Remarkable Creatures" by Sean B. Carroll on Evolution and the history of ToE.
I've enjoyed all of Dawkins books, Bryson's "A Short History Of Nearly Everything", all of Sagans, Eugenie Scotts and Hawkins books.

Haven't read Diamond's books - though I keep meaning to get around to buying them! - though I've read Miller's "OAT" book: heartening and depressing at the same time.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Darkchilde]

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as A Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan is by far my favorite science book. Because that is a book that sets the basics of logic and reason and makes you think.

I have been looking for that book in the UK for quite some time, it doesn't seem to be available in many places (either that or I just haven't been looking hard enough).

I got it from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Demon-haunt...=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300728182&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted...9469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300728249&sr=8-1

I had bought it from Amazon US, as I had some other books I wanted and it was cheaper.

 

[Laurens]

Thank you Dragan Glas and Darkchilde, I shall look into ordering a copy asap.

 

[Darkchilde]

Six Easy Pieces, and Six Not-So Easy Pieces, from Richard P. Feynman.

Must get around to reading both of those.

If you have not yet purchased those two, then I recommend you go straight to the Feynman lectures on Physics. More costly, but both of the above, contain lectures from the Feynman Lectures.

There is the definitive edition of those, which consists of 4 books, the first 3 are the 3 tomes of lectures, and the 4th one is Feynman's Tips on Physics. I have this edition, and as soon as I am done with a few other things, I want to read those.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Believe it or not-
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The actual paradoxal events that would have resulted, got the old gears a rolling on matters of reasoning and science. I soon looked up that old e=mc^2 thing and from there, I decided that I was going to build a time machine...

I got to the part about where the resulting energy for a kilogram of mass to travel the speed of light was substantially more than I would bother writing out in full-print, so I just drew some dials on the fridge box and warped myself to a distant future where (if I remember correctly) I was fighting my way through a jungle with strange creatures with a Gauss rifle.
Fun fact: I found my scrawlings when I was moving out of the old house, and found my calculations to have required more energy than available in the known universe... Even WITH a horrible miscalculation that caused the factor to be much, much less than actual levels.

Ramblings aside - yes. The Time Machine was the book that originally sparked my knowledge from vauge fantasies of philosophy into the wonders of science.
On my shelf, next to my Magick books, I have Hawking's A Brief History of Time, the complete works of Darwin, some old Philosophy books, and (my first strictly-Physics formulae book) The Essentials of Aerodynamics by I-Can't-Recall-His-Name. The final one was an old, old hand-me-down, and contains many principles of physics that can be applied to quite many things...

DAMMIT, LOR - QUIT MAKING ME NOSTALGIA.

 

[Darkchilde]

Talking about nostalgia. I am currently doing a renovation in my living space, due to faulty insulation, so I had to pack everything in boxes. I found among forgotten things, my first astronomy book. This was a book in italian, called "Il Grande Libro dello Spazio" or in English "The Big Book of Space" In it, were the first Hertzsprung - Russel ldiagrams I ever saw, and read about, talked about the Moon and the Stars and all that stuff. This was material that a middle-school level (what we call gymnasium in greek or medie in italian) is able to understand and yet it has all the basics of astronomy, from the planets to the birth and death of stars to the Big Bang.

It is a bit outdated with some of the newer stuff that has come up in the last years, especially with Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer and all those wonderful space telescopes, but at the time, it had just come out.

Then I found another book on the planets, again in italian, called "Oltre la terra", or "Beyond the Earth" and in it were even more scientific facts, especially with regards to the planets. I still remember that it presented the various hypothesis for the formation of the Moon, from the collision hypothesis to the hypothesis that the Moon was taken "prisoner"... and it presented all the evidence for and against each hypothesis.

Those are books that I cherished when I was little. I will probably put them in some box, and keep them somewhere. Or maybe I should display them in one of my new bookcases.

 

[aeritano]

How did i Miss this thread?!

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
by Dr. Armand Leroi

Really interesting book on teratology or the study of abnormal physical development and human mutations



here is the link to the amazon info
http://www.amazon.com/Mutants-Genetic-Variety-Human-Body/dp/B000CDG8CY

 

[Tenderfoot]

Nineteen posts;
some authors' names I recognize (and some I don't);
not one book I've yet read (or be able to read anytime soon).

What made me post here was that no one mentioned Steven Jay Gould.
I've read some four or five of his compilations of essays (published by Penguin) but my favourite is "Full House".
I made the mistake of lending it so I can't check if that is the name of the book in the US or in the UK.
Among other things, that's the book that made me really understand basic statistics, some 20 years after university.

Best regards,
Tenderfoot