We have a physics festival in town: http://www.q2cfestival.com/, open to the general public. Yes, I do live in a rather geeky community. I attended Sean Carroll's talk and I now have his From Eternity to Here on my wish list. I'm also finally starting A Brief History of Time, which has sat on my bookshelf for years now.

All this has inspired me to ask: what are your favourite science books for non-specialists?

I read a lot of these in my teen years and undergrad days, and a few of my favourites include: The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan, Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory by George Gamow, and The Mathematical Experience by Davis and Hersh.

I'd be interested in hearing your recommendations, especially for books published in the past decade. Which are the best? The worst?

Message edited by its author, Oct 22, 2009, 7:03am.

I recently bought How Spacecraft Fly, which looks interesting and useful, although I've yet to read it. I've read How To Build Your Own Spaceship, which is not in fact about that, but is still quite good - I reviewed it here.

Message edited by its author, Oct 22, 2009, 9:38am.

The coming plague by Laurie Garrett - man/environment interaction and the potential for new epi/pandemics.

the age of wonder - the romantic era in science and arts and how the literature and science "supported" each other in late 18th and early 19th C G.Britain.

this is your brain on music

Bill Bryson's A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING (mentioned on another thread) is a good book for laymen. I love science fiction but sometimes the science loses me--and math, well, don't even go there.

Try Galileo's Daughter-- I think it is mostly historical, less fiction. My husband liked it (he is a geek though).

Then there's Linked which is written by a physicist, but not all that technical. There is no story or characters. This is a "how connecting works" book-- very applicalbe to Facebook types of communities, disease spread, etc. Pretty interesting read.

While it's not SF, per se Dava Sobel's Longitude is a fun and interesting read. If you change the name of the ship that tested the chronometer to something like the H.M.S. Timebringer, it would be SF.

Message edited by its author, Oct 22, 2009, 2:02pm.

> 2: Nice review, Ian.

> 3: My husband, an electrical engineer and amateur musician, really liked This is Your Brain on Music, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

> 4: I've enjoyed Bryson's travel books and am curious about how he handles science. Will definitely have to pick this one up.

I really enjoyed Incompleteness by Rebecca Goldstein. She manages just the right balance between biographical information about Kurt Godel and an explanation of his work in mathematical logic (designed for people without a background in pure math). Her description of the friendship between Godel and Einstein was particularly moving for me; I was suprised to find such emotional depth in a book about numbers.

Incidentally, in no way should this be taken to be a recommendation for the rest of the Great Discoveries series.

uncle petros and Goldbach's conjecture is a very enjoyable novel turning on the obsessiveness of math geeks.
Copenhagen - the play by Michael Frayn on the meeting between Heisenberg and Neils Bohr early in WWII was fascinating on stage. Haven't read it as a book, but might try it as an audio book.

My husband just bought Why Does E=MC2? And Why Should We Care? and it looks very interesting. One of the authors was interviewed on The Colbert Report recently. He (husband, not Colbert!) has also recommended I read The Black Hole War.

I pretty much liked Why Does E=mc^2. The science seems substantial without being overwhelming. I would still like to know the implications of the interchangeability of energy and mass for a novel reader.

Have fun,

Robert

I loved Lives of a Cell.

I have read several global warming books, written for a non-scientific public. I reviewed one here on LT, Where the Wild Things Were.

E.O. Wilson is a great nature writer, on ants but also biology in general.

I read this book, but didn't really understand the later chapters which required the reader to understand higher math: The Pythagorean Theorem: A 4,000-Year History. The writing style was easy to understand.

I read Writing to Learn and got a lot of ideas of great nonfiction to read, then started working through the list. It really broadened my horizons. I had read pretty much only fiction (aside from school reading) before then.

I read The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner some years ago and found it fascinating.

(This is my first post, so forgive me if I did not handle something correctly - especially the Touchstones!)