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!)

Welcome, Jenni! The Beak of the Finch was fascinating, especially interesting was the idea that evolution can occur over the span of a couple generations. Well worthy of a Pulitzer.

I found it a tad gross, but I really enjoyed that epidemiological thriller And the Band Played On.

I enjoyed The Naturalist, an autobiography. Also, anything by Bernd Heinrich.

moving into "real life" epidemiology - one of the very best, again AIDS, is my own country Abraham Verghese's story of being an internist in a small town in Tennessee and becoming immersed in the puzzle of how this "city sickness" was showing up in increasing numbers in the rural SE. Beautifully written and, in terms of understanding the patterns of disease transmission, very important (even his scientific papers are lucid). Also anatomizes the stresses on his family life - both being Asian-Indian in this setting, but more particularly his obsession w/ solving this puzzle.

This is a genre that is, perhaps, too full of v. good choices. But Verghese wins out in my mind by both being the protagonist AND being a terrific writer and story teller. His the tennis partner is a harrowing and loving story of his love of tennis and attempt to mentor a talented resident who was both a v. good tennis player and a relapsing hard drug addict. In re medical stuff, the next best book (perhaps more important, but not as well written and VERY long) is Laurie Garrett's the coming plague.

It's not mandatory to have a solid background in the field in which a science writer is writing - Richard Rhodes has ranged from his original the making of the atomic bomb to deadly feasts about prion diseases -which turned our son into a vegetarian immediately after reading it his junior yr in HS.

But the background does help..IF the writing is up to the job too. But then my sister is one the APs medical writers..mostly they need to have a clear enough understanding of the implications of a paper they come across in the NEJM or BMJ or JAMA to get on the phone and start talking w/ the first author. (that's a secondary gig, primarily she's been an NOrleans/LA reporter since '77). But Verghese has become my favorite "doctor/writer" - not to put down Oliver Sacks, Thomas and others who are also excellent - and who primarily write case studies/essays that can be swallowed quickly. He's just the best Writerin my never esp. humble opinion. Besides he's writing in a field not so distant from my day gig supporting epidemiology research at the Nat.Inst. of Envi. Health Sciences. AND he loves maps..so my geography and public health jones' get fed.

Message edited by its author, Dec 9, 2009, 10:11am.

In re "medical reporting" - 15 yrs ago or so, the group i work with came up w/ a finding that was widely reported on the timing of intercourse during the menstrual cycle..the probability of getting pregnant given intercourse on any of the 6 fertile days at and before ovulation. The first author, a biostats person, who's one of our best friends and still at 60 a lovely woman, got a call that started "We're from Young Bride and we'd like to ask you about "Your Sex Life". Now quotes are hard to hear over the phone and she had, at first, no idea that this was a regular column for newly weds..So her first inclination, which she repressed but just barely, was to say "you should have called 15 yrs earlier")

I just grabbed David Foster Wallace's history of inifinity at the library.

17:
His only published thing that I have yet to read. I do own it though.

13: Welcome, jenniford, and thanks for the recommendation.

15: The science titles I've read tend to be in the math/physics area. I've not read much in the medical field, but the area fascinates (and sometimes terrifies) me. I'll have to check out these suggestions.

Obviously I can't recommend in my own country and the tennis partner too highly. Unlike many med/epi books for non-specialists, these aren't books that are out to scare the reader or influence behavior or policy; rather they are books that put humanity back into medicine and medical research (the latter task being rather harder than the first!)

His most recent book, Cutting for Stone a sprawling novel that follows the lives of two brothers begins (and spends much fascinating time) in Verghese's homeland of Ethiopia. Then narrator and book move to one of the many urban hospitals (NYC in this case) that have became the primary care givers for the poor and a primary training ground for foreign residents. It's very good - but not as moving or as "telling" as his medical autobiographies.

The coming plague is calmly terrifying as it delineates the rapidly changing interfaces between man/environment/ and disease all over the world and outlines possible implications.

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 10:55pm.

Three excellent books which are very informative for the layperson and also extremely funny are the Science of Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen - I can recommend them highly. Also, The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies seems to be getting a thumbs-up from my husband (he with the brain the size of a planet and a reluctance to suffer fools gladly, or at all!).

Message edited by its author, Dec 30, 2009, 4:41am.