The r/AskScience Reading List

Description
You asked, we answered: introducing the AskScience Reading List! We asked our experts what science books they recommend. While this list is a work in progress, we've posted it in hopes that it will help our readers find interesting an enlightening material. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/wiki/booklist
1
Awakenings
by Oliver Sacks
2,730 members
27 reviews
3.9
2 Members
gypsysmom, buecherportal
2
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
16,889 members
776 reviews
4.2
Member
gypsysmom
3
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
by Neil Shubin
2,959 members
80 reviews
3.9
Member
buecherportal
5
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
by Tracy Kidder
5,398 members
151 reviews
4.1
Member
gypsysmom
7
Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren
3,179 members
174 reviews
4
Member
gypsysmom
8
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
by Jonathan Weiner
1,932 members
41 reviews
4.2
Member
gypsysmom
9
The Mind's Eye
by Oliver Sacks
1,756 members
69 reviews
½ 3.7
Member
gypsysmom
10
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks
12,965 members
237 reviews
3.9
Member
gypsysmom
11
Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
7,697 members
119 reviews
4
Member
gypsysmom
12
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
by Aldo Leopold
5,102 members
74 reviews
4.2
Member
gypsysmom
13
Principles of Instrumental Analysis
by Douglas A. Skoog
196 members
1 review
3.8
Member
gypsysmom
14
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
25,547 members
430 reviews
4.2
15
The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin
16,542 members
133 reviews
4.1
16
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas Hofstadter
14,901 members
136 reviews
½ 4.3
17
Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman
14,852 members
265 reviews
4.1
18
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
by Carl Sagan
9,575 members
102 reviews
½ 4.4
19
A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking
7,686 members
110 reviews
4
20
Chaos: Making a New Science
by James Gleick
7,659 members
73 reviews
3.9
21
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
by Simon Singh
6,568 members
80 reviews
4.2
22
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
by Steven Pinker
6,512 members
63 reviews
4
23
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
6,026 members
216 reviews
½ 4.3
24
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
by Brian Greene
5,952 members
46 reviews
4.1
25
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
by Edward R. Tufte
5,563 members
60 reviews
½ 4.4
26
The Universe in a Nutshell
by Stephen Hawking
5,233 members
45 reviews
3.9
27
How the Mind Works
by Steven Pinker
5,182 members
46 reviews
4
28
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
by Richard Dawkins
5,115 members
88 reviews
4.2
29
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
by Albert Einstein
5,115 members
40 reviews
3.9
31
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
by Simon Winchester
4,571 members
129 reviews
3.8
32
The Map that Changed the World: The Tale of William Smith and the Birth of a Science
by Simon Winchester
4,248 members
89 reviews
½ 3.6
33
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't
by Nate Silver
3,694 members
93 reviews
3.8
34
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
by Mark Kurlansky
3,608 members
77 reviews
3.9
35
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
by Steven Pinker
3,558 members
41 reviews
3.8
36
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
by Richard Feynman
3,347 members
43 reviews
4.2
37
Pale Blue Dot : A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by Carl Sagan
3,344 members
35 reviews
½ 4.3
38
The Gene: An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
3,284 members
79 reviews
4.2
39
Introduction to Algorithms
by Thomas H. Cormen
2,990 members
8 reviews
½ 4.3
40
In Search Of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
by John Gribbin
2,845 members
29 reviews
3.9
41
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
by Charles Seife
2,764 members
55 reviews
3.8
42
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
by Apostolos Doxiadis
2,580 members
111 reviews
3.9
43
The Sea Around Us
by Rachel Carson
2,322 members
21 reviews
3.9
44
How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
by G. Polya
2,276 members
19 reviews
4
45
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
by Lewis Thomas
2,259 members
32 reviews
4.1
46
The Planets
by Dava Sobel
2,176 members
53 reviews
½ 3.5
47
Annals of the Former World
by John McPhee
1,839 members
25 reviews
4.2
48
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
by Stuart J. Russell
1,803 members
6 reviews
4.1
49
The Character of Physical Law
by Richard Feynman
1,751 members
18 reviews
4.1
50
Why Evolution Is True
by Jerry A. Coyne
1,708 members
32 reviews
½ 4.3
51
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1-3
by Richard Feynman
1,706 members
13 reviews
½ 4.5
52
The Mismeasure of Man
by Stephen Jay Gould
1,585 members
17 reviews
4.1
53
The First Three Minutes
by Steven Weinberg
1,533 members
17 reviews
3.8
54
Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc
by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
1,403 members
27 reviews
½ 3.6
55
A History of Pi
by Petr Beckmann
1,381 members
17 reviews
½ 3.5
57
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
by Nicholas Wade
1,152 members
41 reviews
4
58
A Country Doctor's Notebook
by Mikhail Bulgakov
1,054 members
24 reviews
4.1
59
What Is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods
by Richard Courant
1,048 members
11 reviews
4.2
60
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
by Sean M. Carroll
969 members
25 reviews
3.8
61
Introduction to Electrodynamics
by David J. Griffiths
961 members
3 reviews
4
62
The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?
by Leon M. Lederman
923 members
8 reviews
3.9
63
The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking)
by Katie Mack
892 members
31 reviews
4.1
64
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
by Mike Brown
883 members
37 reviews
4.1
65
The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
843 members
68 reviews
3.8
66
In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World
by Ian Stewart
703 members
11 reviews
½ 3.6
69
Classical Mechanics
by Herbert Goldstein
683 members
3 reviews
3.8
70
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
by Andrew Blum
671 members
23 reviews
½ 3.4
71
Classical Electrodynamics
by John David Jackson
655 members
6 reviews
½ 3.7
73
Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality
by Edward Frenkel
580 members
13 reviews
½ 3.6
75
The Malay Archipelago
by Alfred Russel Wallace
511 members
9 reviews
4.1
77
The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set
by Donald E. Knuth
498 members
6 reviews
½ 4.6
79
Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences
by Mary L. Boas
476 members
4 reviews
4.1
81
Modern Quantum Mechanics
by J. J. Sakurai
398 members
2 reviews
½ 3.7
82
Mechanics
by Lev Landau
394 members
4 reviews
3.9
83
The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology
by Horace Freeland Judson
392 members
2 reviews
4.2
84
What Is Life?: The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell
by Erwin Schrödinger
360 members
3 reviews
4
85
Elements of Information Theory
by Thomas M. Cover
347 members
1 review
½ 4.3
86
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information
by Michael A. Nielsen
339 members
1 review
4.1
87
Principles of Quantum Mechanics
by R. Shankar
331 members
4.1
88
The Classical Theory of Fields
by L. D. Landau
327 members
2 reviews
3.8
89
Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell
by Anthony Zee
323 members
1 review
3.8
90
The Day We Found the Universe
by Marcia Bartusiak
312 members
9 reviews
4.1
92
Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics
by Frederick Reif
295 members
3 reviews
½ 3.5
93
Quantitative Chemical Analysis
by Daniel C. Harris
283 members
½ 3.7
94
Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
by Randal E. Bryant
280 members
½ 3.7
95
Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People
by Steven Vogel
279 members
1 review
½ 3.5
96
An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory
by Michael E. Peskin
259 members
4
97
Statistical Physics, Part 1
by L. D. Landau
258 members
3.9
98
Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology
by Valentino Braitenberg
256 members
3 reviews
4.2
99
Quantum Mechanics: Non-Relativistic Theory
by L. D. Landau
253 members
2 reviews
½ 3.6
100
Algorithm Design
by Jon Kleinberg
243 members
1 review
½ 3.5