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
Members
1 participating member
1
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
22,534 members
400 reviews
4.2
2
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
14,039 members
731 reviews
4.2
3
The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin
13,804 members
117 reviews
4.1
4
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
13,277 members
125 reviews
½ 4.3
5
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks
11,174 members
203 reviews
3.9
6
Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman
11,016 members
221 reviews
4.1
8
Cosmos: The Story of Cosmic Evolution, Science and Civilisation
by Carl Sagan
8,034 members
83 reviews
½ 4.4
9
Chaos: Making a New Science
by James Gleick
6,781 members
62 reviews
3.9
10
A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking
6,660 members
97 reviews
4
11
Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson
6,249 members
98 reviews
4
12
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
by Simon Singh
5,816 members
74 reviews
4.2
13
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
by Steven Pinker
5,802 members
58 reviews
4
14
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
by Brian Greene
5,219 members
42 reviews
4.1
15
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
by Edward R. Tufte
4,998 members
56 reviews
½ 4.4
16
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
4,819 members
205 reviews
½ 4.3
17
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
by Tracy Kidder
4,783 members
145 reviews
4.1
18
How the Mind Works
by Steven Pinker
4,653 members
40 reviews
4
19
The Universe in a Nutshell
by Stephen Hawking
4,616 members
40 reviews
3.8
20
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
by Richard Dawkins
4,457 members
81 reviews
4.2
21
Relativity: The Special and General Theory
by Albert Einstein
4,279 members
33 reviews
3.9
22
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
by Aldo Leopold
4,221 members
55 reviews
4.2
23
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
by Simon Winchester
4,032 members
119 reviews
3.8
25
The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology
by Simon Winchester
3,707 members
79 reviews
½ 3.6
26
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
by Steven Pinker
3,208 members
37 reviews
3.8
27
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
by Mark Kurlansky
3,158 members
66 reviews
3.9
28
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't
by Nate Silver
3,085 members
82 reviews
3.9
29
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
by Richard P. Feynman
2,929 members
41 reviews
4.2
30
Pale Blue Dot : A Vision of the Human Future in Space
by Carl Sagan
2,806 members
27 reviews
½ 4.3
31
Introduction to Algorithms
by Thomas H. Cormen
2,690 members
6 reviews
½ 4.3
32
In Search Of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
by John Gribbin
2,520 members
27 reviews
3.8
33
Your Inner Fish
by Neil Shubin
2,498 members
70 reviews
3.9
34
Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren
2,480 members
144 reviews
4.1
35
The Gene: An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
2,401 members
70 reviews
4.2
36
Awakenings
by Oliver Sacks
2,389 members
24 reviews
3.9
37
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
by Charles Seife
2,385 members
49 reviews
3.8
38
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
by Apostolos Doxiadis
2,211 members
102 reviews
3.9
39
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
by Lewis Thomas
2,040 members
33 reviews
4.1
40
The Planets
by Dava Sobel
1,906 members
49 reviews
½ 3.5
41
How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
by George Pólya
1,900 members
15 reviews
4
42
The Sea Around Us
by Rachel Carson
1,887 members
16 reviews
4
43
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
by Jonathan Weiner
1,675 members
36 reviews
4.2
44
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
by Stuart J. Russell
1,620 members
6 reviews
4.2
45
Annals of the Former World
by John McPhee
1,564 members
23 reviews
½ 4.3
46
The Character of Physical Law
by Richard Feynman
1,520 members
15 reviews
4.1
47
The Mind's Eye
by Oliver Sacks
1,490 members
59 reviews
½ 3.7
48
Why Evolution Is True
by Jerry A. Coyne
1,473 members
29 reviews
½ 4.3
49
The Feynman lectures on physics [3-volume set]
by Richard P. Feynman
1,407 members
10 reviews
½ 4.5
50
The Mismeasure of Man
by Stephen Jay Gould
1,382 members
13 reviews
4.1
51
The First Three Minutes
by Steven Weinberg
1,312 members
14 reviews
½ 3.7
52
A History of Pi
by Petr Beckmann
1,201 members
17 reviews
½ 3.4
54
Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc
by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
1,097 members
36 reviews
½ 3.6
55
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
by Nicholas Wade
1,033 members
39 reviews
4.1
56
What Is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods
by Richard Courant
883 members
9 reviews
½ 4.3
57
The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?
by Leon M. Lederman
818 members
8 reviews
3.9
58
Aantekeningen van een jonge arts
by Mikhail Bulgakov
811 members
21 reviews
4.2
59
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
by Sean M. Carroll
807 members
23 reviews
3.8
60
Introduction to Electrodynamics
by David J. Griffiths
792 members
3 reviews
4
61
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
by Mike Brown
750 members
35 reviews
4.1
62
The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
742 members
65 reviews
3.8
64
Classical Mechanics
by Herbert Goldstein
574 members
3 reviews
3.8
65
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
by Andrew Blum
567 members
21 reviews
½ 3.4
66
Classical Electrodynamics
by John David Jackson
566 members
5 reviews
½ 3.6
68
In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World
by Ian Stewart
544 members
10 reviews
½ 3.6
69
The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking)
by Katie Mack
529 members
17 reviews
4.1
71
The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-3 Boxed Set
by Donald E. Knuth
477 members
6 reviews
½ 4.6
72
Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality
by Edward Frenkel
455 members
11 reviews
½ 3.6
74
The Malay Archipelago
by Alfred Russel Wallace
450 members
6 reviews
4
76
Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences
by Mary L. Boas
414 members
6 reviews
4.1
79
The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology
by Horace Freeland Judson
335 members
1 review
½ 4.3
80
Modern Quantum Mechanics
by J. J. Sakurai
332 members
1 review
½ 3.6
81
Mechanics
by Lev Landau
323 members
3 reviews
4
82
Elements of Information Theory
by Thomas M. Cover
294 members
1 review
½ 4.3
83
What Is Life?: The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell
by Erwin Schrödinger
292 members
3 reviews
4.1
84
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information
by Michael A. Nielsen
287 members
1 review
4.1
85
The Classical Theory of Fields
by L. D. Landau
284 members
1 review
3.9
86
Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell
by Anthony Zee
280 members
1 review
3.8
88
Principles of Quantum Mechanics
by R. Shankar
270 members
4.1
89
The Day We Found the Universe
by Marcia Bartusiak
264 members
8 reviews
4.2
90
Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics
by Frederick Reif
249 members
3 reviews
½ 3.5
91
Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
by Randal E. Bryant
240 members
½ 3.7
92
Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People
by Steven Vogel
240 members
1 review
½ 3.3
93
Quantitative Chemical Analysis
by Daniel C. Harris
237 members
½ 3.7
94
Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology
by Valentino Braitenberg
232 members
3 reviews
½ 4.3
95
An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory
by Michael E. Peskin
222 members
4
96
Statistical Physics, Part 1
by L. D. Landau
221 members
3.9
98
Quantum Mechanics: Non-Relativistic Theory
by L. D. Landau
215 members
1 review
½ 3.7
99
Algorithm Design
by Jon Kleinberg
208 members
1 review
½ 3.6