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10 of the best popular science books as chosen by authors and writers

By George Monbiot , Colin Tudge , Pragya Agarwal , Jonathan Drori , Emily Shuckburgh , Cassandra Coburn , Jojo Mehta , Jim Down , Camilla Pang and Richard Walker

24 April 2021

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

A fantastic science book can wow you, entertain you and change the way you think, all over the course of a few hundred pages. It can also act as a source of inspiration. We have asked 10 brilliant science writers and authors to pick their favourites, many of which were influenced earlier in their careers by their choices. Did your favourite make the list?

The best popular science books as picked by science writers

Jonathan Drori chooses Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

This is like being asked to choose the best vegetable or your favourite child! However, if pressed, I would nominate Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring , published in 1962 but still luminous and relevant. With her strong evidence and clear voice, Carson ignited global environmental efforts by detailing the effects of DDT and other pesticides on the environment . In addition to showing that life on Earth is composed of complex webs of interdependency, she revealed the dangers posed to humans and wildlife by artificial pesticides and exposed the cosy acceptance of industry propaganda by government officials.

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The Ten Best Science Books of 2023

From stories on the depths of the ocean to the stars in the sky, these are the works that moved us the most this year

Bridget Alex , Riley Black , Dan Falk , Shi En Kim , Carlyn Kranking and Joe Spring

In the past 12 months, record-breaking wildfires burned across Canada, and a tragic blaze swept through Maui . A piece of an asteroid landed on Earth after an epic space mission, and artificial intelligence advanced in leaps and bounds. In our oceans, a sub imploded on a fatal dive to the Titanic , and orcas gained our attention as they broke rudders off boats.

In between writing and editing articles about all of those stories, we read longer, more involved works of nonfiction. From these, we picked our ten favorites published between December of last year and this November. They range from a book about a group dedicated to rehabilitating injured turtles, to the story of a damaging wildfire that burned through a city in Canada, to a work on the amazing discoveries that have been made by scientists exploring the ocean’s depths. Check out these top science titles from the past year, selected by Smithsonian magazine’s editors and frequent contributors.

Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World by John Vaillant

In a year when record-setting forest fires raged across Canada and their smoke clouded the skies across North America , and a Maui forest fire incinerated the town of Lahaina in a deadly blaze, the most harrowing book we read about climate change featured a devastating forest fire. In Fire Weather , author John Vaillant crafts a thriller about a cataclysmic inferno that burned through the town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, in May 2016. (We ran an excerpt of the book here .) The blaze generated hurricane-force winds and lightning, and entire neighborhoods burned to the ground under a type of pyrocumulus cloud usually associated with volcanoes. Roughly 100,000 people evacuated what would become the costliest disaster in Canadian history.

Vaillant’s story of Fort McMurray’s destruction illustrates a perfect storm of sorts. Fort McMurray is in the middle of Alberta’s tar sands, or bituminous sands. As Vaillant colorfully writes, “Bituminous sand is to a barrel of oil what a sandbox soaked in molasses is to a bottle of rum.” Its deposits in Canada are one of the biggest known petroleum reserves in the world, and Fort McMurray is in the energy-intensive business of recovering it, upgrading it and transporting it. The fossil fuel that comes from Fort McMurray, when burned, releases the greenhouse gases that cause climate change—and the conditions in which fires can flourish. Vaillant weaves together the story of the tar sands industry, the impacts of climate change and the white-knuckle evacuation of the town into a frightening wake-up call of our new reality concerning wildfires. — Joe Spring

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.

Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell by Sy Montgomery

Scuttling Earth for at least 220 million years, turtles have survived more than one mass extinction, including the one that offed dinosaurs. But in a geologic instant, humans have pushed more than half their 360 known species to near-extinction. And in an actual instant, animals slated to live a century or more can be killed—after their shells are crushed by cars, their mouths are snagged by fishhooks or their ponds are drained by developers.

Yet there is hope for some turtles. The Turtle Rescue League in Southbridge, Massachusetts, rehabilitates hundreds of ailing turtles each year. In Of Time and Turtles , author Sy Montgomery joins the small squad in spring of 2020, just as routine life freezes for Covid-19. The book recounts her year with the league, as they incubated eggs, injected antibiotics, mended shattered shells and returned healed patients to nature. Montgomery’s sensory-rich writing brings readers into the action: You’ll watch a cold-stunned sea turtle move “in ultra slow-mo, a toy whose batteries are almost run out”; smell a wetland “scented like pencil shavings”; and walk across “moss that cushions and squelches with every step.” You’ll bond with favorite patients like Fire Chief, a 42-pound snapper with a custom-built wheelchair, and Lucy, a tropical tortoise rejuvenated with watermelon slices. Between scenes of reptile rescue, Montgomery draws from research papers, news stories, novels and poetry to muse on turtles and the passage of time. Ultimately though, the shell-armored reptiles, “ancient, unhurried, long-lived beings,” are what help her make peace with mortality and growing old. — Bridget Alex

Preview thumbnail for 'Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell: A heartwarming compassionate portrait of injured turtles, perfect for nature lovers.

Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell: A heartwarming compassionate portrait of injured turtles, perfect for nature lovers.

National Book Award finalist for The Soul of an Octopus and New York Times bestseller Sy Montgomery turns her journalistic curiosity to the wonder and wisdom of our long-lived cohabitants—turtles—and through their stories of hope and rescue, reveals to us astonishing new perspectives on time and healing.

Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb

From the start of Ben Goldfarb’s fascinating book on road ecology, Crossings , the reader is peppered with jaw-dropping facts. Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the Earth. While a half-century ago 3 percent of land-dwelling mammals died on a road, in 2017 that percentage had quadrupled. In 1995, researchers estimated that, in the United States, deer factor into more than a million vehicle crashes annually, injure 29,000 drivers and passengers, and kill more than 200. (We ran an excerpt of the book, with many more surprising facts, here .) And the book is engrossing for other reasons. In it, Goldfarb chronicles roads from California to Canada to Tasmania to show how they have impacted the natural world—and that includes us. He explores how roads have affected everything from butterflies to mountain lions to frogs.

His journey is not just a recounting of dismal experiences. He looks to those places where engineers have built overpasses and underpasses—and animals and humans have benefited as a result. Some of those creations are expensive, but animal crashes cost the U.S. more than $8 billion dollars a year, so fixes are in order. The Nugget Canyon underpasses, built in Wyoming, for example, prevented 95 crashes with animals annually, and so paid for themselves within five years. By citing so many interesting examples of things done right, Goldfarb invites us to contemplate a future of roads that could be much brighter, if we would just adopt an ethic, he says, in which roads embrace the land instead of conquer it. — J.S.

Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

An eye-opening account of the global ecological transformations wrought by roads, from the award-winning author of Eager .

Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them) by Roberto Trotta

Without the stars, the history of our species would have been very different. That’s the central argument in Roberto Trotta’s engaging homage to the star-studded night sky, Starborn . The stars are more than just pretty: As Trotta shows, our efforts to understand the movements of the stars and planets (and the sun and the moon) played a crucial role in the development of navigation and precision timekeeping. In ancient Egypt, for example, the bright star Sirius was worshipped as a deity, and the start of the new year was signaled when Sirius first became visible in the pre-dawn sky. Seafaring Polynesians, meanwhile, traveled from island to island in the Pacific Ocean by memorizing the positions and movements of some 200 stars—aided by their knowledge of ocean currents, fish, birds and seaweed. Today’s most accurate timekeepers are atomic clocks , which count vibrations of a cesium atom—but even these need to be tweaked based on the sun and stars, because the Earth’s spin is gradually slowing.

But the night sky is no longer as visible as it once was. The author shows just how much we’re losing as light pollution—first from cities and industrialization and now from so-called constellation satellites like those launched by SpaceX—obliterates all but the very brightest stars and planets for millions of Earthlings. Though Trotta is a theoretical physicist, this is nothing like a textbook; rather, the author uses his own insightful observations and personal anecdotes to pay tribute to our evolving relationship with the universe. Perhaps above all, the book is a reminder to look up—and not to take that vista for granted. — Dan Falk

Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (and Who We Would Be Without Them)

A sweeping inquiry into how the night sky has shaped human history

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People by Tracy Kidder

In Rough Sleepers , author Tracy Kidder profiles a dedicated doctor who treats Boston’s homeless. Harvard-educated physician Jim O’Connell is the founder and president of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program . “The Program,” as O’Connell calls it, employs roughly 400 workers to treat more than 11,000 homeless people annually. O’Connell, who refers to the unhoused as “rough sleepers,” a 19th-century British term, is called Dr. Jim by his patients. He treats them in a clinic and drives a van to meet them on the streets. He addresses everything from lice and scabies to more advanced problems that patients have following years of neglect, including large tumors and, in one case, a hernia that dropped below a man’s knees. Aside from care, O’Connell sometimes hands out his own money and gift cards.

Homelessness is an overwhelming problem with lots of causes, from poverty to drug addiction to mental illness, and battling it is difficult. O’Connell is just the last line of defense, a committed pro who, by one account, is a man at a bottom of a cliff trying to catch people after they fall off. Although Kidder briefly delves into the increasing urban homelessness problem and organizations’ attempts to fight it, this book makes our list because of the author’s flowing narrative showing the bond among Dr. Jim, his co-workers and his unhoused patients. That often-overlooked sector of society is perhaps best illustrated in the book after one homeless person dies, and people in the clinic and on the street share stories and mourn his passing. “The community of rough sleepers, usually so loose and informal,” Kidder writes, “could sometimes seem as intimately connected as mycelium under a forest floor.” — J.S.

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people

Tracy Kidder has been described by The Baltimore Sun as “a master of the nonfiction narrative.” In Rough Sleepers , Kidder tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a gifted man who invented a community of care for a city’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the “rough sleepers.”

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

Nature is unabashedly queer. We are surrounded by species that live outside our human experience, points of reflective contrast to our terrestrial lives. Sabrina Imbler’s scientifically steeped memoir How Far the Light Reaches revels in these differences, using an aquarium of undersea creatures as foils for significant moments in the author’s life. The preserved remains of a whale are a foil for dissecting a breakup, and our sometimes leering fascination with a marine worm called the sand striker gives form to a meditation on consent. Imbler’s essay “We Swarm,” especially, is a treasure. Squishy marine organisms called salps, which spend part of their lives in aggregations of hundreds of individuals, open a warm recollection of Pride celebrations along the New York shoreline.

Each of Imbler’s chapters is rife with scientific information about the species they’ve chosen, but the book shines as an exercise in undersea empathy. “I want to know what kinds of transformation the cuttlefish is capable of when it is motivated not by fear but by community and sex,” Imbler writes, “and I am not interested in calling it a disguise.” A creature like a cuttlefish may seem so far removed from what we know, separated by over 500 million years of history, but Imbler beautifully demonstrates that we can catch glimmers of ourselves in lives that thrive from the photic zone to the deepest depths. — Riley Black

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature.

The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan

As chemicals go, phosphorus—number 15 on the periodic table—is something of a paradox. In The Devil’s Element , journalist Dan Egan explains how phosphorus is essential for all life; it can be found in every cell in your body. But it is also combustible and explosive. So-called white phosphorus is a waxy substance that spontaneously combusts when exposed to oxygen—and can cause temperatures to hit 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit. White phosphorus was the key ingredient in the bombs dropped by the Allies on Hamburg, Germany, during World War II, unleashing a firestorm that leveled the city and killed some 37,000 people.

First isolated by a German alchemist in the 1600s, phosphorus today is an essential ingredient in fertilizers; without it, millions would go hungry. But the United States may run out of phosphorus in just a few decades—a looming crisis that Egan says may rival the more talked-about shortages we may soon face with oil and water. Meanwhile, runoff from agricultural use is sending phosphorus into our lakes and rivers, leading to toxic algae blooms and rendering large swaths of water unsafe. A case in point is Florida, which holds more phosphorus deposits than any other state, but is also now plagued with smelly and even dangerous waterways, thanks to the over-use of the chemical. With a compelling mix of science, history and geopolitics, Egan illuminates our complex relationship with this enigmatic element. — D.F.

The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance

Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called “the oil of our time.”

My Father’s Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s by Sandeep Jauhar

Alzheimer’s disease robs a person’s memory, yes, but it also causes sweeping behavioral transformations that can include agitation and stubbornness. Those with the condition can become difficult patients, unrecognizable to their loved ones. The slow-acting and irreversible disease “is more feared than death itself,” writes Sandeep Jauhar in My Father’s Brain . After his father starts to show signs of dementia in 2014, Jauhar’s parents move states to be closer to their sons. But the close proximity does little to prevent his father’s Alzheimer’s from upending the lives of family members. Jauhar doesn’t shy away from narrating the ugly and difficult experiences of his father’s irrational behavior, which often leads to sibling fights and frustration for the author.

The book is an excellent introduction to the impacts of Alzheimer’s—on the patient and caregivers. It shines the brightest when detailing the factors that add financial and logistical challenges to families caring for the chronically ill. Millions of people care for a family member with Alzheimer’s, but Jauhar’s voice is unique; he taps into his dual identity as a doctor and son of immigrants to explore the ethics and cultural expectations of long-term care. Although the book doesn’t offer hope for a preventative or cure, readers will find comfort in Jauhar’s honesty—and, for those going through the same journey of caring for someone with Alzheimer’s, solidarity. — Shi En Kim

My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's

A deeply affecting memoir of a father’s descent into dementia, and a revelatory inquiry into why the human brain degenerates with age and what we can do about it

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey

In June, the world paid more attention than usual to deep-sea exploration when OceanGate’s Titan submersible went quiet while exploring the Titanic . Later, the public learned the craft imploded . That was the rare tragic episode of deep-ocean adventures, one years in the making due to the company’s failure to test and heed warnings. But a much more awe-inspiring exploration of the deep has been taking place for decades, and Susan Casey’s enthralling book, The Underworld , documents it in stunning detail. (We ran an excerpt of the book here .) As Casey points out, though you can view maps of Mars on your iPhone, 80 percent of Earth’s seafloor hasn’t been charted in sharp detail. So much remains to be discovered, and Casey makes it a point to see what is out there by interviewing deep-sea pioneers and even heading down thousands of feet in submersibles herself. As she goes, she shares the amazing sights around her—fish that light up like a meteor shower, shrimp doing wheelies and orange microbial mats. She also chronicles the history of deep-sea exploration and details the current efforts to discover more about a world that deserves our attention now more than ever. Many companies are considering mining the seafloor for precious metals, and Casey’s book is a testament to the fact that so many beautiful and important things live down there that we should learn about before doing damage. — J.S.

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean

Susan Casey is our premiere chronicler of the aquatic world. For The Underworld , she traversed the globe, joining scientists and explorers on dives to the deepest places on the planet, interviewing the marine geologists, marine biologists, and oceanographers who are searching for knowledge in this vast unseen realm.

Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper

In little more than two minutes captured on video in May 2020, the life of New York City birder Christian Cooper drastically changed. He saw a dog run through a forested section of Central Park and asked its owner, a white woman, to leash her pet in accordance with the law. When she refused, he began to film her with his smartphone, and as he did, she said she would call the police on him and tell them “an African American man is threatening my life.” As the racist incident came to national attention, Cooper quickly became the best-known birder in America. And, amid a hobby that is largely older and white, “the fact that that birder is Black turned heads,” Cooper writes.

With his memoir, Better Living Through Birding , the self-described “Black, gay nerd” pulls back the curtain on the rest of his life outside those two minutes. He begins with an inside glimpse into the world of Central Park birders that he entered as a child. Alongside other binocular-toting enthusiasts, he wakes up at the crack of dawn to chase rarities, like the gray-and-yellow Kirtland’s warbler, and finds beauty in the more mundane, like the iridescent sheen of a common grackle. But Cooper’s story takes readers beyond Central Park, to awe-inspiring destinations around the world, from Australia’s Uluru rock to the Everest Base Camp. He also shares experiences from inside the walls of the Marvel Comics offices, where he worked as a writer and editor, and from the streets of New York, where he protests following an incident of violence against a gay couple in upper Manhattan. Every bit of Cooper’s experience is intertwined with his appreciation for nature, and his memoir is punctuated with descriptions of birding so imbued with passion—from watching a fiery-orange Blackburnian warbler in Central Park to sprinting after chimney swifts in Selma, Alabama—that they could make even a non-birder’s veins pulse with excitement. — Carlyn Kranking

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

Better Living Through Birding recounts Christian Cooper’s journey through the wonderful world of birds and what they can teach us about life, if only we would look and listen.

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Bridget Alex | | READ MORE

Bridget Alex is an anthropologist and science writer based in Pasadena, California. Her stories can be found in outlets including Discover , Science , and Atlas Obscura . She tweets @bannelia .

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.

Dan Falk | | READ MORE

Dan Falk is a science journalist based in Toronto. His books include The Science of Shakespeare and In Search of Time .

Shi En Kim | | READ MORE

Shi En Kim is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance science journalist. Her work has appeared in National Geographic , Scientific American , the Atlantic , Popular Science and others. In 2021, she interned at Smithsonian magazine as an AAAS Mass Media Fellow.

Carlyn Kranking | | READ MORE

Carlyn Kranking is the assistant web editor for science and innovation.

Joe Spring | READ MORE

Joe Spring is the associate digital science editor for Smithsonian magazine.

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Nonfiction Books » Science » New Science Books

Browse book recommendations:

Existential Risks
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Last updated: November 19, 2024

In our new science books section, we keep track of some of the books coming out by Five Books interviewees and frequently recommended authors. It's a golden age for science and science books are following suit, exploring all manner of subjects in an engaging and accessible style for a broad audience. We also are fortunate that the UK's national science academy, the Royal Society (which was founded in 1660 and so still has a wonderfully 17th-century official name: "The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge") has two annual book awards, one for adults and one for kids. We try to have the judges take us through the shortlists every year , to ensure those books are also included.

(We also have a separate section dedicated to new math books and new physics books).

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

By kelly and zach weinersmith.

🏆 Winner of the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize

Read expert recommendations

“There are two things that are very cool. First, it’s written by a husband-and-wife couple, one of whom is a science writer and the other is a cartoonist. They have pooled their talents to write a really engaging, fun narrative that ties together a huge array of multidisciplinary lines of evidence of what it would take to achieve different stages of living in space.” Read more...

The Best Popular Science Books of 2024

John Hutchinson ,

Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

By cat bohannon.

“It’s about the neglect of the importance of female anatomy and physiology in our understanding of mammalian evolution, and much more broadly in society. It walks through the evolution of the female form, showing how massive those changes were in terms of their effect on the biology of our distant ancestors, which then affected all descendant mammals in certain ways. Bohannon then marches through the evolutionary tree, through different ancestors (or their proxies), ultimately to us—explaining how our biology as a species, not just as women, has been shaped by the influence of female biology.” Read more...

Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality

By venki ramakrishnan.

“Ramakrishnan puts together all the evidence we have about the molecular and cellular biology of ageing and of cancer—and how this relates to mortality, and makes a very interesting point that I had never thought about, which is that there is a tension in the way our cells work in holding off ageing, but also holding off cancer. The two work at loggerheads; you don’t want to get cancer, but also you don’t want your cells to grow too old and to get too damaged to function. Preventing one can enable the other.” Read more...

Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are

By rebecca boyle.

“A lovely book about the moon by science writer Rebecca Boyle: Our Moon: A Human History . She looks at the moon from all sorts of interesting angles: how it affected the outcome of battles, what it was like for the Apollo astronauts, etc.” Read more...

Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024

Sophie Roell , Journalist

The Shortest History of Sex

By david baker.

“David Baker, whose field is ‘big history’, takes on The Shortest History of Sex, starting with the Big Bang. This is really a fascinating science book, a tale of the entire history (and a bit of the future) of humanity told through the lens of sex. Like On The Origin of Species, each chapter begins with a little summary of the main topics covered. If you’re on the prudish side (I’m afraid I am) the jokes can be a little jarring but given the subject matter, I can understand the author’s decision to go for it.” Read more...

Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense

Saul perlmutter, robert maccoun and john campbell.

🎯 A bestselling book on Five Books in 2024

In Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense a Nobel-prize winning physicist, a philosopher and a social scientist together give a clear, accessible and enlightening guide to the tools of thinking that make science work. This is a brilliant book by eminent thinkers in their fields who are also superb communicators. It's a really enjoyable read and a great book for anyone who wants to think more clearly about evidence, argument, reason and the need for a degree of intellectual humility.

“One of the most popular interviews on our site is about critical thinking. Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense by Saul Perlmutter (a Nobel-prize winning astrophysicist), Robert MacCoun, (a social psychologist) and John Campbell (a philosopher) is a notable new addition to that list. According to Nigel Warburton, it’s ‘a clear, accessible and enlightening guide to the tools of thinking that make science work. It’s a really enjoyable read and a great book for anyone who wants to think more clearly about evidence, argument, reason and the need for a degree of intellectual humility.'” Read more...

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

By hannah ritchie.

“Data scientist Hannah Ritchie, head of research at Our World in Data, has a book out on climate change entitled Not the End of the World . Ritchie says she’s inspired by the late Swedish epidemiologist Hans Rosling (author of Factfulness ) and the book is very much in the vein of ‘we’ve achieved a lot, let’s not despair.’ It’s a climate-change pep talk, I suppose, but based on facts and data.” Read more...

The Globe: How the Earth Became Round

By james hannam.

“ The Globe: How the Earth Became Round by James Hannam looks at how human beings figured out the Earth was round, a nice read for those of us who are still impressed by that feat. Hannam points out the extent to which people misunderstand the history, including Barack Obama in a speech. As he writes, ‘The truth is that, after AD 800, we don’t know of anyone in western Europe with a modicum of literacy who didn’t think that the Earth is spherical.'” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023

The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Global History of Mathematics & its Unsung Trailblazers

By kate kitagawa & timothy revell.

“Reading the book was the first time I understood properly what calculus was about, by reading how it was developed, step by step. What they have managed to do is to give mathematics a narrative history that can be understood by non-mathematicians, and this requires a lot of skill. There’s a wonderful phrase they use at some point in the book: ‘Mathematics is a relay’. They bring out very fluently the ways in which the baton is passed on.” Read more...

The 2024 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding

Charles Tripp , Political Scientist

A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous

By caspar henderson.

“Finally, I’d like to mention a book by a friend, Caspar Henderson, whose latest book, A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous, is about sound. It’s a science book, but it’s also a book about appreciating nature and life. It’s beautifully, beautifully done. ‘For me, writing this book has been part of an attempt to listen more deeply and hold on to a sense of aliveness,’ Caspar writes. You can also read his interview with our deputy editor, Cal Flyn, who spoke to him about books on sound in all its manifestations.” Read more...

Pseudoscience: A Very Short Introduction

By michael gordin.

“In Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series there’s a new book on Pseudoscience (again, a popular subject subject on Five Books ) by Princeton historian of science Michael Gordin.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023

Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science

By athene donald.

“Also in new science books is Cambridge physicist Athene Donald’s Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science, looking at why after decades of effort, the numbers of women pursuing careers in the physical sciences and engineering still remain low, and women aren’t adequately represented at the top of biomedical research either.” Read more...

The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos

By jaime green.

Science journalist Jaime Green tells the history of our quest for intelligent life in the universe, exploring the complex science and the science fiction that helps us picture what we might find—and what that might means for humanity.

Worlds Without End: Exoplanets, Habitability, and the Future of Humanity

Worlds Without End by Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, is an accessible and highly readable introduction to exoplanets and the possibility of finding other life in the universe. We're taken through the discovery of exoplanets, the telescopes and technology used, the arguments for life beyond Earth and where science is at in terms of finding it. If you're new to the subject, it's a fun way to learn a lot.

The Little Book of Exoplanets

By joshua winn.

“It’s a good primer. It’s not that short a book, actually, but it’s written in a very nice, concise way…Joshua Winn is part of the TESS team and it’s always interesting to hear about a subject from someone in the field who is at the top of their game. The book is also organized extremely well. He just leads you through the subject in what seems like a logical, sensible way.” Read more...

The best books on Exoplanets

Chris Impey , Scientist

Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace

By james costa.

Radical by Nature is a biography of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) , the English naturalist who came up with the idea of 'transmutation' (now called evolution) at the same time as Charles Darwin, pushing the latter to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859 . It's by James Costa, a Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Western Carolina University, who describes Wallace as "one of the great Victorian naturalist explorers." At 416 pages, this is a serious biography that examines Wallace's life and voyages of scientific discovery, his relationship with Darwin, his work on social causes and his spiritual turn which was so at odds with his scientific reputation.

Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils

By dale e. greenwalt.

Remnants of Ancient Life: The New Science of Old Fossils is a really interesting look at advances in paleobiology by Dale Greenwalt, a paleobiologist who curates the fossil insect collection at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. While traditional paleobiology had to rely on the study of bones and teeth, paleobiologists can now use ancient molecules to study DNA, protein, pigments, and other organic materials. The shadow of Jurassic Park lurks behind this book: it opens with a description of the discovery of the fossil of a blood-engorged mosquito, a stunning 46 million years old.

Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life

By peter coveney & roger highfield.

Virtual You is by Peter Coveney, Director of the Centre for Computational Science at University College London and Roger Highfield, a science communicator and director at the Science Museum Group . In trying to figure out where we're at in terms of making digital copies of our individual human bodies (a big help as we go into an age of more personalized medicine), we also find out an awful lot about those bodies.

A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars

By les johnson.

A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars is a nonfiction book about interstellar travel by Les Johnson, who works on propulsion technologies at NASA, though not currently on interstellar travel, which remains well beyond the realms of today's technologies. As he points out, "the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.2 light years away." Still, who knows what the future will bring? As he also notes, until the early 1990s the only planets we knew were those going around the sun. It's a nice account of where we are and what the future could hold, though there's no need to pack your bags yet.

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time and Motion

By sean carroll.

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe by Sean Carroll is a book with a brilliant premise: that it is possible to write a popular science book that introduces the general reader to the "real stuff" of physics—in other words, equations. The book starts with the equation for momentum (p=mv) and goes all the way to general relativity (Rμν − ½Rgμν = 8πGTμν). It's a bold endeavour, and we can't yet confirm whether it's successful at taking the beginner-in-physics reader the whole way. However, it's nicely mixed with titbits from the history of physics—for example, that it was Ibn Sina ( Avicenna ), the Persian polymath, who first proposed the key idea that in the vacuum of empty space, with no air resistance, a moving body would keep moving forever.

Anaximander and the Nature of Science

By carlo rovelli.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who is brilliant at explaining his field in short books. Anaximander is about a philosopher who lived 26 centuries ago in Miletus, a Greek city on the coast of what is now Turkey. He was the first person to understand that the Earth is just floating in space, and doesn't need to be supported by anything. Anaximander also figured out where rain comes from. "I think it's my best book because it's about what I think science is," Rovelli said at an event at the annual Oxford Literary Festival on 20 January, 2023.

How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space

By janna levin.

***A new edition of How the Universe Got Its Spots by Americal theoretical cosmologist Janna Levin***

“There’s not another book out there like it. It is truly unique. I read it when I was a postdoc. I read a lot of popular science, but I read this book and thought, ‘this is an entirely different genre of science writing!’ It’s very personal. She interweaves stories about her science and her science research from a first-person perspective with stuff going on in her personal life— her troubles with her relationship or when she feels depressed or lonely. That’s all in the book. You understand more what it is like to be a human being doing science from this book than anything I’ve ever read. I still think it’s profound. I occasionally go back and reread a chapter of it, also just to be inspired as a writer.” Read more...

The Best Books on the Big Bang

Dan Hooper , Physicist

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

🏆 Winner of the 2023 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize

“It really is an absolutely marvelous read, from start to finish. It’s just very intriguing. It focuses on animal senses—including smell, sight, hearing, and echolocation, among others. It’s written in a way that truly defines what a great science book is, in that it takes a topic and describes it in a clear scientific manner, but also in a way that really makes the reader think. It really makes you think about all the different senses and all these animals with their amazing senses all around us. The book opens up the reader to a whole new world. As humans, we use sight as our main sense to interpret the world around us. But for dogs, for example, their main sense is smell. Learning how a dog, and all the other animals discussed in the book, interpret the world around them was truly intriguing. I also learned about animals that I’d never heard about before. I learned about the star-nosed mole and the fire-chaser beetle, which is really quite amazing. Fire-chaser beetles sense forest fires from miles away and go there to lay their eggs. I really went ‘Wow!’ learning about that. After finishing the book, I felt I had a new appreciation for the world around me and all the species of animals that inhabit it. It really made me think and understand that we are not the only ones here. It’s quite special.” Read more...

The Best Science Books of 2023: The Royal Society Book Prize

Rebecca Henry , Scientist

Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science

By james poskett.

“It challenges our assumptions…It’s really nice to read an account of scientific endeavor which tells you that across cultures and places, things were going on that gave insight into the world. For example, there’s the astronomer, Ulugh Beg, who five centuries ago calculated the length of the solar year to within 25 seconds of accuracy to what we’ve got today. That single episode encapsulates what this book is about. It encourages us to stop imagining that we are somehow at the center of the universe of progress and development and to recognize that there are other cultures out there who have been way ahead of the game and who we’ve learned from…The book is very accessible…I really appreciate a scientist helping me to understand scientific developments in a way that absolutely resonates and unpeels the complexities of our world. It’s a very significant book.” Read more...

The British Academy Book Prize: 2022 Shortlist

Philippe Sands , Lawyer

Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions

By sabine hossenfelder.

“ Existential Physics is by Sabine Hossenfelder, a German theoretical physicist and physics popularizer, and is her take on some of the big questions. The book was not easy for me—I had to reread parts—but I loved the opening lines, based on a young man’s question to her. He asked: ‘A shaman told me that my grandmother is still alive. Because of quantum mechanics. She is just not alive here and now. Is this right?’ And Hossenfelder’s response, addressed to the reader: ‘As you can tell, I am still thinking about this. The brief answer is, it’s not totally wrong.'” Read more...

Nonfiction of 2022: Fall Roundup

Atoms and Ashes

By serhii plokhy.

“In Atoms and Ashes, Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy, author of a brilliant book on Chernobyl, looks at six nuclear disasters around the world—starting with the testing of a hydrogen bomb in Bikini Atoll in 1954 and ending with Fukushima—to see what lessons can be learned from them. As citizens, the pros and cons of nuclear power is something we have a duty to think about, and this book is a gripping way in.” Read more...

Notable Nonfiction of Spring 2022

by Or Graur

In his book Supernova Or Graur , Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth, introduces his field. Graur does research on Type Ia supernovae but has also spent a lot of time doing public education and outreach, including working with high school students. The book is interesting, informative and very clear. It makes you want to go out and look at the night sky.

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

By stuart ritchie.

“Humans do science, that that means it’s flawed, you know? Maybe they over-hype their findings, sometimes they are biased in their analysis or data collection. He gives several well-known examples—Andrew Wakefield’s MMR paper, or Paolo Macchiarini’s work on transplantation. He reaffirms what science should be about— nullius in verba , take nobody’s word. Which is in fact the Royal Society’s motto. He comes up with ways to limit the damage to science, which makes it quite an important book because you want to ensure science is done to the highest possible standard.” Read more...

The Best Popular Science Books of 2021: The Royal Society Book Prize

Luke O'Neill , Scientist

The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness

By suzanne o'sullivan.

“This is a bit like a detective story. O’Sullvan is a neurologist, who specialises in epilepsy. Some of the patients she would see have these strange seizures, that’s how she got into it, I suppose. In the book, she goes around the world to explore these examples of young women who have gone, suddenly, into comas, and cannot be raised. Or they’ve developed epilepsy suddenly. She goes to Sweden, upstate New York, Kazakhstan, and then characterises them all. It’s a good clinical account of our most unusual situations—which aren’t as uncommon as you might think.” Read more...

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

By james nestor.

“Imagine a whole book about breathing! But there was a necessity, I think. Nestor is a journalist; he goes into everything you need to know about breathing. We learn that no matter what you eat, no matter how you exercise, how wise you are—none of it really matters if you’re not breathing properly.” Read more...

The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers

By emily levesque.

“It’s by a female astronomer in a very male-dominated science, historically. She describes her own career, and how she navigated that world. She gives a really good account of the telescopes in Chile and Hawaii—all the challenges, all the things that broke down, bad weather, all sorts—and goes into detail on the great discoveries astronomers have made. Towards the end, she talks about the future of astronomy: now you can do it all remotely, just download data from the telescope. She makes a compelling case of how the science will change because of this.” Read more...

Lady Sapiens: Breaking Stereotypes About Prehistoric Women

By eric pincas , jennifer kerner & thomas cirotteau.

Lady Sapiens is a nonfiction book, translated from French, that offers a great introduction to what we know about women who lived during the Upper Paleolithic period (40,000 to 10,000 years ago). The authors report on what the latest science says about our human ancestors in a clear, no-nonsense way and you learn a lot from reading it. The book is also very nicely illustrated.

Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

By catherine green & sarah gilbert.

Vaxxers is a book by two scientists at the University of Oxford who, with their team, developed the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19. Professor Catherine Green heads the Nuffield Department of Medicine's Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility and Sarah Gilbert is Professor of Vaccinology. Behind the impressive titles and incredible achievement, it's the story of two scientists working flat out and what it was like on a day-to-day basis—scientifically, practically and emotionally.

The title is telling: this is a book written with anti-vaxxers in mind, outlining what it is that vaxxers do, or did in the case of this particular vaccine. The writing of the book was prompted by a campsite encounter Green had with an anti-vaxxer, who had told her, "I'm not saying there is definitely a conspiracy...but I do worry that we don't know what they put in these vaccines: mercury and other toxic chemicals. I don't trust them. They don't tell the truth." Green had to tell her, "I am 'them': and, appropriately, at the end of the book all the ingredients of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine are listed.

I am a book. I am a portal to the universe.

By stefanie posavec & miriam quick (illustrator).

***Winner of the 2021 Royal Society Young People’s Books Prize***

“My very favourite of the books. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought fifteen copies and I’ve been giving them out to everyone…. I wasn’t the only one who loved this book. I think everyone was intrigued by it, because it’s so interactive. It’s a true and very creative art and science fusion.” Read more...

Best Science Books for Children: the 2021 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize

Katharine Cashman , Scientist

The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds

By christopher mason.

Have you ever worried about what will happen 4.7 billion years from now, when the Earth is so close to the Sun that we won't be able to live on it anymore? Or trillions of years from now, when the universe will most likely come to an end? Many of us haven't, but Chris Mason, a geneticist who runs a lab at Weill Cornell Medicine and focuses on the effects living in space has on the body, has. A lot. You can already imagine the blockbuster movie: the hero who saves humanity because he worried about things no one else did. In this book, The Next 500 Years , Mason lays out his plan for leaving our solar system, including the genetic engineering required so our bodies are better adapted to space and the possible transport options for getting there.

We also spoke to Chris about the best space travel science fiction , some of it more science than fiction .

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

By walter isaacson.

The Code Breaker is the story of Jennifer Doudna, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her development of the CRISPR technology that allows gene editing. It is also the story of genes and gene editing and women in science. Walter Isaacson is a veteran biographer. He writes in highly readable prose that is particularly welcome when it comes to writing about science, when the concepts can be difficult. He also writes it like a pacy story, where you want to know what happens next. It is little surprise that on coming out, The Code Breaker went straight to the top of the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

By merlin sheldrake.

***Winner 2021 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation***

***Winner The Royal Society Science Book 2021***

“This is an outstanding science book, actually. And again: who would imagine you’d enjoy a doorstopper of a book about fungi? He goes through everything you need to know about fungi: he talks about truffles, about psychedelic mushrooms, about yeast and alcohol, penicillin. He even makes the case that life wouldn’t have to moved onto land without fungi.I thought that was fascinating. So, again, great science and really well written.” Read more...

Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

By carl zimmer.

Just as many of us are still struggling with the question of the meaning of life, the brilliant popular science writer Carl Zimmer—whose books have been frequently recommended on Five Books—takes the question a step further back and asks what life actually is. This promises to be a fun read on a really important question, not least because the virus wreaking havoc across the planet at the moment is very lively and yet...not alive.

Viruses: A Very Short Introduction

By dorothy h. crawford.

Part of the Very Short Introductions series

“Viruses are just a piece of genetic material inside a protein shell. So they’re obligate parasites. They can’t exist on their own. Whether or not they are alive is a moot point: it’s something that I’ve argued both for and against in my own books, because it’s an interesting question not only scientifically, but also philosophically. You have to start by asking: what do we call ‘alive’? I would come down on the side of no, they are not living. After all, they don’t metabolise, so they can’t generate energy or make proteins; in fact they can’t do anything on their own. That piece of genetic material has to get inside a living cell – then it hijacks all the mechanisms of the living cell to produce its own offspring.” Read more...

The best books on Viruses

Dorothy H. Crawford , Medical Scientist

Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science

By jimena canales.

When reading key works in the history of science—that story of how we turned from believing that everything that happens around us is the work of gods and supernatural forces to understanding bacteria, gravity etc—historian of science Jimena Canales noticed how often 'demons' made an appearance. Bedeviled is her exploration of—and reflections on—that contradiction, starting in the 17th century with René Descartes. This is not a book for beginners, but if you're interested in the history of science and how scientific discoveries are made, it's a really fascinating paradox that she explores.

Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen's Guide

Richard wolfson and ferenc dalnoki-veress.

Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen's Guide is a must-read book if you're interested in anything nuclear. Many people watched the Netflix series about Chernobyl and, for many of us, it was the first time we really started to understand how a nuclear power plant works. This book is a chance to get better educated not just about nuclear power, but every aspect of nuclear, from the basic physics to nuclear weapons and medical technologies. It tries to take a disinterested approach, presenting the pros and cons, so we can each make a decision we're comfortable with about the role of nuclear technology in our societies.

The Human Cosmos

By jo marchant.

In The Human Cosmos award-winning science writer Jo Marchant tells the history of our relationship with the stars, from our cave-dwelling ancestors to a NASA astronaut walking in space, observing the "velvet bottomless bucket of the universe stretching on forever". The stars have inspired and awed humans throughout history but nowadays not so much, which is a pity.

Quantum Reality: The Quest for the Real Meaning of Quantum Mechanics

By jim baggott.

Science writer Jim Baggott has devoted his working life to making quantum physics accessible to the rest of us. As he mentions in the preamble, he has been called 'depressingly sane'. He is a strong advocate for a bigger role for philosophy in science, as we reach the limits of what our minds can get our heads around and wild speculation has taken the place of empirical evidence. In this book, he explores the relationship between quantum physics and reality.

A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You

By sean b carroll.

Sean B Carroll is both a serious biologist and a gifted science communicator, and his books have been recommended several times on Five Books. A Series of Fortunate Events is a an informal, chatty book about the role chance has played in our lives, from the giant asteroid that hit the Yucatan 66 million years ago, to why we get cancer later in life. It's very informative and a lot of fun.

At The Edge of Time

By dan hooper.

At The Edge of Time by astrophysicist Dan Hooper is a popular science book that explains, in lay person's terms, not only what we know out about the universe to date, but also what we don't know about it. "Right now, there’s a culmination of mysteries in cosmology that need to be told as a coherent story," he says in his Five Books interview on the Big Bang . "Maybe we’re in the 1904 of cosmology right now, and we're going to tear down everything we think we know to the ground and build something entirely new."

The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction

By gísli pálsson.

“Two British people went to Iceland to find the last of the auks in the 1840s, which were reportedly on an outlying island. Extinction was a known phenomenon, but was thought to be something that happened to inferior species—they were kind of doomed to go extinct anyway, and not by human causes. In this case, through their very careful investigations and oral histories—interviewing people around Iceland who had seen auks or heard about them— as well as looking at the physical evidence, they discovered the great auk had gone extinct. It’s a powerful story of how people who love birds discovered a world-changing perspective on what we can do to the environment—that we, our greed, can destroy a species. That’s a pretty humbling revelation.” Read more...

Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy

By kashmir hill.

“This reads like a mystery, although we already know the outcome. This is a work of truly rigorous investigative journalism by the reporter who broke the story about this company, Clearview AI, in The New York Times : how it is using facial recognition in startling new ways, and how it has sold its software to police organisations who are using it to try to identify criminals from videos.” Read more...

Everything is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World

By tom chivers.

“I wish I’d read this book years ago. Bayesian statistics is all over my area of research—and, as the book argues, it’s all over everywhere, and it has long been so. But the general public is not aware of this, and even many scientists, I think, are not aware of Bayes’ theorem. In a way, the book is pretty simple. It’s about one equation, which calculates the probability of something, given a piece of evidence and your confidence in that evidence. There’s a way you go through, calculating the probability of some event, adjusting your calculations as new evidence comes in—and that’s it, really. But the author does a great way of explaining how this is counter-intuitive to a lot of people.” Read more...

The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science

By kate zernike.

“This book is about the life and work of Nancy Hopkins, who is a molecular biology professor in the United States. It focuses on the discrimination that she went through as a young woman scientist in the 1960s and 70s in the United States. It’s specifically focused on MIT/Harvard, because that’s where she did most of her work. This book really struck me on a personal level, reading it and learning about the struggles of women in science…It was really a book that I didn’t want to put down. It’s a very exciting, easy read. It’s written in a very elegant way. There are personal accounts, there are historical aspects and also different scientific aspects all interwoven throughout the chapters…The end is quite topical. The last chapter mentions Katalin Karikó, who is the Hungarian-American scientist whose work on messenger RNA helped pave the way for the COVID-19 vaccine. She worked for years in research institutes in America. She didn’t get tenure, she got fired, she didn’t get equal treatment with men, but she continued to preserve. She now is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.” Read more...

Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing

By lev parikian.

“It’s a book about the evolution of flying. From a scientific point of view, it’s a really interesting topic and the author communicates it in a very educational, but also an entertaining and engaging manner. Each chapter focuses on a different type of bird or flying mammal. For example, there’s one chapter on bats and another on hummingbirds. One interesting thing that I learned about the hummingbird that I didn’t know before, is that it has a hippocampus—the part of the brain that is involved in our ability to store memories—and uses it to remember the flowers with the best pollen. They fly around to the different flowers and memorize which ones are good and which ones less so. The book reminds you that we’re not the only ones here on the planet. There are other animals and creatures out there that are living their lives. As a result of reading this book, I’m more aware of, and will take more time to appreciate, all the flying birds, insects and creatures around us.” Read more...

Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World in a Big Way

By roma agrawal.

“What she looks at is apparently quite mundane types of engineering developments over the centuries or even millennia. There is one chapter on the nail and another one on the wheel. You think, ‘How am I going to read a chapter about a nail?’ but the author discusses how many objects we use all the time couldn’t actually function without the discovery of the nail. She discusses seven of these engineering developments that we never think about, and makes you as a reader go, ‘Oh, my gosh! Society as we know it would not be the same without these discoveries.’ It was a captivating read…My take-home message is that this is a book that everybody should read if they’re interested in learning about the world around us. For me personally, I feel I have a greater appreciation for these so-called mundane objects that allow us to function in our daily lives.” Read more...

Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature's Secrets to Longevity

By nicklas brendborg.

“The idea is that when jellyfish are exposed to any type of stressor, they go back to their polyp form, eventually budding again to produce a genetically identical jellyfish. Essentially, they can retreat back to their former self and hide in response to stressors and then regrow again into their adult form when the time is right. This is quite amazing. The author uses this premise to talk about the process of aging. There’s a lot of research going on nowadays, about how we can slow down the aging process and what we can do to advance our lives. It’s great…He really brings in a lot of humor throughout the book as he writes about some of the nonsense science that has been put out there about anti-aging…This book is presented in a very clear manner. It’s a very easy read and introduces the reader to the different advances in research on anti-aging.” Read more...

Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

By david quammen.

“This is a book about the COVID-19 pandemic, but what makes this read unique is that it doesn’t go into the preparedness of countries or how they dealt with COVID-19. Rather, it takes you on a detective-like journey through the science of COVID-19. It looks at the theories on its origins and the scientists who worked relentlessly on understanding the biology of the virus itself and then the development of the vaccines against it. A lot of people think that the vaccine development happened quite fast, me included. However, in reality, RNA-type vaccine technology has been in the works for years. Scientists have been working on mRNA vaccine technology for decades and were then able to take that technology and effectively apply it to COVID-19.” Read more...

The Best Popular Science Books of 2024 , recommended by John Hutchinson

Everything is predictable: how bayes’ remarkable theorem explains the world by tom chivers, eve: how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution by cat bohannon, your face belongs to us: the secretive startup dismantling your privacy by kashmir hill, the last of its kind: the search for the great auk and the discovery of extinction by gísli pálsson, why we die: the new science of aging and the quest for immortality by venki ramakrishnan, a city on mars: can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through by kelly and zach weinersmith.

Every year, the judges of the Royal Society Science Book Prize put together a shortlist of the smartest, sharpest, funniest science books of the previous twelve months. We asked the chair of the 2024 panel—the leading evolutionary biomechanics researcher Professor John Hutchinson —to talk us through their picks of the best new popular science books.

Every year, the judges of the Royal Society Science Book Prize put together a shortlist of the smartest, sharpest, funniest science books of the previous twelve months. We asked the chair of the 2024 panel—the leading evolutionary biomechanics researcher Professor John Hutchinson—to talk us through their picks of the best new popular science books.

The Best Science Books of 2023: The Royal Society Book Prize , recommended by Rebecca Henry

An immense world: how animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us by ed yong, breathless: the scientific race to defeat a deadly virus by david quammen, jellyfish age backwards: nature's secrets to longevity by nicklas brendborg, nuts and bolts: seven small inventions that changed the world in a big way by roma agrawal, taking flight: the evolutionary story of life on the wing by lev parikian, the exceptions: nancy hopkins, mit, and the fight for women in science by kate zernike.

The Royal Society, set up in the 1660s, is a fellowship of some of the world's most eminent scientists. It also has an annual book prize, celebrating the best popular science writing. Neuroscientist Rebecca Henry , one of this year's judges, talks us through the fabulous books that made the 2023 shortlist—and explains how good science writing can change the way you see the world around you.

The Royal Society, set up in the 1660s, is a fellowship of some of the world’s most eminent scientists. It also has an annual book prize, celebrating the best popular science writing. Neuroscientist Rebecca Henry, one of this year’s judges, talks us through the fabulous books that made the 2023 shortlist—and explains how good science writing can change the way you see the world around you.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

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COMMENTS

20 Best Scientific Research Books of All Time
Science literacy for educated citizens and for professional scientists requires an understanding of science itself. Written at an introductory college level, this book provides on overview of what science is, the philosophy of science, how research is done, how scientists interact, ethics and misconduct, scientific thinking, and pseudoscience.
Best Sellers in Scientific Research
The Craft of Research, Fifth Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Wayne C. Booth. Paperback. 40 offers from $14.56 #6. The Human Brain Book: An Illustrated Guide to its Structure, Function, and Disorders (DK Human Body Guides) Rita Carter. ... The Science Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (DK Big Ideas) ...
The Ten Best Science Books of 2022
The Ten Best Science Books of 2022. From a detective story on the origins of Covid-19 to a narrative that imagines a fateful day for dinosaurs, these works affected us the most this year
The Ten Best Science Books of 2021
The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration, by Sarah Everts. We are all sweating, at least a little, all the time. That's a good thing. For one thing, sweat keeps our hot-running ...
Open Access Books
By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers. ... IntechOpen has grown to become the world's leading publisher of Open Access books, specialising in technology, science and medicine. 7,200 Open Access Books
73 best science books you need to read in 2024
Our team has hand-picked the very best science books you should read.
10 of the best popular science books as chosen by authors and writers
A fantastic science book can wow you, entertain you and change the way you think, all over the course of a few hundred pages. It can also act as a source of inspiration. We have asked 10 brilliant ...
The Ten Best Science Books of 2023
The Ten Best Science Books of 2023. ... Montgomery draws from research papers, news stories, novels and poetry to muse on turtles and the passage of time. Ultimately though, the shell-armored ...
New Science Books
Every year, the judges of the Royal Society Science Book Prize put together a shortlist of the smartest, sharpest, funniest science books of the previous twelve months. We asked the chair of the 2024 panel—the leading evolutionary biomechanics researcher Professor John Hutchinson—to talk us through their picks of the best new popular ...
25 Greatest Science Books of All Time
The book, written in the 16th century, revolutionized the understanding of human anatomy, challenging the prevailing ideas of the time, which were primarily based on the dissection of animals. Its author, a physician and anatomist, emphasized the importance of direct observation and dissection of human bodies in medical education and research.