It’s already end-of-the-year-list time, and I’m delighted to see that Amazon has picked Microcosm for their top ten science books of 2008. I must confess I’ve been slow this year on reading science books. What little free time I’ve got I’ve signed over to trying to finish War and Peace before I die. I’m enjoying it greatly, but at the rate I’m going, it’s a toss-up whether I’ll hit my biological deadline. Of the books on Amazon’s list, I can certainly recommend Your Inner Fish, having reviewed it in Nature. But are there any 2008 science books missing from this list, in your opinion?
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
Oh Gods! (or at least the FSM). Can we ban colons from book titles? They make the titles look like A Book about Something: but most of you are too stupid to work that out. For at least six of them the subtitle is redundant: you can work out what the book is about from the main title (Microcosm is one of the exceptions).
Sorry, this is becoming a pet peeve of mine.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Carl Zimmer — To finish War & Peace you need a collection of old-fashioned 3×5 index cards. Use these to keep track of the characters. Otherwise you’ll find you keep backtracking, almost starting over, …
Noticed that yet?
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I’m really enjoying Richard Fortey’s Dry Store Room #1:The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum. (Look Bob! I found more dots for you!)
It’s a great read, very casual and perfect after an evening of pencil drawing. The science just kind of sneaks up on you throughout the stories of big personalities.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Congratulations Carl! (On the top 10 list, not the biological deadline)
November 6th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I reckon Phil Plait’s Death from the Skies deserves a mention, although its only just come out so may not have been on the shelves long enough yet.
Really impressed with Neil Shubin – just finished the book a few days ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, as I did with Microcosm a couple of months ago.
Congrats!
November 9th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
[...] Check out Amazon’s Best Science Books of 2008. Shockingly, I haven’t read any of them, so now I know what I’m doing in 2009! (Via The Loom) [...]
November 10th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Since if I don’t, no-one will: Yes — mine. I know Eating the Sun is not out in teh US until November 18th — but that is still in my calendar well within 2008…
November 10th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I’m reading one right now called “The Alchemy of Air” that is very good. The center of the story revolves around Fritz Haber and developing the process for fixing ammonia (responsible for most of today’s fertilizer & our ability to produce crop yields high enough to feed the world). But the author does a nice job and gives us a lot of back story in order to be able to understand the importance of the invention.
I’m still part way through so I haven’t gotten to the tragic part of the story yet (Haber was deeply involved in chemical weapon development in WW2 – and the same process used for fertilizer is also important for making explosives), but there are certainly all the elements for a good story and the author does a good job of telling it.