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Entertainment Weekly Bemoans Lack of Great Science Books 257

Bryan writes "A recent headline at Entertainment Weekly suggests that the '100 Best Reads' of the last 25 years do not include a single science book (not even a popular science book). In response, cosmologist Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance has given an interesting analysis of EW's disappointing list, and Soul Physics is calling for suggestions on the Greatest Physics Books of the Last 25 Years. For all the great literature that science has produced in the last 25 years, EW's list seems to represent a major shortcoming in the field: it still isn't diffusing into popular culture." I'm not sure what Entertainment Weekly's standing to complain would come from. That aside, have science books ever in modern times been a driving force greater than ones intended as (mere) entertainment, religious instruction, etc? I'd put anything by Richard Feynman on this list, though.
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Entertainment Weekly Bemoans Lack of Great Science Books

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  • by xtracto ( 837672 ) * on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:28PM (#23940393) Journal

    But Carl Sagan documentaires were *a must* when I was a kid.

    Oh, and Isaac Asimov's non-SF books are great too (the book about Physics and the one about Maths are great).

    • Don't forget Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:36PM (#23940549)

      Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" was, I think, a bestseller and was very good too.

    • by eli pabst ( 948845 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:43PM (#23940681)

      But Carl Sagan documentaires were *a must* when I was a kid.

      Agreed. Watching his specials and NOVA were a large part of what inspired me to become a scientist. I predict that the current generation is going to grow up watching things like Mythbusters and Brainiac and lead to an massive increase in the number of people entering fields science that involve "blowing shit up".
      • Agreed. Watching his specials and NOVA were a large part of what inspired me to become a scientist. I predict that the current generation is going to grow up watching things like Mythbusters and Brainiac and lead to an massive increase in the number of people entering fields science that involve "blowing shit up".

        I don't know so much about Mythbusters, only a few of the explosions were really, really good (the cement truck is in a class by itself, of course). But there is no doubt that Braniac has rekindled my love of Thermite!

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Hawthorne01 ( 575586 )

        My four year old is bored silly by most of the stuff on The Science Channel. But he loves Mythbusters and Master Blasters, as do I. I had Mr. Wizard growing up, he has Mythbusters, and anyone who thinks that Mr. Wizard's audience was just kids needs to check themselves.

        There is a time for everything under the sun, and sometimes you want to watch someone explain the mysteries of the billy-uns and billy-uns of stars out there, and sometimes you want to see someone blow s*** up (for a purpose).

        As for books, Je

      • by Gilmoure ( 18428 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @06:20PM (#23941881) Journal

        My daughter (7 years old) got sucked into Mythbusters last year (picking up basic scientific method). Recently (last 2 months), she's started watching other shows on Discovery channel. She even woke me up early because she found one called Universe. Was really excited, seeing how Earth could have formed. So yeah, blowing shit up is very cool, she is picking up some ideas on critical thinking and also getting interested in mechanical engineering. Poor thing, tried to make a robot out of card board and tape. Got upset when it kept falling apart. Looks like a Mechano set is on the list for birthday.

    • by syousef ( 465911 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @06:37PM (#23942121) Journal

      If you enjoyed Cosmos, you really should read:
      Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark" (1996)
      Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" (1994)

      Biographies on famous scientists are always interesting too. There are plenty to choose from. I've read about the lives of Sagan, Feynman, Newton and Einstein. Very entertaining and a wonderful insight into their work as well as their characters (and their character flaws! Did you know the rumour is that Einstein would try to seduce women by letting his robe fall open....oops)

      • by TapeCutter ( 624760 ) * on Thursday June 26, 2008 @02:56AM (#23945845) Journal
        If I had to pick just one book it would be Demon Haunted World. If I could pick a second I would add Dawkin's "Unweaving The Rainbow" to counter the common belief that only the religious can trully appreciate the awe inspiring beauty of the Universe.

        Also it's hard to go past Brownowski's "The Acsent of Man" for a general history of science.
  • by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) * on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:29PM (#23940403) Homepage Journal

    In related news, Cosmo whines about the lack of great intellectual thinkers.

  • Ah, Feynman (Score:5, Funny)

    by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:32PM (#23940461) Homepage

    What many people don't know is that in addition to being a great bongo player, Richard Feynman was also quite an accomplished physicist.

    It's true!

    • by SputnikPanic ( 927985 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:55PM (#23940799)

      Feynman was a character, wasn't he? "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" doesn't really fall into the category of a science book per se, but it was a great read. Safecracking at Los Alamos as a practical joke? Priceless.

      • Re:Ah, Feynman (Score:4, Interesting)

        by History's Coming To ( 1059484 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @05:58PM (#23941615) Journal
        I run a section at a large-ish bookshop, my bit is the physical sciences. And astrology when my colleagues get confused ;)

        Feynman is, pound for pound ($for$) the biggest seller in the whole section. That includes urban studies. And, to be serious, Fossey, Hawking, Lovelock and Sagan. My bit doesn't include the popular science stuff (the line we draw is equations - more than two and it's my section, less and it's the equally popular Popular Science section)

        The public will be drawn in by popular science books, hell, I love reading them myself, and there will always (I hope and ironically pray) be guys at the top of the field who can write non-popular but entertaining books for those who either have a bit of background in "science" in general, or want a bit more depth to their pop-sci introduction. Science writing is alive and well. It's never going to compete with "everything else", the fiction section at work takes up a third of the shop, and rightly so. We're talking a niche product, but as a niche the quality and passion behind it is very very high. And I'm referring to both the writers and the customers.


        And the booksellers....obviously ;)
  • by archen ( 447353 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:33PM (#23940489)

    Isn't this subjective with the term "best read". I can tell you right now that I'm not even moderatly interested in the majority of those books. I could name a few fantasy books I'd say would say most certainly beats many of those on that list but because of my own tastes.

    A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking I actually found to be a great read if they need suggestions on science literature. Again, who considers science a "good read"? Not most people I would say.

  • Science Superheroes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Colonel Korn ( 1258968 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:34PM (#23940519)

    "EW's list seems to represent a major shortcoming in the field: it still isn't diffusing into popular culture."

    A professor once gave me a book called The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (http://www.amazon.com/Existential-Pleasures-Engineering-Thomas-Dunne/dp/0312141041/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214425954&sr=8-1), which began with a discussion of engineers as romantic, heroic figures to the people of the late 19th century. This is still true to some extent in some places like France. Right now in the US we're in an anti-intellectual upswing, but that doesn't mean we won't have another golden age of cultural interest in science.

  • re (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JohnVanVliet ( 945577 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:35PM (#23940525) Homepage
    any and ALL books by Carl Sagan, A.C. Clark (non-fiction), A.Asimov (non-fiction) and a MUST READ Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark"
    • Re:re (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @05:41PM (#23941395) Journal

      I'd add anything and everything from Feynman. Even his biographical writings are full of information.

      Also, I'm surprised to be the first to point out "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose. There's nothing new in the book really, but he's the first to put real mathematics in a book targeted towards a general audience. If want a deeper understanding than you can get from A Brief History of Time, but you're not prepared to read a graduate physics text, The Road to Reality is for you.

    • by Gilmoure ( 18428 )

      While not strictly 'about science', Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship [google.com] is an interesting look at atomic powered space craft. Some yummy geek fodder in there.

  • Sure, it was 20 years ago, but it was a pretty good book for the unwashed masses.

    One might say the same about most technical subjects. Given the overwhelming list bias towards fiction, it isn't that surprising. How may of your parents or children took A New Kind of Science to the beach this summer?

  • It goes into other things through its pages, but "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman is on my top 20 list for the last 25 years, and certainly on my top 100 all-time.
  • Check the demo. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by urcreepyneighbor ( 1171755 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:36PM (#23940559)

    Uh. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the twits and twats that read Entertainment Weekly simply aren't the same people that would read anything by Kaku or Sagan or Dawkins or anything else that would make them use that three pound enigma in their skulls.

    I, for example, don't know any of the current videos on MTV or BET. I'm just not in that demographic.

  • For Me... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Wandering Wombat ( 531833 ) <mightyjalapenoNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:37PM (#23940567) Homepage Journal
    http://www.amazon.com/Science-Class-You-Wish-Had/dp/0399523138 [amazon.com]

    "The Science Class You Wish You Had"

    It covers a LOT of ground in very short time, and makes everything accessible. This is definitely for people who think that Harry Potter is the #2 best book of the last 25 years.
    • These are not "Classics." Classics are things that survive the test of time. They aren't necessarily "popular" per se, but they are constantly referenced in popular culture, and continue to be meaningful and enjoyable even today. The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, these are classics. Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code, not so much.

      I'm sure Henry James was pretty damn popular back in his day, but who the hell reads him anymore? In fact, how many people could name a book by Henry James without doing a sea

  • by Illbay ( 700081 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:38PM (#23940587) Journal
    When I was a kid, and education seemed to be focused more on what was important rather than being "thick with thin things," science was considered "cool," to put it simply.


    Everyone was interested in it. The Space Race was still ongoing, magazines like Popular Science proliferated, and we Cub Scout and Boy Scout kids worked hard on our radio and electricity or bridge-building experiments. We all wanted to be scientists when we grew up.

    Now, everyone wants to be "in entertainment." Even the most well-known "scientists" are really CELEBRITIES more than anything else; they're famous for being famous. Instead of the staid, sober "Mr. Wizard," [mrwizardstudios.com] you have "Bill Nye the Science Guy" [billnye.com] from about a decade ago, or the new Sid The Science Kid [muppetnewsflash.com]. It's all about fun and flash and, well, "celebrity," entertainment.

    We used to be "entertained" by the IDEAS behind what we were learning. We had imagination enough to extrapolate ideas like "hey, if I can make this model rocket fly up to 500 feet, maybe one day I can make one that goes the the Moon or Mars!"

    Now, it's all about what someone else is doing, for our entertainment, on TV. Don't need "hands-on," we can just watch someone else do "Science" that really just looks like an entertaining video game.

    Perhaps if we could get the kids back to doing REAL science - after all, when you're eight years old the same experiments that the scientists of three hundred years ago were performing for the first time are certainly NEWS to you! - instead of just seeking to entertain them, they might start to take it seriously.

    And that would be reflected in what we are reading and talking about as well.

    • Obviously we need Oprah to realize that there are some non-fiction books out there besides self-help titles, Deepak Chopra ramblings, and self-serving celebrity autobiographies.
      • by vrmlguy ( 120854 )

        Obviously we need Oprah to realize that there are some non-fiction books out there besides self-help titles, Deepak Chopra ramblings, and self-serving celebrity autobiographies.
        I think that you've stumbled on part of the problem. A really good science book doesn't open itself up to discussion the way anything you listed does.
    • This links well with what passes for "research" these days. Hit Google and cut&paste the first link. Watch a youtube video or two.

      In the "it's all about me and my feelings" generation, the need for, and value of, critical and objective thought has been lost.

      No wonder most kids (and many adults) really believe that a cell phone can cook an egg or pop corn.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by porcupine8 ( 816071 )
      Mr Wizard is not "serious science." Have you gone back and WATCHED any Mr Wizard recently? It's very much in the vein of "science = cool tricks you can do." Not that I don't love Mr Wizard and think he got a lot of kids interested in science, but scientists don't sit around doing cool tricks, and he often didn't even explain the mechanisms behind the tricks more than in passing. Bill Nye (again, I love the show, BUT) is "science = a collection of facts about the natural world."

      There's a new show on PBS no

    • It's funny, it seems people here tend to mention Bill Nye rather than Beakman. I always thought Beakman was the "bigger" show!
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by syousef ( 465911 )

      I think you need both. Science needs to be entertaining to keep people's interest. What I can't stand is when the science is sacrificed FOR the sake of entertainment.

      For example look at how unscientifically the Myth Buster's do their experiments. Their show would be a brilliant platform to drum in what the scientific method means and how to go about actually disproving or verifying a hypothesis. Instead they just blow shit up, and generally piss on the scientific method then come up with a conclusion that i

  • Never read a 404 before.

  • Sometimes life is a lot like open source development. If you want it that bad, quit your whining and write it yourself ;) Or you could start an open book [wired.com] and start contributing...
  • Possible Reasons? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:41PM (#23940647) Journal

    First I'd have to possibly put Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of Time on there. It was pretty popular, and really good at explaining the comments to a mass audience.

    Second, I just don't think popular culture is fertile ground for intellectual inquiry along the lines of hard science. Some popular mass-circulation magazines and newspapers used to have math and science sections of interest to general readership. You'll find nothing like that in People, Us, or USA Today.

    Third, I think scientists have gone somewhat at odds with the general population in the past few decades as well. This is still largely a religious nation, but many books by the most prominent scientists now spend most of their time not only questioning things like religious belief and cherished cultural traditions, but mocking them outright as well. Richard Dawkins all but calls religious people idiots in his books. That's kind of a hard sell when nearly 90 percent of your population believes in a God of some kind.

    What was that line from that movie... Contact? Palmer Joss's line?

    Our job was to select someone to speak for everybody. And I just couldn't in good conscience vote for a person who doesn't believe in God. Someone who honestly thinks the other ninety five percent of us suffer from some form of mass delusion.

    Just possibly, making the argument to most of the population that their beliefs are nothing but twaddle probably doesn't do wonders for book sales.

    • Re:Possible Reasons? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by clarkkent09 ( 1104833 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @05:03PM (#23940911)
      Just possibly, making the argument to most of the population that their beliefs are nothing but twaddle probably doesn't do wonders for book sales.

      I dunno, The God Delusion by Dawkins make precisely that argument and it was in NYT bestsellers for 51 weeks, reaching #4, as well as #2 on Amazon. There are more atheists out there than you think, especially among the more educated and intelligent, and therefore among those who tend to read more.
      • I dunno, The God Delusion by Dawkins make precisely that argument and it was in NYT bestsellers for 51 weeks, reaching #4, as well as #2 on Amazon.

        True, but I didn't mean that atheists were doomed to market failure... almost 10 percent of the US population is agnostic or atheist, so there's 25 million+ plus people to sell books to...my main point was that, if you're looking for a list of "greatest books" for the whole population (and sales are going to be part of that), then scientists are still somewhat out of the general cultural zeitgeist. For both good and ill, they really do live in another world.

        • It's a matter of degree I guess. Yes, the radical atheists are somewhat remote from the common people, but at the same time to say that we are living in a religious culture is not true either. 90% or whatever of people in USA (MUCH lower percentages in Europe, even a minority in some countries) pay lip service to religion but do they really live according to the Bible? There is not enough space here to list all the ways that the "religious" Christians disobey the God of the Bible (how many of them have even
  • Perhaps he's not written the greatest science books, but if your criteria is ease of reading, entertainment value and short enough that your average reader is likely to stay the course, then his work must be taken into account.

    The shortest book of his that I have 'The Riddle of the Compass, is light and entertaining, yet also manages to include a lot of hard fact.

    Also 'Entanglement' counts as being rather good, a very easy introduction to the subject of quantum entanglement.

    My favourite has to be 'The Myste

  • The Red Queen [amazon.com] on the evolutionary benefits of sex (and how it pertains to evolution), by Matt Ridley and The Blank Slate [amazon.com] by Steven Pinker, a book on Evolutionary Psychology.

    I still think back to both books when I ponder the behaviour of the people around me.

    • by Dahamma ( 304068 )

      The Red Queen is a great book - though mentioning Matt Ridley, I thought Genome was even better...

  • "A complete history of almost everything."

    It's just as advertised, and yet a great read.

  • by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:47PM (#23940723)

    "Entertainment Weekly too shallow to pay attention to science, blames scientific community"

  • by Diomedes01 ( 173241 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:49PM (#23940737)

    What about the compilations of Gould's essays for "Natural History" magazine? My two favorites are "The Panda's Thumb" and "Bully for Brontosaurus".

  • GÃdel, Escher, Bach (Score:5, Informative)

    by NJVil ( 154697 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:50PM (#23940743)

    GÃdel, Escher, Bach has enough science in it (particularly cognition and neurology) to qualify as a "science book" (whatever that's supposed to mean).

    Definitely a must-read for anyone interested in metacognition.

  • by cetialphav ( 246516 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:52PM (#23940769)

    I loved A Short History of Nearly Everything [wikipedia.org] by Bill Bryson [wikipedia.org]. It is more of a history of science book. If you want to know something like how it is that we know the age of the earth and all the prior theories and how they were concocted then this is the kind of book for you. It is a very entertaining read as he often takes side tracks into the personalities behind the discoveries.

  • by smellsofbikes ( 890263 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:52PM (#23940783) Journal

    If their demographic is twenty- and thirty-something people who want to read about movie stars and their lives, which is what Entertainment Weekly publishes (they gave me a free subscription, which now clogs my recycle bin, unread) they're pretty unlikely to enjoy books that aren't about movie stars.

    Bill Bryson's "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" is a fabulous read. One or two chapters each on astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, you name it. There's a reason it was a bestseller: it is accessible to people who don't know an integral from an interval.

    There are scads of excelent science books out there: Sagan, Asimov, Zukav, Hofstatder. But if you want to read about Mel B's nose job, you're probably not going to rate them highly.

  • This book is without question the best science book I have ever read. But maybe it was too thick for Entertainment Weekly and its readership to consider...

    Other candidates include just about anything from Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Hawking or Richard Feynman. I'm not into biology, but I'm sure there are great titles from biology/medicine.

    If you include math as a 'science' for science writing, Mario Livio writes brilliantly, too. "Godel, Escher, Bach" actually doesn't qualify, since I bought my copy more

  • What about "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark" By Carl Sagan,"The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, "The fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene etc. EW is a bunch of idiots.
  • Flu by Gina Kolata, which recounts a search for the flu virus that caused the 1918 pandemic, was a great and at times harrowing read.

  • Excuse me? Penrose's "The emperor's new mind" was published in 1989 and is one wonderful book on AI - so great that I've read it a few times (I was 14-15 the first time I read it, it took pretty long to come to my country). Maybe EW should concentrate on the mindless entertainment?

  • I loved reading it too, so I was very disappointed to read that it was ghostwritten. It was ghostwritten by a close friend who worked with him on the book, but it was still ghostwritten...
  • ...but what about "A Brief History of Time," by Stephen Hawking?

  • by Diomedes01 ( 173241 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @05:06PM (#23940953)

    In my mind, a lot of these are questionable at best, but any organization that places a poorly-written piece of garbage like "The DaVinci Code" on a list of the top 100 books in the past 25 years immediately loses my respect.

  • I've read plenty of good popular science books in the last few years.

    My favorite was Stephen Johnson's Emergence, which is about swarm intelligence. After that, I liked Amir Aczel's The Mystery of the Aleph ... a book about infinity, and the mathematics surrounding infinity.

    Neil Turok's new book isn't half bad. I think it's called Endless Universe.

    Finally, for people interested in more scientific writing that is still enjoyable, you should check out a series of collections called The Best Science

  • by richieb ( 3277 ) <richieb@gmai l . com> on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @05:08PM (#23940975) Homepage Journal
    He's written a bunch of books that should be on the list: "Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker", "Ancestor's Tale" and last but not least "The God Delusion".
  • by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @05:09PM (#23940985) Journal

    Science Weekly's list of "The 100 Best Reads" includes not one single piece of popular culture fluff. Nor does it only go back 25 years, which is about how long people with no other useful purpose have been making money by turning information about entertainment (as opposed to entertainment itself) into a money making venture.

    When EW's history goes back far enough and has enough quality material listed that they can claim to have their equivalent to Principia Mathematia, then they'll have something significant to say about their own field. And they will probably still have no background from which to judge science literature.

    I read an entertaining and educational science book once a week whether I need to or not. Anyone wanting some suggestions along these lines, go read Alan Boyle's "Cosmic Log" on MSNBC and look up the archives of his Used Book Of The Month Club. Those who already read such things should keep an eye out for his next request for suggestions, and submit one. If it gets used, you get a prize -- usually another good science book he'd recently reviewed or otherwise acquired.

  • And what about good old Stevie H.? Brief History of time anyone? Great book, widely read... and a damn good read at that...
  • The God Particle (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Myrv ( 305480 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @05:19PM (#23941095)


    The God Particle [amazon.com] by Leon Ledderman is one of my favourite Physics books. It offers an incredibly accessible introduction to particle physics for the non science oriented while at the same time provides a fascinating look (for the science oriented) into the history of particle physics by someone involved in several of the key discoveries of the last 50 years.

  • The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll, The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder, and Basin and Range by John McPhee. All three were popular enough to make it onto the NYT best seller lists and were widely discussed as pop lit.
  • Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne is an excellent read. It's both informative and (I think) easily read by the average person.

    The Demon-Haunted World by Sagan is a must-read.

    For math books, William Dunham's books are amazing: full of stories and history, but also explains the mathematics in question in elegant terms.

  • Charles Darwin

    I read this in high school and it was very readable. It was also a seminal work.

  • Richard Hofstadter's book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life [amazon.com] was originally written in 1963. As such it discusses McCarthyism and "eggheads" [wikipedia.org] like Adlai Stevenson, but the arguments are as current now as they were then.

    Entertainment Weekly will never find a science book that reaches its audience because no book that could legitimately be called science would ever fall far enough down the intellectual spectrum to be approachable by that magazine's readers.

  • ...than their choice of the "Top 100 Reads" of the past 25 years. Any such list that omits The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is seriously broken. Others have already mentioned many books that should be on such a list.

    Without the 25 year limit, there's Asimov, Clarke, Bronowski, and Bertrand Russell for science, Jagjit Singh, Hogben, and Polya for math, just to mention a very few.

  • I've read several glowing reviews of Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life [amazon.com] by Carl Zimmer (this one is from Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]), and I'm deeply intrigued by what I've heard of it. Reviewers agree that Zimmer does a wonderful job of explaining the science, as well as the attendant politics (stem cells, intelligent design), rendering it understandable to the layman, while not insulting the more knowledgeable. Would anyone here who has read it care to comment?
  • Speaking of Feynman (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sabre86 ( 730704 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @06:19PM (#23941855)
    QED [wikipedia.org] came out in 1985, making it only 23 years old. It'd definitely go on my favorite science book list. It explained virtual photons and summing of probability amplitudes quite well, I though, without calling in the heavy math.

    I'm also a fan of The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.

    --sabre86
  • Chaos: Making a New Science
    by James Gleick [1987]

    Excellent science book for the non-specialist. Informative, entertaining, versatile.

    Link [wikipedia.org].
  • Did I miss something? Is medicine no longer science? And the Band Played On shows up as number 86 and deals primarily with the social and governmental response to the AIDS epidemic but also discusses the initial epidemic and the medical response. Not pure science but as close to science as one will find on a "popular" list of books. Also, I found the the graphic novels interesting: Sandman, Maus, Watchmen all show up...not science but definitive evidence the geek culture has gone mainstream...
  • I think old science books make excellent "Time Capsules". It pretty fun reading about things that were cutting-edge for their time, and postulations and things that were mysteries back then.

    When I was little, I went to a book fair in the town next to me and bought about 2 dozen old sets of encyclopedias, engineering, biology, chemistry, and physics books from the '40s, '50s, and '60s. My parents went absolutely crazy when they saw how much I bought, even though I spent $25 for them (but the sheer VOLUME of

  • by Tired and Emotional ( 750842 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @07:06PM (#23942483)
    How could they leave this off the list of most entertaining books of the last 25 years. Not only does it teach a lot about gravity but you can use it experimentally as a central mass.
  • by CharlesEGrant ( 465919 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @07:13PM (#23942563)

    EW's list is almost entirely light fiction. Except for a few memoirs, there aren't any non-fiction books, let alone science books. I've enjoyed several of the books on the list, but it might be better titled "100 classic beach books".

    I'm not sure if the EW article changed since the Slashdot article was posted, but it doesn't look like EW made any remark about the lack o f science books. I think that was just the submitter's editorial comment.

  • by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) * on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @07:23PM (#23942695)

    Gravity, George Gamow
    Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory, George Gamow
    Birth of a New Physics, I Bernard Cohen

    The nice thing about these is that they don't pander or sensationalize the way much of what passes for current science writing does.

    As far as more recent work goes, I found "Subtle is the Lord", an Einstein biography by Abraham Pais to be quite good.

  • by opencity ( 582224 ) on Thursday June 26, 2008 @12:08AM (#23945051) Homepage

    The two Richard Rhodes bomb books are genius.
    The first one tells the story of 20th century physics and the rise of the Nazis. The second one ends with the Cuban Missle Crisis. Both are white knuckle history with the physics moving from ceiling wax to Mike.

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