Popular Science Book Project
Created | Updated Jan 21, 2006
The h2g2 Popular Science Book Project is aimed at collecting together summaries and reviews of science books worth recommending, and it is hoped it will grow into a useful resource for people looking for good books on particular topics, or just suggestions for things to consider reading.
Suggestions of books to add to the list are welcome, as are offers to review or help review books or provide a few lines of summary. However, some intention of contributing to summaries or reviews *is* hoped for amongst suggesters - even for books where a full review is eventually intended, an initial short summary as a starting point could be very useful.
Short summaries (if present) can be accessed by a 'Summary' link in the final column.
People interested in non-science books might be interested in A745544
Author names link to the relevant entry on the alphabetical author page, allowing all the suggested works of an author to be found, even if their books range across multiple categories.
Where book titles are a link, they link to a full-article book review.
Please also read the notes at the foot of this article.
Biology
Evolution| Clive Bromhall | A4192805 | Summary |
| Charles Darwin | The Origin Of Species | available |
| Richard Dawkins | The Selfish Gene | available |
| The Blind Watchmaker | available | |
| River Out Of Eden | available | |
| A Devil's Chaplain (collected essays) | available | |
| Daniel Dennett | Darwin's Dangerous Idea | available |
| Jared Diamond | Guns, Germs, and Steel | Summary |
| Stephen Jay Gould | Wonderful Life | available |
| Steve Jones | Y - The Descent Of Man | available |
| Almost Like A Whale | Summary | |
| Edward J Larson | Evolution : The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory | Summary |
| Elaine Morgan | The Descent of Woman | available |
| The Descent Of The Child | available | |
| The Scars Of Evolution | available | |
| Matt Ridley | The Red Queen | available |
| D'Arcy Thompson | A4191392 | Summary |
| Colin Tudge | The Day Before Yesterday | Summary |
Animal Behaviour
| Stephen Budiansky | A4264490 | Summary |
| A4259496 | Summary | |
| The Covenant Of The Wild | Summary | |
| Gordon Grice | The Red Hourglass - Lives of the Predators | available |
| Christopher McGowan | The Raptor And The Lamb | Summary |
| Roger Tabor | The Wildlife Of The Domestic Cat | available |
Mind/Brain/AI
| Daniel Dennett | Consciousness Explained | Summary |
| Freedom Evolves | pending | |
| Kinds of Minds | available | |
| Brainchildren (essays) | available | |
| Steven Lavy | - Artificial Life [The Quest for a New Creation] | Summary |
| Roger Penrose | The Emperor's New Mind | Summary |
| Stephen Pinker | The Language Instinct | Summary |
| Words and Rules | available | |
| How The Mind Works | pending | |
| A4265336 | Summary | |
| V S Ramachandran | Phantoms In The Brain | Summary |
| A Brief Tour Of Human Consciousness (not recommended) | Summary | |
| The Emerging Mind (not recommended) | Summary | |
| Carl Sagan | The Dragons Of Eden | available |
Perception
| E H Gombrich | Art And Illusion | available |
| Donald D Hoffman | A4277865 | Summary |
Miscellaneous
| Ronald M Nowak | Walker's Mammals of the World | available |
Physics
| John D Barrow | The Universe That Discovered Itself | Summary |
| Albert Einstein | Relativity: The Special And General Theory | available |
| Richard Feynman | The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out | available |
| Rudy Rucker | The Fourth Dimension : A Guided Tour of the Higher Universe | Summary |
| Carl Sagan | Pale Blue Dot | available |
Materials Science
| J E Gordon | Structures - or why things don't fall down | available |
| The New Science of Strong Materials | available |
Chemistry
| John Emsley | A4267541 | Summary |
| Simon Garfield | A4278288 | Summary |
| John Mann | A4278017 | Summary |
| Molecules at an Exhibition | Summary |
Mathematics
| John Allen Paulos | Innumeracy | Summary |
| Simon Singh | Fermat's Enigma | available |
Geology / Earth Sciences
| Stephen Drury | A4263923 | Summary |
| Roger Osborne | The Floating Egg | available |
| P J Small | The Study Of Landforms | Summary |
General Science
| Bill Bryson | A Short History Of Nearly Everything | available |
| Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen | The Science of Discworld | available |
Science/Technology History
| Stephen Budiansky | A4285172 | Summary |
| A4280311 | Summary | |
| Robert Buderi | A4266524 | Summary |
| Tom Standage | The Victorian Internet | Summary |
Science vs. Pseudoscience and Mysticism, etc.
| Martin Gardner | Science Good, Bad and Bogus | available |
| Carl Sagan | The Demon-Haunted World | available |
| Michael Shermer | Why People Believe Weird Things | available |
Reviewers are asked to write in their own words - possibly a choice phrase or a hint of which areas to cover could be usefully provided by back-cover summaries or reviews from elsewhere, but originality of review or summary is useful for people trying to work out what weight to put in a particular review. Possibly the best guide is that if a book doesn't inspire you to write a review of your own, it's best leaving for someone else to write about.
Note that 'available' essentially means that no-one has yet produced a review or summary of a particular book, or promised to do so.
However, since this page is only editable by one person, it is possible that the page contents are rather behind the contents of the threads hanging off this page, so it is suggested that the threads are also examined for other offers to write reviews for particular books before people closet themselves away to write the masterpiece review.
