{"id":2872,"date":"2008-08-27T10:30:50","date_gmt":"2008-08-27T10:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/27\/popscience-science-book-projec\/"},"modified":"2008-08-27T10:30:50","modified_gmt":"2008-08-27T10:30:50","slug":"popscience-science-book-projec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/27\/popscience-science-book-projec\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop-Science Science Book Project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer Ouellette was inspired by the recent book &#8220;meme,&#8221; and is <a href=\"http:\/\/twistedphysics.typepad.com\/cocktail_party_physics\/2008\/08\/the-great-pop-s.html\">putting together a similar list of pop-science books<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It might surprise some people, but I haven&#8217;t been a big reader of pop-science books over the years. In fact, I&#8217;ve read few enough of the books on her list that I&#8217;m only going to copy over the ones that I have (partially) read. <b>Bold<\/b> means I finished it, <i>italics<\/i> are books I&#8217;ve started or skimmed, and books I intend to read someday are marked with an asterisk.<\/p>\n<p>4. <b>Surely You&#8217;re Joking, Mr. Feynman<\/b>, Richard Feynman<br \/>\n11. *The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene<br \/>\n14. *Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley<br \/>\n15. <b>A Short History of Nearly Everything<\/b>, Bill Bryson<br \/>\n16. A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes (If this is the Rutherford biography, I&#8217;ve read it, and it&#8217;s by Richard Reeves. There&#8217;s also a Richard Rhodes writing science history books, but I haven&#8217;t read any of his stuff.)<br \/>\n18. <b>A Brief History of Time,<\/b> Stephen Hawking<br \/>\n26. <b>Einstein&#8217;s Dreams<\/b>, Alan Lightman<br \/>\n27. <b>Godel, Escher, Bach<\/b>, Douglas Hofstadter<br \/>\n30. <i>The Physics of Star Trek<\/i>, Lawrence Krauss<br \/>\n33. <i>Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold<\/i>, Tom Shachtman<br \/>\n42. *Longitude, Dava Sobel (I had a very enjoyable lunch with her when she visited campus last year, which bumped her book up the queue, but I haven&#8217;t got to it yet&#8230;)<br \/>\n43. *The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg<br \/>\n51. <b>Neuromancer<\/b>, William Gibson<br \/>\n52. <i>The Physics of Superheroes<\/i>, James Kakalios<br \/>\n58. <b>The Language Instinct<\/b>, Steven Pinker<br \/>\n66. <b>Storm World<\/b>, Chris Mooney<br \/>\n69. <b>Copenhagen<\/b>, Michael Frayn<br \/>\n73. <b>Innumeracy<\/b>, John Allen Paulos<br \/>\n75. *Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s only 13\/75 read, which isn&#8217;t a great showing on my part. Of course, there are some glaring omissions from the list that I <strong>have<\/strong> read:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>Connections<\/cite> by James Burke.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/cite><\/strong> by Jared Diamond. Anthropology is a science, right?<\/li>\n<li><cite>Relativity<\/cite> by Albert Einstein<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter<\/cite><\/strong> by Richard Feynman. An outstanding book, which justifies his reputation.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>Mr. Tompkins<\/strong> stories by George Gamow. I have it as <cite>Mr. Tompkins in Paperback<\/cite>, but there are several different versions.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman<\/cite><\/strong> by James Gleick.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>Isaac Newton<\/cite><\/strong> by James Gleick<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>Uncertainty<\/cite><\/strong> by David Lindley. A terrific book about the beginnings of quantum theory.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>The Theory of Almost Everything<\/cite><\/strong> by Robert Oerter. The story of the Standard Model, and maybe the best modern physics book I&#8217;ve read.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>Black Bodies and Quantum Cats<\/cite><\/strong> by Jennifer Ouellette. She&#8217;s too modest to put herself on the list, but it&#8217;s a great read.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>Voodoo Science<\/cite><\/strong> by Robert Park. The bulldog of the APS takes on all manner of crankery.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite>Cosmos<\/cite><\/strong> by Carl Sagan. The tv show is what everybody remembers, but there&#8217;s a book, too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m missing some obvious stuff, too. So what else should be on a canonical list of great pop-science books?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer Ouellette was inspired by the recent book &#8220;meme,&#8221; and is putting together a similar list of pop-science books. It might surprise some people, but I haven&#8217;t been a big reader of pop-science books over the years. In fact, I&#8217;ve read few enough of the books on her list that I&#8217;m only going to copy&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/08\/27\/popscience-science-book-projec\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pop-Science Science Book Project<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science_books","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}