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Ah summer! The perfect time to hit the beach or a shady hammock and catch up on your reading. But what to read? And who to talk about your book with? The Science Friday Book Club has the answer. We’ll choose one book a month, give you some time to read it, and then talk about it on the air.
A few weeks ago, we put out a plea to help us choose the book we'd read for the club's inaugural meeting. It's not too late to suggest your favorite! Send your suggestions to bookclub@sciencefriday.com or leave them in the comments. We’ll announce the selection on Friday June 22nd. Then we'll convene the first Science Friday Book Club discussion on air Friday July 6th.
We've already received a wide range of suggestions on what to read, and we loved the suggestions so much, we want to share them with you in a handy list you can use to select your own summer science reading. Because who better to get book recommendations from than other Science Friday listeners?
Science Friday Fans Recommend...
For ease of browsing, book list is loosely divided by topic
Science, Evolution & Religion
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
Biocosm: The New Scientific Theory of Evolution by James N. Gardner and Seth Shostak
Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller
Natural History
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms by Richard Fortey
Trilobite, Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions by Mark Moffatts
After the Ice Age: the Return of Life to Glaciated North America by E. C. Pielou
Flight of the Iguana by David Quammen
Flight of the Iguana by David Quammen
The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen
The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson
The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson
A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer
History of Science & Discovery
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester
Health & the Brain
Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey
On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
Physics & Cosmology
Space Chronicles by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brain Greene
Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife
The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin
Black Hole Wars by Leonard Susskind
Fearful Symmetry by Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitski
Other
Visit Sunny Chernobyl by Andrew Blackwell
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum
A Great Aridness by William deBuys
Abundance -- The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamonds and Steven Kotler
Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by Michael E. Mann
Agnotology the Making and Unmaking of Ignorance edited by Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger
Why We Cooperate by Michael Tomasello
What would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments.
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