This list includes most of the science books I’ve read since 2007, omitting titles that received only scant mention.
Brane and Brane! What is Brane?!- Cosmology and Astrophysics*
- The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
- Black Holes and Baby Universes, Stephen Hawking
- A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
- The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
- To the Ends of the Universe, Isaac Asimov
The Milky Way: Local Astronomy
- How I Killed Pluto (and Why It Had it Coming), Mike Brown
- The Planets, Dava Sobel
- Lives of the Planets, Richard Corfield
- The Sun’s Heartbeat, Bob Berman
- Death from the Skies!, Phil Plait
- Asimov on Astronomy, Isaac Asimov
- The Planets: A Visual Guide to Our Solar System, Smithsonian
- The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet, Neil deGrasse Tyson
Space: the Final Frontier
- Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir, Tom Jones
- The Space Chronicles, Neil deGrasse Tyson
- A Man on the Moon, Neil Chaikin
- The Cosmic Connection, Carl Sagan
Third Rock from the Sun: Geology and Planetary Science
- Earth, Richard Fortey
- The Oceans, Ellen Prager and Sylvia Earle
- Earth Science Made Simple, Edward Albin
- Africa: Biography of a Continent, John Reader
- Aerial Geology, Mary Caperton Morton
Weather and Climate
- Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas, and the Weather of the Future, Climate Central
- Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations, Brian Fagan
- The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, Brian Fagan.
- It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes, Jerry Dennis
- The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, Brian Fagan
- 18 Miles: The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and its Weather, Christopher Dewdney
- The Weather Machine: How We See into the Future, Andrew Blum
Chemistry and Physics
- Napoleon’s Buttons, Penny LeCouter
- Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes
- The Ingredients: A Guided Tour of the Elements, Phillip Ball
- Electric Universe: The Story of Electricity, David Bodanis
- Atom, Isaac Asimov
- The Science of Breaking Bad, Donna J. Nelson & David Trumbore
- Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Oliver Sacks
Flora and Fauna
- Winter World: the Ingenuity of Winter Survival, Bernd Heinrich
- Diving Companions, Jacque-Yves Cousteau
- Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions, Paul Martin
- When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, Susan McCarthy and Jeffrey Masson
- Chimpanzee Politics, Frans de Waal
- Sex on Six Legs: Lessons from the Insect World, Marlene Zuk
- The Life of Birds, David Attenborough
- The Trials of Life, David Attenborough
- The Private Life of Plants, David Attenborough
- Beautiful Minds: the Parallel Lives of Dolphins and Chimpanzees, Maddalena Bearzi, Craig B. Stanford
- Dolphins, Jacque-Yves Cousteau
- Through a Window: Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, Jane Goodall
- The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds, Noah Strycker
- What the Robin Knows: What Birds Reveal about the Natural World, Jon Young
- The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben
Biology
- The Making of the Fittest, Sean B. Carroll
- The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsense Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms, Connie Barlow
- Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, Nick Lane
- The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins
- Evolution for Everyone, David Sloan Wilson
- Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer
- The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners that Shape Who We Are Today, Rob Dunn
- An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System, Matt Ritchtel
- Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, Randolph Nesse
- Never Home Alone: The Natural History of Where We Live, Rob Dunn
- The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson
- Survival of the Sickest, Sharon Moalem
Anthropology, Archaeology, and Paleontology:
- The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, Matthew Ridley
- Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human, Richard Wrangham
- African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity, Christopher Stringer and Robin McKie
- Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal
- Anthropology for Dummies, Cameron Smith and Evan T. Davies
- The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived, Clive Finlayson
- Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seducitve Lure of Human Rubble, Marilyn Johnson
- Dinosaur Lives, John Horner
- Walking with Dinosaurs, Tim Haines
- The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence, Richard Wrangham
- Why is Sex Fun: The Evolution of Human Sexuality, Jared Diamond
Neurology and Psychology
- On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, William Irvine
- Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman
- The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sachs
- The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head, Oliver Sachs
- When More Isn’t Enough, David Whybrow
- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker
- Phantoms in the Brain, V.S. Ramachandran
- Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, John Ratey
History of Science
- Medical Firsts, Robert Adler
- The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, Roy Porter
- Great Feuds in Science, Hal Hellman
- On the Shoulders of Giants Series, Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser:
- The History of Science from the Greeks to the Scientific Revolution, The History of Science in the 18th Century, The Rise of Reason, The History of Science in the 19th Century, The Age of Synthesis, History of Science 1895- 1945, Modern Science, History of Science from 1945-1990s, Science Frontiers,
- Theories for Everything, various authors
- Universe on a T-Shirt, Dan Falk
Thinking Scientifically
- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan
- Varieties of Scientific Experience, Carl Sagan
- The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science, John Gribbin
- The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe: How to Know What’s Real in a World Full of Fake, SGU
Misc
- The Tragedy of the Moon, Isaac Asimov (Essays)
- The Planet that Wasn’t, Isaac Asimov (Essays)
- The Roving Mind, Isaac Asimov (Essays)
- The Sun Shines Bright, Isaac Asimov (Essays)
* I actually use this as a shelf label on Goodreads. I live in hope that anyone will recognize it. Ten years, no luck so far.
That's a LOT of science! Most of which I've neither read or own.
Brane and Brane! What is Brane?!
I was going to say that it rang a vague bell when it just popped into my head! SPOCK's Brain!!!! Where McCoy had to learn how to put it back after learning how from the ancient computer via the super hairdryer thing.
At long last!
(I've only watched that episode once. Once is…enough.)
You've read a lot more books on the side of astrophysics/physics than I have, I think, especially with your VSI series.
Wow! What a great list. Thanks for the reading provocations. When I have more courage, I will give Hawking another attempt, but I doubt that I will understand much beyond the first few words.
Cosmological physics generally beyond me, too — in part because it seems so abstract. Books on animal behavior are a lot easier to grasp and more entertaining to think about, at least for me.
Carl Sagan made the abstract sensible for me with his book _Cosmos_. But that was eons ago.
Sagan had a rare gift for that, one which hasn't been equaled. He is the one who re-ignited my interest in science, after it lay dormant all throughout high school.