100 Best History Of Science Books of All Time (Updated for 2026)

1

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

5.0

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.

How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism?

Recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, and 34 others.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Both Melinda and I read this one, and it has sparked lots of great conversations at our dinner table. Harari takes on a daunting challenge: to tell the entire history of the human race in just 400 pages. He also writes about our species today and how artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and other technologies will change us in the future. Although I found things to disagree with—especially Harari’s claim that humans were better off before we started farming—I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species. [source]

Reid Hoffman

CEO/LinkedIn

A grand theory of humanity. [source]

2

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

5.0

Preview Summary

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all He

Recommended by A.J. Jacobs and Carl Zimmer.

A.J. Jacobs

Great writer. [source]

Carl Zimmer

Yes. This is a fascinating book on so many different levels. It is really compelling as the story of the author trying to uncover the history of the woman from whom all these cells came. [source]

3

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson

5.0

Preview Summary

In Bryson's biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the

Recommended by Amanda Palmer, David Goldberg, and Fabrice Grinda.

Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer recommended this book in the book "Tools of Titans". [source]

David Goldberg

What I really liked about A Short History of Nearly Everything is that it gives an excellent account of a lot of the personalities and the interconnectedness of important discoveries in cosmology and elsewhere. He does such a great job of bringing together our understanding of cosmology, evolution, paleontology, and geology in a very, very fluid way. [source]

Fabrice Grinda

I have lots of books to recommend, but they are not related to my career path. The only one that is remotely related is Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. That said here are books I would recommend. [source]

4

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn

4.9

Preview Summary

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark eve

Recommended by Mark Zuckerberg, Tim O'Reilly, Danielle Morrill, and 3 others.

Mark Zuckerberg

Founder/Facebook

It's a history of science book that explores the question of whether science and technology make consistent forward progress or whether progress comes in bursts related to other social forces. I tend to think that science is a consistent force for good in the world. I think we'd all be better off if we invested more in science and acted on the results of research. I'm excited to explore this theme further. [source]

Tim O'Reilly

Founder/O'Reilly Media

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn introduced the term "paradigm shift" to describe the changeover from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy. But the book is far more than a classic in the history of science. It's also a book that emphasizes how what we already believe shapes what we see, what we allow ourselves to think. I've always tried to separate seeing itself from the stories I tell myself about what I see. Pattern recognition is impeded if you are trying to overlay an existing pattern on the facts rather than letting the facts sit quietly until they tell their own story. That's General Semantics again. [source]

Andra Zaharia

I’ve gone through quite a few experiences brought on or shaped by what I’ve learned from books. A particularly unexpected one happened in college when our public relations teacher asked us to read a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. As a humanities student, you can imagine that I wasn’t thrilled I’d have to read a book on science, but what followed blew my mind at the time. In the book, Kuhn argues that human knowledge does not accumulate incrementally, but increases in leaps, through paradigm shifts which are brought on by crises and scientific revolutions. This was one of the first books that prompted me to think about how I want to evolve in the context of all the fast-paced changes happening around me. [source]

5

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

4.8

Preview Summary

In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. That edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing bot

Recommended by Richard Branson, Adam Hart-Davis, Anurag Ramdasan, and 2 others.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]

Adam Hart-Davis

When Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time..his publisher told him that every equation he left in would halve the number of readers [source]

Anurag Ramdasan

My first intro into the world of physics and this got me completely hooked!

6

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

Richard Holmes

4.8

'The Age of Wonder' is Richard Holmes' first major work of biography for a decade. It has been inspired by the scientific ferment that swept through Britain at the end of the 18th century, and which Holmes now radically redefines as 'the revolution of Romantic Science'.

Recommended by Caspar Henderson, Ed Cooke, John Shepherd, and 1 others.

Caspar Henderson

Among Holmes’s qualities are is his warmth, his extraordinary depth of knowledge and the fluency in his writing. It’s just a really enjoyable read. [source]

Ed Cooke

Ed Cooke recommended this book in the book "Tools of Titans". [source]

John Shepherd

This is a cross-cultural book, all about how, even in the age of romanticism, science was an important part of cultural life. [source]

7

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Dava Sobel

4.7

Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day—and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resol

Recommended by Richard Branson.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]

8

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Walter Isaacson

4.7

Einstein was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days, and these character traits drove both his life and his science. In this narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered.

Recommended by Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and 5 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011. [source]

Elon Musk

Founder/SpaceX

I didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. … I also feel it’s worth reading books on scientists and engineers. [source]

Ed Zschau

Ed Zschau recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show". [source]

9

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

Sam Kean

4.7

Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium (Cd, 48)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?

The periodic table is one of our crowning scientific achievements, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal and obsession. The f

Recommended by Michelle Francl and Timothy J. Jorgensen.

Michelle Francl

Sam Kean brings the periodic table to life with the stories you didn’t hear in high school chemistry but will wish you did. [source]

Timothy J. Jorgensen

I do like the story of radium. [source]

10

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert

4.6

Preview Summary

Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.

In prose that is at once fran

Recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and 6 others.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert. Climate change is a big problem—one of the biggest we’ll face this century—but it’s not the only environmental concern on the horizon. Humans are putting down massive amounts of pavement, moving species around the planet, over-fishing and acidifying the oceans, changing the chemical composition of rivers, and more. Natural scientists posit that there have been five extinction events in the Earth’s history (think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs), and Kolbert makes a compelling case that human activity is leading to the sixth. Unlike a lot of people who write about the environment, Kolbert doesn’t resort to hype. She just lays out the facts and wraps them in memorable anecdotes. It’s a sobering but engaging and informative read. [source]

Jeff Bezos

Founder/Amazon

"In his autobiography, Walmart's founder expounds on the principles of discount retailing and discusses his core values of frugality and a bias for action — a willingness to try a lot of things and make many mistakes. Bezos included both in Amazon's corporate values," Brad Stone writes. [source]

11

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Siddhartha Mukherjee

4.6

Preview Summary

Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 1439107955 (ISBN13: 9781439107959)

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Sid

Recommended by Bill Gates and Timothy J. Jorgensen.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

I loved this brilliant book about cancer. [source]

Timothy J. Jorgensen

A tremendous amount of cancer biology comes through in that book through the eyes of the victims and the people up close and personal. [source]

12

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond

4.6

Preview Summary

Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ide

Recommended by Bill Gates, Charles T. Munger, Charlie Munger, and 12 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. [source]

Daniel Ek

A brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the modern world was formed, analyzing how societies developed differently on different continents. [source]

Simon Sinek

Author

I’m a fan of books that challenge our assumptions, and Diamond offers us a new and remarkably simple way of looking at our world. Learning to challenge existing assumptions is core to effective leadership for it trains us to keep an open mind. [source]

13

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

Steven Johnson

4.6

From Steven Johnson, the dynamic thinker routinely compared to James Gleick, Dava Sobel, and Malcolm Gladwell, The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapid

Recommended by Alison Alvarez, Seth Mnookin, and Stephen Evans.

Alison Alvarez

I read the Ghost Map, a book about 1854 London Cholera outbreak. The outbreak was stopped because of a map created by Dr. John Snow. You can see hints of this map in some of our customer discovery tools because it was such an effective way of pinpointing a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. [source]

Seth Mnookin

The Ghost Map is a book that I oftentimes give to people to show them how cool and exciting and accessible and gripping stories about scientific discoveries can be. [source]

Stephen Evans

Johnson looks at London during a specific moment in time, August 1854, and focuses on a particular incident, an outbreak of cholera in Soho, in Central London. [source]

14

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard P. Feynman

4.6

Preview Summary

A series of anecdotes, such as are included in Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman, shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in this engagingly eccentric book. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of st

Recommended by Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and 12 others.

Larry Page

Co-Founder/Google

Google co-founder has listed this book as one of his favorites. [source]

Sergey Brin

Co-Founder/Google

Brin told the Academy of Achievement: "Aside from making really big contributions in his own field, he was pretty broad-minded. I remember he had an excerpt where he was explaining how he really wanted to be a Leonardo da Vinci, an artist and a scientist. I found that pretty inspiring. I think that leads to having a fulfilling life." [source]

Naval Ravikant

CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList

Learn about the inner mindset and external state of someone who was absolutely brilliant. [source]

15

The Gene: An Intimate History

Siddhartha Mukherjee

4.6

Preview Summary

Recommended by Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Amit Paranjape, and 1 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

"Mukherjee wrote this book for a lay audience, because he knows that the new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways," Gates wrote. Mukherjee is what Gates calls a "quadruple threat." He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author. [source]

Amit Paranjape

@vikramsathaye @DrSidMukherjee @kiranshaw Great book. [source]

Bryan Johnson

A great book. [source]

16

The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

Richard Rhodes

4.5

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.

Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly - or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright gla

Recommended by Bill Earner and Tom Clarke.

Bill Earner

My favorite book is The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It's a book that covers a vast range of topics over a fifty year period. It talks about the scientific advances that led to the bomb, the personalities that made those advances, and at the same time covers the political choices and escalation of violence over the course of the first half of the 20th Century that paint the use of the atomic bomb on Japan as an almost inevitable conclusion of that escalation. The prose is as incredible as the story. It's really a treat to rea [source]

Tom Clarke

This is the best history of the greatest minds in science alive at the time, or maybe ever, and how they were brought together to build this bomb. [source]

17

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Andrea Wulf

4.5

The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. In North America, his name still graces four counties, thirtee

18

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

Charles Darwin

4.5

Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task.

Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual in

Recommended by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Mark Kurlansky, Adam Maloof, and 3 others.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Author & Science Communicator

Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … On the Origin of Species (Darwin) to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]

Mark Kurlansky

It is one of the most important books written, and I always urge people to read it. [source]

Adam Maloof

For me (and many others) this book forms the foundation for modern biology. It is all about humans’ concept of themselves. [source]

19

Cosmos

Carl Sagan

4.5

Preview Summary

Cosmos has 13 heavily illustrated chapters, corresponding to the 13 episodes of the Cosmos television series. In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying

Recommended by Richard Branson, Ante Shoda, Anurag Ramdasan, and 1 others.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]

Ante Shoda

It explains 14 billion years of the evolution of the universe, a sort of engineering experiment on the largest possible scale. It spans all scales of space and time, describing everything from the largest scales of the universe to the smallest scales of molecules and atoms. It’s a good book for putting everything in perspective. [source]

Anurag Ramdasan

This book helped draft a great perspective on the world and the universe at large and made me a fan of the Cosmos!

Cover unavailable

20

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

Edward Dolnick

4.5

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with nature’s most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

At the end

21

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

Deborah Blum

4.5

Deborah Blum, writing with the high style and skill for suspense that is characteristic of the very best mystery fiction, shares the untold story of how poison rocked Jazz Age New York City. In The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end

Recommended by Michelle Francl.

Michelle Francl

Deborah Blum’s book reminds me that molecules are powerful witnesses, if only we have the skills to interrogate them, and sometimes they are killers. [source]

22

The Double Helix

James Watson

4.4

By identifying the structure of DNA, the molecule of life, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry & won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time, Watson was only 24, a young scientist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest mysteries gives a daz

Recommended by Peter Attia, Matt Ridley, Adam Hart-Davis, and 1 others.

Peter Attia

Founder/Attia Medical

One of the books that considers to be an important read for people interested in his career path. [source]

Matt Ridley

An astonishing literary achievement, and it was about the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century. [source]

Adam Hart-Davis

They made a brilliant guess and the result was that they and Maurice Wilkins shared a Nobel Prize and Rosalind Franklin didn’t, which was very unfair. [source]

23

The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors

John Gribbin, Adam Hook

4.4

A wonderfully readable account of scientiﬁc development over the past ﬁve hundred years, focusing on the lives and achievements of individual scientists, by the bestselling author of In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat

In this ambitious new book, John Gribbin tells the stories of the people who have made science, and of the times in which they lived and worked. He begins with Copernicus, during the Rena

24

The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself

Daniel J. Boorstin

4.4

An original history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him.

Recommended by Lloyd Blankfein, Ryan Petersen, and Thomas Hellmann.

Lloyd Blankfein

CEO/Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs CEO has been reading this sweeping history book for years. [source]

Ryan Petersen

@Juanfrayala Yes, The Discoverers. Probably my favorite history book. Takes a while to develop bc it’s the full history of mankind’s quest for knowledge, so the geography section isn’t til about 100 pages in but worth it! [source]

Thomas Hellmann

It is the book that I often recommend to students who come to me with a true curiosity. [source]

25

Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem

Simon Singh

4.4

"I have discovered a truly marvelous proof, which this margin is too narrow to contain". With these tantalizing words the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple, yet the finest mathematical minds would be baffled for more than three and a half centuries.Fermat's Last Theor

Recommended by Kirk Borne and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore.

Kirk Borne

New Perspective on Fermat's Last Theorem: https://t.co/YeaHQ6iadB by @granvilleDSC @DataScienceCtrl #abdsc #Mathematics See the best-selling book "Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem": https://t.co/dqenmvUw0A by @SLSingh https://t.co/deyMhQTQLU [source]

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

The book is great because Simon Singh has this ability to write about the driest and most complex scientific or mathematical concepts and issues, and somehow make them come alive. [source]

26

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

John M. Barry

4.3

At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collisio

Recommended by Antonio Eram, Dave Collum, Greg Dworkin, and 4 others.

Antonio Eram

This book was recommended by , Founder of NETOPIA mobilPay, when asked for titles he would recommend to people interested in understanding the world around them. [source]

Dave Collum

I guess it is a good time to point out that "The Great Influenza" is a great book. If you think modern medicine would have mitigate this one, you haven't read the book. https://t.co/t4uHPgfLE6 [source]

Greg Dworkin

@heshsson yes1 brilliant book, which also explains flu better than most other things you will read [source]

27

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality

Manjit Kumar

4.3

“One of the best guides yet to the central conundrums of modern physics.”—John Banville

Quantum theory is weird. As Niels Bohr said, if you weren’t shocked by quantum theory, you didn’t really understand it. For most people, quantum theory is synonymous with mysterious, impenetrable science. And in fact for many years it was equally baffling for scientists themselves. In this tour de force of sci

Recommended by K Ken Nakamura.

K Ken Nakamura

I just finish reading this book. Good survey of the history of the Quantum Mechanics from Planck to Bell. Now I must read Mehta's book (The Historical Development of Quantum Theory) next. https://t.co/t37VfBCD2Y [source]

28

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love

Dava Sobel

4.3

Inspired by a long fascination with Galileo, and by the remarkable surviving letters of Galileo's daughter, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has written a biography unlike any other of the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics- indeed of modern science altogether." Galileo's Daughter also presents a stunning portrait of a person hitherto lost to history, described by her father as "

Recommended by Stuart Clark.

Stuart Clark

Dava ostensibly wrote a book about Galileo’s relationship with his daughter but actually it reveals a lot about Galileo and science along the way. [source]

29

Leonardo da Vinci

Walter Isaacson

4.3

Preview Summary

Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most

Recommended by Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Ryan Holiday, and 6 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

I think Leonardo was one of the most fascinating people ever. Although today he’s best known as a painter, Leonardo had an absurdly wide range of interests, from human anatomy to the theater. Isaacson does the best job I’ve seen of pulling together the different strands of Leonardo’s life and explaining what made him so exceptional. A worthy follow-up to Isaacson’s great biographies of Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. [source]

Satya Nadella

CEO/Microsoft

Microsoft CEO has plunged into what must be an advance copy of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. Isaacson’s biography is based on the Renaissance master’s personal notebooks, so you know we’re going to be taken into the creative mind of the genius. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

Truly excellent book about one of history’s all time greats. [source]

30

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

Graham Farmelo

4.3

'A monumental achievement - one of the great scientific biographies.' Michael Frayn

The Strangest Man is the Costa Biography Award-winning account of Paul Dirac, the famous physicist sometimes called the British Einstein. He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, h

Recommended by Eric Weinstein, Marcus Chown, and Pedro G Ferreira.

Eric Weinstein

Managing Director/Thiel Capital

Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter. [source]

Marcus Chown

Graham Farmelo said that he’d never met anyone – even in Bristol where Paul Dirac grew up and lived – who’d ever heard of him: the greatest English physicist since Newton! [source]

Pedro G Ferreira

Out of a fascination with mathematical beauty Dirac discovered the natural world. [source]

31

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

Simon Singh

4.3

In his first book since the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logistica

Recommended by Stephen Kinsella.

Stephen Kinsella

@gavreilly @SLSingh Love that book [source]

32

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions

David Quammen

4.3

David Quammen's book, The Song of the Dodo, is a brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope, far-reaching in its message -- a crucial book in precarious times, which radically alters the way in which we understand the natural world and our place in that world. It's also a book full of entertainment and wonders.
In The Song of the Dodo, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas

Recommended by Isabella Tree, Sean B Carroll, and TC Boyle.

Isabella Tree

Quammen’s wondrous peregrination of islands takes us on a journey of evolutions and extinctions in order to illustrate how like islands our continents have become. [source]

Sean B Carroll

The book covers the role that islands have played in our thinking about how nature works. [source]

TC Boyle

A brilliant journalist who can tell scientific stories with the kind of panache you’d expect from a novelist. [source]

33

The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450

David C. Lindberg

4.3

This landmark book represents the first attempt in two decades to survey the science of the ancient world, the first attempt in four decades to write a comprehensive history of medieval science, and the first attempt ever to present a full, unified account of both ancient and medieval science in a single volume. In The Beginnings of Western Science, David C. Lindberg provides a rich chronicle of t

34

The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution

David Wootton

4.3

A companion to such acclaimed works as The Age of Wonder, A Clockwork Universe, and Darwin’s Ghosts—a groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world.

We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today, science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this

35

The Mismeasure of Man

Stephen Jay Gould

4.3

The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve.

How smart are you? If that question doesn't spark a dozen more questions in your mind (like "What do you mean by 'smart,'" "How do I measure it" and "Who's asking?"), then The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's masterful demolition of the IQ industry, should be required reading. Gould's brilliant, funny, engaging prose dissects the mo

Recommended by Carol Dweck, Jerry Coyne, and Susan Gelman.

Carol Dweck

I was raised in the heyday of the IQ craze. My sixth grade teacher seated us around the room in IQ order and assigned all privileges on the basis of IQ. This book made me realise the effect it had on us and I saw that my work could play a role in bringing that era to a close. [source]

Jerry Coyne

He had this Marxist viewpoint towards biology which in the end made him almost reject natural selection. [source]

Susan Gelman

This is a classic book. It was published in 1981 and got a lot of attention when it came out. Gould just does this beautiful job of laying out the ‘biology as destiny’ idea – and then ripping it to shreds. [source]

36

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

Margot Lee Shetterly

4.3

Preview Summary

Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now.

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as “Human Computers,” cal

37

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Ben Macintyre

4.3

The celebrated author of A Spy Among Friends and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Cold War-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union.

If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of

Recommended by Casey Neistat, Amrullah Saleh, Gady Epstein, and 2 others.

Casey Neistat

Founder/368 Creative Space

just finished this yesterday. absolutely fantastic book. super recommend if you're into spycraft and espionage. bravo @BenMacintyre1 https://t.co/4OG4C1cBQ1 [source]

Amrullah Saleh

I had a great conversation with Ambassador Micheal Lund Jeppesen of @DKinAfghanistan . On the sidelines of our rich conversation we spoke of the Spy & the Traitor a great book in which Denmark's intelligence features highly. Proud of our alliance & cooperation. https://t.co/47GMb7ETWr [source]

Gady Epstein

Think I’ll read a non-China spy story for a change. Have heard great things about this book https://t.co/QcBa0ozRfG [source]

38

The Demon-haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan

4.3

Preview Summary

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutio

Recommended by Dallas Campbell, Edip Yüksel, James Randi, and 2 others.

Dallas Campbell

@TheChilterns Even if you profoundly disagree with Clarke, it’s very detailed. The classic is of course ‘The Demon Haunted World’ by Carl Sagan. When I’m Prime Minister it will be compulsory reading at school! Best book on what science is/isn’t and why we think the way we do. 👍 [source]

Edip Yüksel

For Philosophy of Science class, I am now using Carl Sagan's book as the REQUIRED text book. Instead of bombarding students with terminology and names, we should let them enjoy the dancing of synapses in their own 3-pound grey jelly. In this thread I will share quotes from Sagan. https://t.co/rBEPVvEiuO [source]

James Randi

First of all, Carl was my very good friend, and we had a lot of confidences over the years. He was the epitome of the scientific mind and the scientific thinker. In The Demon-Haunted World, one of his later books, he investigates pseudoscience, frauds and fakes, and the mistakes that scientists made over the years. It’s very comprehensive. He had a whole chapter devoted to “Carlos” – or Jose Alvarez, who travelled all over the world doing this act as a fake psychic, and then revealed the whole thing on Australian television. Carl was quite taken with that story, and he and Jose spent a couple of hours together at a scientific conference that they both attended. [source]

39

The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology

Simon Winchester

4.3

In 1793, a canal digger named William Smith made a startling discovery. He found that by tracing the placement of fossils, which he uncovered in his excavations, one could follow layers of rocks as they dipped and rose and fell -- clear across England and, indeed, clear across the world -- making it possible, for the first time ever, to draw a chart of the hidden underside of the earth. Determined

40

Objectivity

Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison

4.3

The emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences, as revealed through images in scientific atlases--a story of how lofty epistemic ideals fuse with workaday practices.

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences--and show how the concept differs

41

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

Kate Moore

4.3

The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the

42

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

James Gleick

4.2

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.

The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soo

Recommended by Nicholas Carr.

Nicholas Carr

If Standage’s is a small book focused on a particular technology and moment in time, Gleick’s is extraordinarily broad and sweeping. It’s a very large book, in which he tries – and succeeds in many ways I think – to tell the story of information in human history. Information breaks down into two different things in essence. On the one hand it is messages – things with meaning to human beings – and on the other hand it is an abstract good without meaning which we have begun to industrialise, by which I mean figure out how to get more information across a distance more quickly and efficiently. [source]

43

The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery

Wendy Moore

4.2

In an era when bloodletting was considered a cure for everything from colds to smallpox, surgeon John Hunter was a medical innovator, an eccentric, and the person to whom anyone who has ever had surgery probably owes his or her life. In this sensational and macabre story, we meet the surgeon who counted not only luminaries Benjamin Franklin, Lord Byron, Adam Smith, and Thomas Gainsborough among hi

44

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

James Gleick

4.2

An illuminating portrayal of Richard Feynman—a giant of twentieth century physics—from his childhood tinkering with radios, to his vital work on the Manhattan Project and beyond

Raised in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of quantum mechanics ea

Recommended by Naval Ravikant.

Naval Ravikant

CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList

I’ve been reading Perfectly Reasonable Deviations, and I’ve also been rereading Genius. [source]

45

Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer

4.2

In the aftermath of the English Civil War, as people were groping for new forms of political order, Robert Boyle built an air-pump to do exper-iments. Does the story of Roundheads and Restoration have something to do with the origins of experimental sci-ence? Schaffer and Shapin believed it does.

Focusing on the debates between Boyle and his archcritic Thomas Hobbes over the air-pump, the authors p

46

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World

Steven Johnson

4.2

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas.In this illustrated history, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepre

Recommended by Bill Gross, James Altucher, and Chris Dixon.

Bill Gross

Founder/Idealab

This book really showed me the amazing pathways that led to innovations that make our lives work today. The stories are told almost like a dramatic mystery to make the history come to life with excitement and aha moments. [source]

James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

Also add to this: “How We Got to Now” by Steven Johnson. Basically: don’t believe the myth of the lonely genius. Ideas come from a confluence of history, “the adjacent possible” specific geographic locations, etc. The connections Johnson makes are brilliant. For instance, The Gutenberg Press (which, in itself, was invented because of improvements in sewing looms), made everyone realize they had bad vision. So the science of lenses was created. So microscopes were eventually created. So germs were eventually discovered. So modern medical science was discovered. And so on. Johnson is a thinker and a linker and tells a good story. [source]

47

Voyage of the Beagle

Charles Darwin

4.2

s/t: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches
When the Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime.
It was to last five years and transform him from an amiable and somewhat aimless young man into a scientific celebrity. Even more vitally, it was to set in motion the intellectual currents that culminated in the arrival o

Recommended by Tim White and Tom Clarke.

Tim White

Darwin is a great writer and an excellent observer so it is a good place to start understanding where we came from, and how we came to that understanding. [source]

Tom Clarke

Darwin sees Valparaiso destroyed by an earthquake erupting and is horrified by the brutality of nature. [source]

48

Coming of Age in the Milky Way

Timothy Ferris

4.2

Twelve years in the making and impeccably researched, Coming of Age in the Milky Way chronicles the awakening of the human species to the vastness of our cosmos and shows how each time the model of the universe has been altered, tremors have rumbled through such realms as theology and politics. Illustrated.

Recommended by Richard Cohen.

Richard Cohen

Although he is an astronomer, by training and disposition in many ways, he’s also a wonderful historian of science. [source]

49

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Walter Isaacson

4.2

The computer and the internet are among the most important innovations of our era, but few people know who created them. They were not conjured up in a garret or garage by solo inventors suitable to be singled out on magazine covers or put into a pantheon with Edison, Bell, and Morse. Instead, most of the innovations of the digital age were done collaboratively. There were a lot of fascinating peo

Recommended by Brian Burkhart, Chris Fussell, Chris Oliver, and 4 others.

Brian Burkhart

This book is essentially a biography of all the people who’ve led to the technology of today—it’s fascinating. The most important point of the book is everything is one long, connected chain. There isn’t just one person or one industry that makes anything happen—it all goes way back. For example, the communication theory I have espoused and taught throughout my career is from Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. Yeah, I’ve got my own spin on it—instead of ethos, pathos and logos, we say “know, feel, and do.” But it’s still based on their philosophies. Reading this book, I realized it’s not just someone like Steve Jobs who’s responsible for the era we live in. Rather, it’s Steve Jobs plus a whole lot of people from the last 200-plus years. [source]

Chris Fussell

The history of how great ideas evolve. [source]

Chris Oliver

I'm currently reading Innovators by Walter Isaacson. I love reading books like this because you learn about the lives of people who have created amazing things. It teaches you that their lives were often much harder than you realize and the struggles you're going through are very similar to what they had to go through before they were successful. It's really inspirational. [source]

50

A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos

Dava Sobel

4.2

By 1514, the reclusive cleric Nicolaus Copernicus had written and hand-copied an initial outline of his heliocentric theory-in which he defied common sense and received wisdom to place the sun, not the earth, at the center of our universe, and set the earth spinning among the other planets. Over the next two decades, Copernicus expanded his theory through hundreds of observations, while compiling

51

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Douglas R. Hofstadter

4.2

Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers at

Recommended by Steve Jurvetson, Seth Godin, Cory Zue, and 2 others.

Steve Jurvetson

Steve Jurvetson recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show". [source]

Seth Godin

Author, Marketer, Entrepreneur

In the last week, I discovered that at least two of my smart friends hadn't read Godel, Escher, Bach. They have now. You should too. [source]

Cory Zue

More recently books like Godel, Escher, Bach and Sapiens have influenced my thinking a lot. [source]

52

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars

Dava Sobel

4.2

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges--Vassar, Wellesley, an

53

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

Tom Standage

4.2

The Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison. The electric telegraph nullified distance and shrank the world quicker and further than ever before or since, and its story mirr

Recommended by Nicholas Carr and Rafat Ali.

Nicholas Carr

The reason why I start with Tom Standage’s book is because we tend to think of the information age as something entirely new. In fact, people have been wrestling with information for many centuries. If I was going to say when the information age started, I would probably say the 15th century with the invention of the mechanical clock, which turned time into a measurable flow, and the printing press, which expanded our ability to tap into other kinds of thinking. The information age has been building ever since then. [source]

Rafat Ali

The not-Internet Internet of early 20th century and its effect on news/newspapers. From “The Victorian Internet” book, utterly fascinating. https://t.co/jP0C4cfkTc [source]

54

To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science

Steven Weinberg

4.2

A masterful commentary on the history of science from the Greeks to modern times, by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg—a thought-provoking and important book by one of the most distinguished scientists and intellectuals of our time.

In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries from ancient Miletus to medieval B

55

The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe

Arthur Koestler, Herbert Butterfield

4.1

An extraordinary history of humanity's changing vision of the universe. In this masterly synthesis, Arthur Koestler cuts through the sterile distinction between 'sciences' and 'humanities' to bring to life the whole history of cosmology from the Babylonians to Newton. He shows how the tragic split between science and religion arose and how, in particular, the modern world-view replaced the medieva

Recommended by Dava Sobel and Richard Cohen.

Dava Sobel

Even though this came out in the 1950s you still meet people who will talk about it. And for many it was the book that got them interested in astronomy. [source]

Richard Cohen

This classic work has had its share of critics, but as a history of early solar science, which for much of its length it becomes, it is hard to put down. [source]

56

The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought

Thomas S. Kuhn, James Bryant Conant

4.1

For scientist and layman alike this book provides vivid evidence that the Copernican Revolution has by no means lost its significance today. Few episodes in the development of scientific theory show so clearly how the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. Understanding the processes which underlay the Revolution gives us a perspective, in this

57

The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth

Alan Cutler

4.1

58

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes

Adam Rutherford

4.1

This is a story about you. It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. It is unique to you, as it is to each of the 100 billion modern humans who have ever drawn breath. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes we each carry the history of our species births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex.

Since scientists first read the huma

Recommended by Jim Al-Khalili.

Jim Al-Khalili

Rutherford tells the story of our genetic makeup, how it has shaped human history and what history can now tell us about our genes. It’s a hugely illuminating and fresh take on who we are and how we came to be. [source]

59

Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution

Rebecca Stott

4.1

“[An] extraordinarily wide-ranging and engaging book [about] the men who shaped the work of Charles Darwin . . . a book that enriches our understanding of how the struggle to think new thoughts is shared across time and space and people.”—The Sunday Telegraph (London)

Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received an unsettling letter. He

60

Isaac Newton

James Gleick

4.1

Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, g

61

Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

Abraham Pais

4.1

Since the death of Albert Einstein in 1955 there have been many books and articles written about the man and a number of attempts to "explain" relativity. In this new major work Abraham Pais, himself an eminent physicist who worked alongside Einstein in the post-war years, traces the development of Einstein's entire oeuvre. This is the first book which deal comprehensively and in depth with Einste

Recommended by Jim Al-Khalili and Jim Baggott.

Jim Al-Khalili

This book was the first time I had a really good look behind the iconic Einstein, the Einstein as an old man sticking his tongue out, holding his trousers up with a piece of cord. [source]

Jim Baggott

It’s a scientific biography, not necessarily about Einstein the person, although there’s a lot of personal stuff in it. [source]

62

The Day the Universe Changed: How Galileo's Telescope Changed the Truth

James Burke

4.1

In The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke examines eight periods in history when our view of the world shifted dramatically: in the eleventh century, when extraordinary discoveries were made by Spanish crusaders; in fourteenth-century Florence, where perspective in painting emerged; in the fifteenth century, when the advent of the printing press shook the foundations of an oral society; in the

63

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Charles Seife

4.1

The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshipped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. For centuries, the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. Zero follows this number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe and its apotheosis as the mystery of t

Recommended by Alex Bellos and Bryan Johnson.

Alex Bellos

Unlike Ifrah, Charles Seife is a brilliant popular science writer who has here written the ‘biography’ of zero. And even though he doesn’t talk that much about India, it works well as a handbook to Ifrah’s sections on India. Because Seife talks about how zero is mathematically very close to the idea of infinity, which is another mathematical idea that the Indians thought about differently. Seife gives you the context and it explains why, really, without zero, you can’t do anything. The difficulty of understanding zero is similar to the difficulty of understanding infinity. The Greeks had no zero, Roman numerals have no zero, and they had no infinity. He plays with this idea that we were afraid of infinity and then gradually we learnt not to be afraid of it. [source]

Bryan Johnson

Chronicles how hard it was for humanity to come up with and hold onto the concept of zero. No zero, no math. No zero, no engineering. No zero, no modern world as we know it... [source]

64

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Charles Petzold

4.1

What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries.

Using everyday objects and fam

Recommended by Ana Bell.

Ana Bell

It gets you to use your imagination to virtually build a computer. It’s easy to read, you can lie down on the couch and enjoy it—it’s not so much of a textbook. It demystifies the magic of a computer and what it is. [source]

65

The Eighth Day of Creation

Horace Freeland Judson

4.1

In this classic book, the distinguished science writer Horace Freeland Judson tells the story of the birth and early development of molecular biology in the US, the UK, and France. The fascinating story of the golden period from the revelation of the double helix of DNA to the cracking of the genetic code and first glimpses of gene regulation is told largely in the words of the main players, all o

Recommended by Sean B Carroll.

Sean B Carroll

Whatever unit of measurement you have for revolutions, this was a big one. [source]

66

Chaos: Making a New Science

James Gleick

4.1

Few writers distinguish themselves by their ability to write about complicated, even obscure topics clearly and engagingly. In Chaos, James Gleick, a former science writer for the New York Times, shows that he resides in this exclusive category. Here he takes on the job of depicting the first years of the study of chaos--the seemingly random patterns that characterise many natural phenomena.

This

Recommended by Adam Maloof and Pedro G Ferreira.

Adam Maloof

James Gleick is a former science writer for the New York Times and in this book Gleick describes the science of chaos, and how complex systems can also be interpreted in terms of simple rules and simple (but interacting) behaviours. [source]

Pedro G Ferreira

It turns out that even simple equations can have such complicated behaviour that, in practice, it’s impossible to predict the outcome, which is described as ‘chaotic’. [source]

67

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species In 23 Chapters

Matt Ridley

4.1

The human genome, the complete set of genes housed in twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, is nothing less than an autobiography of our species. Spelled out in a billion three-letter words using the four-letter alphabet of DNA, the genome has been edited, abridged, altered and added to as it has been handed down, generation to generation, over more than three billion years. With the first draft of t

Recommended by Charles T. Munger, Charlie Munger, Mark Zuckerberg, and 2 others.

Mark Zuckerberg

Founder/Facebook

This book aims to tell a history of humanity from the perspective of genetics rather than sociology. This should complement the other broad histories I've read this year, as well as follow "Energy" well in focusing on science. I've wanted to read Matt Ridley's books for a while. His recent book "The Rational Optimist" about how progress and the economy evolve is also near the top of my ever-growing pile of books to read. [source]

Naval Ravikant

CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList

Getting into the more evolution, science kind of books, I really highly, highly recommend picking up Genome … . [source]

Cover unavailable

68

Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics

Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon

4.1

The story of two brilliant nineteenth-century scientists who discovered the electromagnetic field, laying the groundwork for the amazing technological and theoretical breakthroughs of the twentieth century.

Two of the boldest and most creative scientists of all time were Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). This is the story of how these two men - separated in age by for

Recommended by Charles T. Munger.

Charles T. Munger

Vice Chairman/Berkshire Hathaway

It's a combination of scientific biography and explanation of the physics, particularly relating to electricity. It's just the best book of its kind I have ever read, and I just hugely enjoyed it. Couldn't put it down. It was a fabulous human achievement. And neither of the writers is a physicist. [source]

69

God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

James Hannam

4.1

This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized behavior. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In God's Philosophers, James Hannam debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages,

70

Connections

James Burke

4.1

In this bestselling book, James Burke examines the ideas, inventions, and coincidences that have culminated in the major technological advances of today. He untangles the pattern of interconnecting events, the accidents of time, circumstance, and place that gave rise to major inventions of the world. Says Burke, "My purpose is to acquaint the reader with some of the forces that have caused change

71

The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug

Thomas Hager

4.1

The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.

Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Fr

72

The Day We Found the Universe

Marcia Bartusiak

4.1

On January 1, 1925, thirty-five-year-old Edwin Hubble announced the observation that ultimately established that our universe was a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed, filled with myriad galaxies like our own. This discovery dramatically reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos, and once and for all laid to rest the idea that the Milky Way galaxy was alone in t

73

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

4.1

Preview Summary

"A wonderful, splendid book--a book that should be ready by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future." --Howard Fast

With a new introduction by Anthony Arnove, this edition of the classic national bestseller chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools—with its em

Recommended by Lisa Ling and Alex Honnold.

Lisa Ling

I credit this book with propelling me to dig deeper, and to not always believe the narrative. [source]

Alex Honnold

Totally changed the way I look at politics. [source]

74

E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation

David Bodanis

4.1

E=mc². Just about everyone has at least heard of Albert Einstein's formulation of 1905, which came into the world as something of an afterthought. But far fewer can explain his insightful linkage of energy to mass. David Bodanis offers an easily grasped gloss on the equation. Mass, he writes, "is simply the ultimate type of condensed or concentrated energy," whereas energy "is what billows out as

75

Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science

Jim Al-Khalili

4.1

In Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, Jim al-Khalili celebrates the forgotten pioneers who helped shape our understanding of the world.

For over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic. Surveying the golden age of Arabic science, Jim Al-Khalili reintroduces such figures as the Iraqi physicist Ibn al-Haytham, who practised the modern scientific method over half a centu

Recommended by Andrew Lawrence.

Andrew Lawrence

This is a history book, but about the history of science. It was an eye opener to me because I thought I knew about Arabic science and I didn’t. The story that most scientists will tell you is, “First there were the Greeks who did these wonderful things, and then later on there was the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. In between the Arabs and Islam held the torch.” The picture you get is that they kept the knowledge alive between Aristotle and Newton as it were and passed the torch down by transmitting what the Greeks had done. [source]

76

Horrible Histories Blood Curdling Box (Horrible Histories Collections)

Terry Deary

4.1

Featuring some of the very best from Terry Deary's Horrible Histories series, and displayed in a great printed lift top storage box, this fantastic set is a must have for any child's book shelf. This Horrible Histories box set of fantastic children's books includes practically all of the series' favourites, including Rotten Romans, Vicious Vikings and Savage Stone Age and encourages children to re

77

The Scientific Revolution

Steven Shapin

4.1

"There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it." With this provocative and apparently paradoxical claim, Steven Shapin begins his bold vibrant exploration of the origins of the modern scientific worldview.

"Shapin's account is informed, nuanced, and articulated with clarity. . . . This is not to attack or devalue science but to reveal its richness as the human e

Recommended by Matthew Cobb.

Matthew Cobb

Shapin describes what happened during the scientific revolution, but it’s above all a discussion of the literature, the historiography. [source]

78

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

Lindsey Fitzharris

4.1

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters--no place for the squeamish--and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These medical pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous th

79

The Lunar Men

Jenny Uglow

4.0

80

Horrible Histories Collection 20 Books Set Pack

Terry Deary

4.0

81

Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science

David Lindley

4.0

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.
—Werner Heisenberg

That God would choose to play dice with the world is something I cannot believe.
—Albert Einstein

Nothing exists until it is measured.
—Neils Bohr

The remarkable story of a startling scientific idea that ignited a battle among the greatest minds of the twentieth cen

82

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou

4.0

An innovative, dramatic graphic novel about the treacherous pursuit of the foundations of mathematics.
This graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, he crosses paths with thinkers like Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert & Kurt Gödel, & finds a passionate student in Ludwig Wittgenstein. But his most ambitious goal—to establi

Recommended by Marcus du Sautoy.

Marcus du Sautoy

This is quite a recent publication and I saw the first inklings of this graphic novel when I went to a meeting in Mykonos on maths and narrative and it really looked an incredibly exciting project. I enjoy the graphic novel as an art form and I’ve always enjoyed Tintin and this has a very Tintinesque line to it, the illustration. But it brings alive one of the great stories of 20th-century mathematics, which is the crisis that happened when Gödel proved that there are statements about numbers which are true but which will never be proved. And this went against the whole ethos of mathematics since the ancient Greeks. If something is true, we should be able to prove why it’s true. If there are infinitely many primes, we can prove that there are infinitely many primes. But we don’t know that there are infinitely many twin primes: Primes that are two apart, like 17 and 19. Maybe that’s a true statement that doesn’t have a proof and we’re trying to chase something that doesn’t exist. Gödel’s theorem, proved in the 1930s, was a real bombshell for the philosophy of mathematics. [source]

83

The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World

Deborah Cadbury

4.0

The story of two nineteenth-century scientists who revealed one of the most significant and exciting events in the natural history of this planet: the existence of dinosaurs. In 'The Dinosaur Hunters' Deborah Cadbury brilliantly recreates the remarkable story of the bitter rivalry between two men: Gideon Mantell uncovered giant bones in a Sussex quarry, became obsessed with the lost world of the r

Recommended by Paul Barrett.

Paul Barrett

This [source]

84

Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History

Penny LeCouteur, Jay Burreson

4.0

Though many factors have been proposed to explain the failure of Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign, it has also been linked to something as small as a button - a tin button, the kind that fastened everything from the greatcoats of Napoleon's officers to the trousers of his foot soldiers. When temperatures drop below 56°F, tin crumbles into powder. Were the soldiers of the Grande Armée acutee fatall

85

American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Kai Bird

4.0

Preview Summary

"American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in time of war. Immediately after Hiroshima, he became the most famous scientist of his generation - one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern m

Recommended by David Blaine.

David Blaine

One of the more fascinating men that I’ve read about. [source]

86

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Jon Gertner

4.0

The definitive history of America s greatest incubator of innovation, the birthplace of some of the 20th century s most influential technologies, including the integrated circuit, the communications satellite and the cell phone.

From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs officially, the research and development wing of AT&T was the biggest, and arguably the best, labo

Recommended by Mark Zuckerberg and Ron Conway.

Mark Zuckerberg

Founder/Facebook

My next book for A Year of Books is The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation. I'm very interested in what causes innovation -- what kinds of people, questions and environments. This book explores that question by looking at Bell Labs, which was one of the most innovative labs in history. As an aside, I loved The Three-Body Problem and highly recommend it. If you're interested in Chinese history, virtual reality and science fiction -- I'm three for three! -- then you'll enjoy this book. I'm going to try to fit in the sequel before the end of the year as well. [source]

87

Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution

Lisa Jardine

4.0

In this fascinating look at the European scientific advances of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, historian Lisa Jardine demonstrates that the pursuit of knowledge occurs not in isolation, but rather in the lively interplay and frequently cutthroat competition between creative minds.

The great thinkers of that extraordinary age, including Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, and Christophe

88

Seeing Further: Ideas, Endeavours, Discoveries and Disputes — The Story of Science Through 350 Years of the Royal Society

Edited & Introduced by. Contributing editor: Jon Turney BRyson, Bill

4.0

Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, and with contributions from Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, David Attenborough, Martin Rees and Richard Fortey amongst others, this is a remarkable volume celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society.

On a damp weeknight in November, 350 years ago, a dozen or so men gathered at Gresham College in London. A twenty-eight year old — and not widely famo

Recommended by John Shepherd.

John Shepherd

All these issues that we think are modern were in fact already around in the 18th century. [source]

89

Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation

Steven Johnson

4.0

Preview Summary

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovat

Recommended by Bill Gates, Tony Hsieh, James Altucher, and 2 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Quite good at giving examples of how you create environments that can encourage good ideas. [source]

Tony Hsieh

CEO/Zappos.com

Author Steven Johnson argues in his 2010 book that innovation comes from the collision of ideas. This can happen when an individual working in isolation builds off years of existing knowledge to fuel his insights, or it can happen much more quickly when several creative types bounce ideas off each other in a community like Silicon Valley. This theory is one of the reasons why Hsieh decided to invest $350 million of his own money in 2010 into the Downtown Project, which is building a community of entrepreneurs in Zappos' neighborhood. [source]

James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

Also add to this: “How We Got to Now” by Steven Johnson. Basically: don’t believe the myth of the lonely genius. Ideas come from a confluence of history, “the adjacent possible” specific geographic locations, etc. The connections Johnson makes are brilliant. For instance, The Gutenberg Press (which, in itself, was invented because of improvements in sewing looms), made everyone realize they had bad vision. So the science of lenses was created. So microscopes were eventually created. So germs were eventually discovered. So modern medical science was discovered. And so on. Johnson is a thinker and a linker and tells a good story. [source]

90

Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements

Hugh Aldersey-Williams

4.0

Everything is made of them, from the furthest reaches of the universe to this book that you hold in your hands, including you. Like you, the elements have lives: personalities and attitudes, talents and shortcomings, stories rich with meaning. You may think of them as the inscrutable letters of the periodic table but you know them much better than you realise. Welcome to a dazzling tour through hi

91

The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist

Reviel Netz, William Noel

4.0

At a Christie's auction in October 1998, a battered medieval manuscript sold for two million dollars to an anonymous bidder, who then turned it over to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore for further study. The manuscript was a palimpsest-a book made from an earlier codex whose script had been scraped off and the pages used again. Behind the script of the thirteenth-century monk's prayer book, the

92

Bulging Box of Books

Nick Arnold

4.0

20 titles from the bestselling 'Horrible Science' series, presented in a bulging boxed set. This collection includes everything from blood, bones and body bits to ugly bugs and vicious veg!

93

The Ascent Of Man

Jacob Bronowski, Richard Dawkins

4.0

Dr Jacob Bronowksi's The Ascent of Man traces the development of human society through our understanding of science. First published in 1973 to accompany the groundbreaking BBC television series, it is considered one of the first works of 'popular science', illuminating the historical and social context of scientific development for a generation of readers. In his highly accessible style, Dr Brono

Recommended by Caspar Henderson.

Caspar Henderson

It’s a historical document now but it’s very beautiful. [source]

94

Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time

Peter Galison

4.0

A dramatic new account of the parallel quests to harness time that culminated in the revolutionary science of relativity, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps is "part history, part science, part adventure, part biography, part meditation on the meaning of modernity....In Galison's telling of science, the meters and wires and epoxy and solder come alive as characters, along with physicists, engineer

Recommended by Walter Isaacson.

Walter Isaacson

Author

This is an absolutely brilliant investigation into two related discoveries that deal with how you define what is simultaneous. [source]

95

Charles Darwin: Voyaging

Janet Browne

4.0

Few lives of great men offer so much interest--and so many mysteries--as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than a hundred years after his death. Yet only now, with the publication of Voyaging, the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly viv

Recommended by Jerry Coyne.

Jerry Coyne

This may be the best scientific biography I have ever read. It’s just absolutely engrossing. [source]

96

The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World

Laura J. Snyder

4.0

ThePhilosophical Breakfast Club recounts the life and work of four men who met as students at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones. Recognizing that they shared a love of science (as well as good food and drink) they began to meet on Sunday mornings to talk about the state of science in Britain and the world at large. Inspired by the great 17th c

97

Black Women in Science: A Black History Book for Kids

PhD Kimberly Brown Pellum

4.0

Bold, black women in science—where will their inspiration take you?

Throughout history, black women have blazed trails across the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Black Women in Science brings something special to black history books for kids, celebrating incredible black women in STEM who have used their brains, bravery, and ambition to beat the odds.

Black Women in Sc

98

The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus

Owen Gingerich

4.0

In the spring of 1543 as the celebrated astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, lay on his death bed, his fellow clerics brought him a long-awaited package: the final printed pages of the book he had worked on for many years: De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Though Copernicus would not live to hear of its extraordinary impact, his book, which first suggested that the Sun, n

Recommended by Dava Sobel.

Dava Sobel

Gingerich writes about his own study of Copernicus’s On the Revolution. And he was able to prove that it was, in fact, an extremely important book. [source]

99

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

Harriet A. Washington

4.0

From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment.

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical resear

100

Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

Mark Miodownik

4.0

A New York Times Bestseller

An eye-opening adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science

Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paper clip bend? Why does any material look and behave the way it does? These are the sorts of questions that Mark Miodownik is constantly asking himself. A globally-renowned

Recommended by Bill Gates.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Mark Miodownik’s personal and professional obsession, as he explains in his book Stuff Matters, is basic materials we often take for granted such as paper, glass, concrete, and steel -- as well as new super-materials that will change our world in the decades ahead. I’m pleased to report that he is a witty, smart writer who has a great talent for imparting his love of this subject. As a result, Stuff Matters is a fun, accessible read. [source]