Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
Based on another recent thread about a certain politician, I'm motivated to start one on recent(ish) valuable popular-audience science books that are available as ebooks.
... And I'll go out on a limb and mention Dawkin's most recent book, even though I haven't read it yet:
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-...dp/1416594787/ |
I haven't read it, either, but I've heard nothing but good about it. The latest issue of
Free Inquiry contains a four-page excerpt from
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins which serves as the springboard for other articles in that issue.
Here are the science books I've read this year:
*
Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries by Neil deGrasse Tyson. This book contains far-reaching, fascinating, and sound science from the man who ruined Pluto's reputation.
*
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott under the pseudonym "a square". This book is in the public domain, and can be downloaded at
Project Gutenberg. This is a novel, but one that is often referenced by scientists and science professors in trying to clarify our understanding of higher dimensions by imagining a world whose denizens inhabit only two.
*
In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension by Dan Falk.
*
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku.
*
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. One of the people discussed by Gladwell in this fascinating book is
Paul Ekman, whose work on facial expressions is the inspiration for the FOX TV Show
Lie To Me.
*
A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen W. Hawking (1988). An audiobook re-read.
*
A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (2005). The classic updated and simplified. A book I re-read on my Kindle.
This week I purchased, but have not yet begun to read,
The Large, the Small and the Human Mind by Roger Penrose (Author), Malcolm Longair (Editor), Abner Shimony (Contributor), Nancy Cartwright (Contributor), and Stephen Hawking (Contributor).