I just ran across
this post by Steven Weinberg listing the best science books for the general reader. For the most part, I like the list (see below). I own 6 of the books, and have read most of 4 of them. There are some that I think are excellent, like Gamow's
The Birth and Death of the Sun, although I prefer
One, Two, Three...Infinity by the same author better. Feynman's
The Character of Physical Law I think is excellent. But my favorite book, although it's probably best for someone with a technical bent, not a general reader, is Weinberg's own
The First Three Minutes. I first read that book between my junior and senior years as a physics major at UC Santa Cruz, and was literally blown away. It had a huge impact on me. Although I had already decided to lead a life in physics, that was at a point where I found everything having to do with physics incredibly cool and interesting.
I was led to Weinberg's article (which is an interesting and well-written article, completely separate from his list of books) by
this article by Chad Orzel. To be honest, I wasn't very impressed by Orzel's book on 'how to teach your dog physics.' It may play to the general reader who doesn't know anything about physics, but I'm more interested in books that are geared toward intelligent readers that know something about physics. Along this vein, I hand out such books to students in my introductory (and advanced) physics classes who score well on exams. Especially freshman students taking university-level physics for the first time, I want to expand their knowledge about different kinds of physics and astronomy, and how to actually use the physics that we're learning. Along this line are the three books listed above, or Weinberg's
Dreams of a Final Theory, or books by Isaac Asimov, or Lawrence Krauss's
The Physics of Star Trek. Given the wide interest among students in string theory, the recent book by Jim Baggot,
Farewell to Reality, gives a level-headed picture of what physics (and science) is, and how to think about cutting-edge physics when you are a freshman. I also pointedly do
not give out any books by Michio Kaku, because he is definitely part of the problem. I've already mentioned in a
previous post one of the best books for clearly stating which physical ideas are speculative, and which have lots of observational evidence.
Orzel gives his own list
here, and chides Weinberg for being "in the Whig history mode," whatever that means. His first book is probably the worst science book every for the general reader - defined as someone who is not an expert in any of the science in the book, but hopefully will take away a realistic picture of what the important issues are. This bad book is Bill Bryson's
A Short History of Nearly Everything. First of all, Bryson is not a scientist. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but in Bryson's case it is. He has no understanding of what science is all about, and hence he conveys many wrong things. I've read pieces of the book, and what I read seemed OK, even enlightening. This is probably true because Bryson is such a great writer. (In fact his comedy writing, like
A Walk in the Woods, is top notch.) However, then I read an interesting review of the book by a scientist. They said that everything looked pretty good, but when he covered the reviewer's own field of expertise, Bryson got things wrong. So the reviewer asked other scientsist their opinion. They said essentially the same thing: "It's a great book, but when he talks about X [my field of expertise] he doesn't know what he's talking about." This means that the reader
thinks he's getting an understanding of some technical issue, but he's getting the wrong understanding. And that's the worst kind of science writing because it's masquerading as good writing.
The only other books on Orzel's list that I've heard of before are Richard Feynman's
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Kip Thorne's
Black Holes and Time Warps, and George Gamow's
Mr Thompkins in Wonderland. All three are excellent, but I think the first two are not really for the general reader at all, and would require at least some formal education in physics at the university level, if not an undergraduate degree.
As I said, I give away books to my physics students, and over the past 10-15 years I've given away approximately 150 books. I get them from used book stores, and I often give away duplicate copies of the same book, for example, Steven Hawking's
A Brief History of Time. Below I give Weinberg's list of 13 books, and then I give all the books I've given away. There's not much overlap, mostly because I try to give away books that deal with physics and astronomy, either directly or indirectly.
Here is Weinberg's list:
Philosophical Letters (1733) Voltaire
The Origin of Species (1859) Charles Darwin
On a Piece of Chalk (1868) Thomas Huxley
The Mysterious Universe (1930) James Jeans
The Birth and Death of the Sun (1940) George Gamow
The Character of Physical Law (1965) Richard Feynman
The Elegant Universe (1999) Brian Greene
The Selfish Gene (1976) Richard Dawkins
The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986) Richard Rhodes
The Inflationary Universe (1997) Alan Guth
The Whole Shebang (1997) Timothy Ferris
Hiding in the Mirror (2005) Lawrence Krauss
Warped Passages (2005) Lisa Randall
And here is my list:
Abbott |
Flatland: A romance of many dimensions |
Andrade |
Quanta |
Andrade |
Sir Isaac Newton: His life and work |
Andrade |
Rutherford and the nature of the atom |
Asimov |
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright |
Asimov |
Understanding Physics: Motion, Sound, and Heat |
Asimov |
Atom: Journey across the subatomic cosmos |
Asimov |
The Collapsing Universe |
Aveni |
Conversing with the planets |
Barrow |
Theories of Everything |
Barrow |
The origin of the universe |
Bergreen |
Voyage to Mars: NASA's Search for Life Beyond Earth |
Bodanis |
E=mc2: A biography of the world's most famous equation |
Bruce |
Schrodinger's Rabbits |
Calder |
Einstein's Universe |
Carter |
Latitude: How American astronomers solved the mystery of variation |
Chaikin |
A Man on the Moon |
Collins |
Carrying the Fire |
Coveney |
The arrow of time |
Crease |
The second creation: Makers of the revolution in 20th-century physics |
Davies |
The Last Three Minutes |
Davies |
About Time: Einstein's unfinished revolution |
Ehrlich |
The cosmological milkshake |
Einstein |
Relativity: The special and the general theory |
Einstein |
Einstein's Miraculous Year |
Ferris |
The Whole Shebang |
Feynman |
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman |
Fritz |
Understanding Cosmology |
Galileo |
Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo |
Gamov |
The Great Physicists from Galileo to Einstein |
Gamow |
Mr Tompkins in paperback |
Gamow |
One Two Three … Infinity |
Gleick |
Chaos |
Gleick |
Isaac Newton |
Glenn |
We Seven |
Gray |
Angle of Attack |
Greene |
The elegant universe |
Gribbin |
Spacewarps: A book about Black Holes, White Holes, Quasars, and our violent Universe |
Gribbin |
Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality |
Gribbin |
Stardust |
Gribbin |
Quantum Physics |
Guth |
The Inflationary Universe |
Hawking |
Black holes and baby universes |
Hawking |
A brief history of time |
Hawking |
A brief history of time: A reader's companion |
Helmholtz |
On the sensations of tone |
Herbert |
Faster than light |
Jastrow |
Red Giants and White Dwarfs |
Jones |
Physics for the rest of us |
Kane |
The Particle Garden |
Krauss |
Fear of Physics |
Krauss |
The Physics of Star Trek |
Levin |
How the universe got its spots |
Lightman |
Ancient Light: Our changing view of the universe |
Lindley |
The end of physics |
Lloyd |
Programming the Universe |
Magueijo |
Faster than the speed of light |
Marshall |
Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat? |
McPhee |
The curve of binding energy |
Nahin |
An imaginary tale: The story of i |
Nasar |
A beautiful mind |
Pagels |
The cosmic code |
Parker |
The vindication of the Big Bang |
Peat |
Superstrings and the search for the theory of everything |
Petroski |
To Engineer is Human |
Pullman |
The atom in the history of human thought |
Randall |
Warped passages |
Reichenbach |
From Copernicus to Einstein |
Reid |
Marie Curie |
Rhodes |
The Making of the Atomic Bomb |
Segre |
From falling bodies to radio waves |
Shipman |
Black holes, quasars, and the universe |
Singh |
Big Bang: The origin of the universe |
Smolin |
The trouble with physics |
Smoot |
Wrinkles in Time |
Sobel |
Longitude |
Stewart |
Nature's Numbers |
Thorne |
Black holes and time warps |
Time-Life |
The Far Planets |
Trefil |
The Unexpected Vista |
Tufte |
Visual Explanations |
von Baeyer |
Taming the Atom |
von Baeyer |
The Fermi Solution |
Watson |
The double helix |
Weinberg |
Dreams of a Final Theory |
Weinberg |
The First Three Minutes |
Weinberg |
The Discovery of Subatomic Particles |
Will |
Was Einstein Right? |
Zee |
Fearful symmetry: The search for beauty in modern physics |