My favorite Science books
Science is the truth! Science has unlocked many mysteries and saved Humanity from diseases and helped them explore the world — technological advancement such as Artificial Intelligence is possible by Science.
These books are a treasure house of knowledge. Science explains many facets of nature — mysteries of space, the concept of Time, and the human body’s composition. I benefited by understanding the realities of nature with a more profound perspective. Most of the books I reviewed here are revolutionary and helped the generations understand our reality better.
Our home was like a library full of books (popular/research) on Science & Mathematics. Reading them gave me an exposure to various disciplines of Science and think with an open mind. I also developed an appreciation for the scientific method, experimentation, and inference.
I have not read all of them. Some, I partially read; some I read a lot of reviews about all of them! Without further ado, here is my list!
Sapiens:
This book is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. It captivated my attention to the interesting details from the very beginning. This book offers some eye-opening reasoning of why everything is the way it is and shapes our perspective. Harari answered many questions about life, Evolution, various events in history and presented them in such an excellent way. It’s a treat to read. Not only this book recounts how it all happened, but it also opens up many avenues. It offers some logical reasoning about things and why they happened that way and not in any other way. Harari explored various events in history with gentleness how we came about to be what we are, who we are, and why we are. I learned about history, social culture, and humans. It is piercing insight to understand “fiction” (aka common myths) to describe the concepts that let large numbers of strangers cooperate across space and time.
A Short History of everything:
In this fascinating book, Bryson has made Science involving or entertaining. He addressed and answered some of the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the Universe and ourselves. This is a book on the history of the natural sciences with a breadth of cosmology, quantum physics, paleontology, and chemistry. He took us through a fascinating journey from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. In brief, it is a brief history of us! The book is profound, funny, and always a supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge. There are many exciting stories behind the facts which make this book a breezy read!
The Selfish Gene:
Richard Dawkins’s book is a fundamental change in the way we see ourselves and the world. This book introduced me to the beauty of the theory of Evolution with lucidity and finesse. The examples were from every field of biology. He introduced the concept of or memes. Learning to find out why there are miles and miles of “unused” DNA within each of our bodies. The explanation about evolutionary stable strategy in the human context — that there are 3 kinds of people — “the fool,” “the cheater,” and “the grudger” is thought-provoking. That explanation for the behavior of social insects is insightful. Dawkins provides the answers from the perspective of molecules competing for limited space and resources to produce more of their own kind.
The emperor of all maladies:
Siddarth Mukherjee (Sid) is a phenomenal doctor-story teller! This book was outstanding and traced the history of Cancer with illuminating detail. Although this book is nonfiction, there is drama. The book narrates the development of various treatments such as radical surgery and radical mastectomy, X-rays, cytotoxins, monoclonal antibodies, and tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Sid explains well each of the treatment or therapeutics work. It bound patients’ personal accounts to create a feeling of empathy and leave you with a tinge of sadness. It gives heart-wrenching descriptions of the grit patients have to endure such a debilitating disease; transcending the physical body into a higher understanding. Sid delves into the molecular biology of cancer. He explains our current understanding of the processes and pathways involved. You get the impression that by 2050 we will target the specific pathways and mutations that make up a particular form of Cancer. It leaves the belief that we may one day conquer this emperor of all maladies!
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
I found this book on many “must-read” lists with many recommendations and considered a classic. Unlike the other books on my list, this book is hard to read. The concepts are abstruse, and the language complicated, and specialized. I am yet to complete this book. I am sure this book is beneficial to understand the history of science, philosophy, and Science’s impact on society. According to a review, Thomas Kuhn says that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but is a “series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions.” In those revolutions, “one conceptual world view is replaced by another.” Hopefully, I get to understand this book after several readings!!
The sixth extinction:
It was enlightening to learn about the prior five mass extinctions, which had cataclysmic effects on Earth’s biodiversity. The causes of the five previous mass extinctions were natural catastrophes. Human activity will drive the sixth extinction. This book is engaging, and I found it poignant to read about the dwindling of habitats and the extinction of various living beings at an alarming rate. It is also wonderful to learn about climate change. It is sad to realize how oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb the carbon humans generate through burning fossil fuels. In providing a little comfort, Kolbert narrates scientists’ attempts to preserve species (cryogenically) on the verge of extinction. This book should be a wake-up call for all people who care about the environment, biodiversity, and climate change effects.
The Gene:
In “The Gene,” Sid distills the infinitely complex fabric of our identity into a narrative that is as understandable as it is gripping. The story transports us through Time as it explores the hypotheses from Pythagoras to Rosalind Franklin. I learned new things about the “who’s who” in genetics — Aristotle, Darwin, Mendel, Morgan, Bateson, Johannsen, Galton, Garrod, Beadle and Tatum, Jacob and Monod, Watson and Crick, Khorana, McKusick, Sanger, Berg, Venter, Gurdon and Yamanaka!! The book deals with both the history of genetics and its applications in health and disease. It shows that genetics holds the potential to transform human disease treatment and feed the ever exploding population. The suggestion about Neanderthals and humans is intriguing. It also warns us to heed to the ethical implications of genetics as we look to the future. I found the discussion about the groundbreaking research on genetics interesting. A new technology called CRISPR, which could edit and propagate genes with unprecedented precision, is both exciting and horrifying at the same time.
A brief history of Time:
This essential book on cosmology explains complex concepts such as space, Time, and black holes to the layman from a scientific perspective. This was the first book I read about Cosmology. It blew my mind to understand and appreciate the complexity of the Universe. I learned more about how the Universe began, how the stars have formed, and how we have come here due to the Evolution of the Universe. The book contains interesting stories of some Nobel Prize winners in physics with their results related to the mentioned fundamental questions. I had extreme difficulty getting my head around Relativity and quantum mechanics — but this book helped enhance my understanding a little more. Stephen Hawking explained the nature of our Universe, from the smallest particles to the biggest entities, the black holes, in a simple language. How he narrated complex concepts in theoretical physics is commendable! I owe my curiosity about astrophysics to him!
To explain the world :
This is a brief history of Science! Science has given us answers to many of the most perplexing questions about the natural world’s workings. In this book, Steven Weinberg concentrates on physics and astronomy. He narrates the transition from the Ancient Greek approach — applying pure reason with only a nod to the observation of phenomena — to the modern process based on an essential combination of experiments, observation, and theory. Much of ancient Science was philosophical and mathematical, relying more on abstract thinking than on empirical observation. Science rises and falls on data, and as technology progressed, so did Science. My favorite section of the book was a chapter focusing on Arab scientists’ contributions in the Middle Ages. Men like al-Biruni, an astronomer living during the Abbasid era, despised astrology and attempted to calculate Earth’s radius. Others like Ibn Sahl and al-Haitam made contributions to optics that Weinberg considers being the most significant contribution the Arabs made in physics. Of all the things humans have done, Science ranks among the greatest. Steven Weinberg’s writing is riveting!
Cosmos:
Cosmos is brilliant and one of the bestselling books ever! If you want to wonder about the stars, history, and a story of the human condition, look no further! With a lyrical literary style, Sagan dazzles with the narration of the world inhabited by a life form that is just beginning to discover its own identity and to venture into the vast ocean of space. Its scope is expansive, and suggestions are provocative. The illustrations of Ann Druyan, full-color illustrations, are enticing and iridescent. The Foreword by one of my favorite people, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is imaginative! Cosmos retraces the fourteen billion years of its existence and explores the origin of life, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, spacecraft missions, the Sun’s death, the Evolution of galaxies, and many more! It also lays out the stories of distinguished men who helped to shape modern Science.
Guns, germs and steel :
This book is fantastic by any measure! Jared convinces us that Geographic, environmental, biological, and other factors dramatically shifted human history. This resulted in the worldwide dominance of the leading industrial powers during the past 500 years. Jared Diamond explored, “Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way?” “Why did human development is different on different continents?” “Why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?” Jared drew knowledge from medicine, evolutionary biology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, and geography.
The exposition of the “Yuli’s Question” is the heart of this fabulous book. To answer the question, Jared begins his story around 11,000 BCE, when the last Ice Age was drawing to a close. Human beings were forming villages in a few places around the world. It’s unclear whether villages’ formation preceded the deliberate cultivation and production of food or vice versa. Regardless of the sequence, that shift from a hunter-gatherer society to agriculturally based settlements set in motion the course of events that have led to the civilization in which we live. This book is not for light reading. It is full of facts and power-packed with information. But if you have an interest in understanding how the world came to be as it is, this book highly rewarding.
The elegant Universe:
I have put off reading this book after buying it. I couldn’t quite muster the courage to read about scholarly works such as the General and Special Relativity, the Double-Split Experiment, Quantum Mechanics, and Modern physics. I have tried reading about them several times to be defeated! But, this book, oh, my….is different! It is one of the finest science books I have read. It indeed does an outstanding job engaging me and taking me into a whole new dimension, almost literally! It’s a great follow-up of ‘A brief history of time’! Greene brings physics to ordinary people for ordinary people with brilliant analogies from daily life. He explained the vast complexity of physics’s propositions in layman’s terms. It is essential reading for all those guys who want to understand the Universe we live in.
My impressions:
These books need multiple readings. Unlike non-fiction novels, these books need one to be passionate about science, they expand our horizons, gives us the knowledge to navigate the world full of misinformation!
Please share your favorite Science books and your perspective!