Help create a JREF recommended science books list?

I agree with Capel, in that a statistics/probability book should be included.

Brief History of Time (Hawking)
Road to Reality (Penrose), difficult
Riemann Hypothesis book (perhaps Karl Sabbagh's)
a survey of physics e.g. Fraser's
concepts of physics book, non-calculus
Chaos (Gleik)
Fermat's Enigma (Simon Singh)
Beyond Einstein (Michio Kaku)
Unknown Quantity (Derbyshire)
Godel, Escher, Bach; difficult read
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers or My Brain Is Open

my list is biased towards physics and math.
 
Godel, Escher, Bach; difficult read
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Really? I flicked through it on our bookshelf and I thought it was highly accessible. Yes, it had some advanced concepts but it walked you through them very well. It's on my to-read list now.
 
I'm in, but since we're only discussing putting together a list, as opposed to actually doing so, I'll merely state that I have a most extensive and eclectic library from which I would be happy to contribute titles.
 
thanks for the new suggestions....:)

Now that there's a fair few books on the list the problem (a good problem!) is to ensure quality over quantity and that the list doesn't become too unwieldly to be really useful,

suggestions on how to maintain quality control welcomed - my own opinions;

1) Each sub section should have 1 (or 2 max) "must read" first books - ideally ones which span the whole area, are exceptionally well written and can spark an interest in the rest of the section. Further books in the category could be slightly more area specific, more suitable to read with some knowledge of the subject etc etc.

2) An easy rating system to use as a base line is Amazon - of all the links I put in, every book was 4star or 5star rated. If there have been a fair number of reviews and it scores less than 4star i suggest we don't include it (unless a case can be made :) )

If people could include the Amazon links with all their recommendations that would be really helpful - it helps in categorising and in giving an idea of feedback.

cheers :D
 
andyandy said:
2) An easy rating system to use as a base line is Amazon - of all the links I put in, every book was 4star or 5star rated.
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Amazon isn't perfect. Some people gave relatively low ratings to Devlin's The Millenium Problems. Yet it clearly has more substance than many pop math books. Substance, lucidity of exposition, credentials of author, etc, should be factored in.

There are also sockpuppet accounts on Amazon. I found several game books given 5 star ratings by suspicious reviewers.
 
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illogical said:
Amazon isn't perfect. Some people gave relatively low ratings to Devlin's The Millenium Problems. Yet it clearly has more substance than many pop math books. Substance, lucidity of exposition, credentials of author, etc, should be factored in.

There are also sockpuppet accounts on Amazon. I found several game books given 5 star ratings by suspicious reviewers.
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Sure, Amazon isn't perfect and an Amazon rating is not the absolute arbitor of what is and what is not a good book, nevertheless it's a hugely valuable resource to make use of when trying to decide whether an individual's subjective assessment is matched more generally. There will always be a problem with maths books insofar as they are greatly dependent upon a reader's background - and as such popular-maths often falls between two stools and thus you would expect them to suffer in any Amazon style ratings. But as I already mentioned Amazon is not a be all or end all - simply a good rough guide. I've had a look at the Devlin book - and it does sound pretty interesting to me.... I could do with a $million ...I've some ideas about the Poincare Conjecture

ETA

Damn Perelman's beaten me to it :D
 
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Or the meme machine by Susan Blackmore? Acceptable? Too speculative?

ETA: O.K., both books only got three and a half stars on amazon. But when you look at the rating of books of "the claws", the system doesn´t seem to be absolutely reliable.........
 
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Here's a personal favorite, not nearly as widely read or recognized as many other titles suggested.

"The Recursive Universe" William Poundstone. (I think).

The book is a very readable discussion of various topics related to the second law of thermodynamics. It was reading that book that made me "get" the statistical interpretation of the second law.
 
From Gould:
The Panda's Thumb
Dinosaur in a Haystack

For Science History:
Six Great Scientists, by J. G. Crowther
Einstein, Copernicus, Darwin, Galileo, Newton and Marie Curie are discussed.
 
Just to let you all know I am working on a book-list section so if you all want to get you reviews ready it should be in place by the end of next week. (Thanks to andyandy for starting this thread.)
 
Here are my suggestions with links:

The Song of the Dodo - David Quammen (Note, I would categorize this as a second tier book in the Ev. Bio. section, as it focuses primarily on diversity and the rapid rate of extinction in "island" populations.)

Chaos - James Gleick

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Charles Seife

Measuring America - Andro Linklater

BTW, these links are all to the U.S. version of Amazon. Does this matter?
 
Hokulele, Amazon (US/CA) has more reviews to my knowledge. Their UK site usually has a different set of reviews.

The sites I use are Amazon, Google Books, Google Scholar, Campus Books and Froogle price engine, and Worldcat library catalog.
 
revised.....

Astromony/cosmology

Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein´s Outreageous Legacy - Kip S. Thorne

Cosmos by Sagan
Pale Blue Dot - Sagan

fabric of the Cosmos/Elegant Universe by Greene

Parrellel worlds by Kaku

The Birth of Time Gribbins

Physics

Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott

Feynman's 6 Easy Pieces

Atom by Issac Asimov.

David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order

"The Recursive Universe" William Poundstone.

Brief History of Time (Hawking)

Deep Simplicity Gribbins

In Search of Schrodingers Cat Gribbins

Evolutionary biology

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sagan

Selfish Gene, River Out of Eden, Ancestor's Tale, Blind watchmaker by Dawkins

Stephen Jay Gould The Panda's Thumb/ Dinosaur in a Haystack

Biology

The Naked Ape and The Human Animal by Desmond Morris.

Steve Jones: The Language of the Genes and Almost Like a Whale.

Brusca and Brusca's Invertebrates

The Song of the Dodo - David Quammen

The mismeasure of man Gould

Neuroscience
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Sacks

Phantoms in the Brain VS Ramachandran

General medical

Awakenings - Sacks

The Boy who could not stop Washing - Rapopart

Carol Ann Rinzler's Dictionary of Medical Folklore

Maths

A History of Mathematics - Carl Boyer

The Lady Tasting Tea - Salsburg (Statistics)

Stewart Shapiro's Thinking About Mathematics

Chaos - James Gleick

Goedel, Escher and Bach by Hofstadter

Coincidences, Chaos, and all that Math Jazz by Edward Burger & Michael Starbird.

How To Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff.

General Science history

David C. Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science

Edward Grant's The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages

Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everthing

Steven Shapin's The Scientific Revolution

Grant & Olson's Science & Religion (Johns Hopkins UP 2004) in two volumes (From Aristotle to Copernicus and From Copernicus to Darwin)

Specific science histories

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

Fermat's Enigma (Simon Singh)

Beyond Einstein (Michio Kaku)

The Day The Universe Changed James Burke.

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Charles Seife

Longitude - Sobel

Measuring America - Andro Linklater

Six Great Scientists, by J. G. Crowther

Mauve - Garfield

Salt by Mark Kurlansky

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

The Fellowship (History of science in the Royal society) Gribbins

David Quammen Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind.

Billions and Billions - Sagan

Connections ??

Sputnik - Dickson


Scepticism and science

Frauds, Myths and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology - Feder

Demon Haunted World - Sagan

Tricks of the Mind Derren Brown

Broca's Brain Sagan

"why people believe weird things" by Michael Shermer?[/QUOTE]

anthroplogy/archeology
Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond

Dead Men do tell Tales - Maples

The prehistory of the mind S Mithen

Psychology

The Happiness Hypothesis Haidt

How To Think Straight About Psychology by Keith Stanovich.
 
Short suggestion for 1): Boyer´s math book. Ask any historian of mathematics.

Long explanation: Boyer was the very first actual Historian of Mathematics, and founded the first (and only, I think) undergrad course on it in the world. The book covers mostly everything known to History regarding numbers, from Babilonia to Bourbaki, it´s superbly well-written, has a huge list of references (for those interested), and has exercises (not only maths, but history ones too!)
It does require something more than plain curiosity to follow the difficult parts, but those can be skiped without loss of continuity.

OH, and I forgot another one, on electromagnetism:

A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity - E.T. Whittaker

Part I = To this day the must-read guide for anyone interested (and getting a PhD) in the history of electricity, up to Einstein. (Read excerpts, not the whole book.)

Part II = After Einstein. Appearently, not so good. A little controversial, but still...(never read it)
 
andyandy said:
Tricks of the Mind Derren Brown
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Tee hee, I see one reviewer has said "Derren Brown i solute you" - so much for improving scientific understanding. Or it could be a deranged homoeopath I 'spose.

While I'm on - what about 'Flim flam! psychics, esp, unicorns and other delusions' by James randi; 'How we know what isn't so' by Thomas Gilovich and the excellent, post-modernist puncturing 'How mumbo-jumbo conquered the world' by Francis Wheen.

I also have great affection for "James Randi - psychic investigator" as an introduction to how very simple, common sense methods of investigation can be applied to any and all claims. This was the first, true 'sceptical' book I ever owned and to this day I can remember my feeling of amazement when I discovered that all these paranormal phenomena could actually be investigated by very basic methods.

Previous to that I had had a vague, half belief that these things, whether or not they were true, were not subject to mundane, natural laws and therefore must be beyond investigation. My feelings of revalation and relief was closely followed by one of horror as I realised how the wool had insiduously been pulled over my eyes without my even realising it.

Yuri
 
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