The 100 Best Science Books of All Time

1. The Origin of Species By Charles Darwin | Used Price: 70% Off In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an ... More »

2. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter By Richard Feynman | Used Price: 60% Off Celebrated for his brilliantly quirky insights into the physical world, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the general public. Here Feynman provides a classic and definitive introduction to QED (namely, quantum electrodynamics), that part of quantum field theory describing the ... More »

3. On Growth and Form By D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson | 70% Off Why do living things and physical phenomena take the form they do? D'Arcy Thompson's classic On Growth and Form looks at the way things grow and the shapes they take. Analysing biological processes in their mathematical and physical aspects, this historic work, first published in 1917, has also ... More »

4. Ideas And Opinions By Albert Einstein | Used Price: 50% Off A new edition of the most definitive collection of Albert Einstein's popular writings, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. The selections range from his earliest days as a theoretical physicist to his death in 1955; from such subjects as relativity, nuclear war or peace, and religion and ... More »

5. Double Helix By James D. Watson | Used Price: 90% Off Published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Nobel Prize for Watson and Crickâ€™s discovery of the structure of DNA, an annotated and illustrated edition of this classic book gives new insights into the personal relationships between James Watson, Frances Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin, and the ... More »

6. Lives of a Cell By Lewis Thomas | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things.Â Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays ... More »

7. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions By Thomas Kuhn | Used Price: 60% Off 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 ... More »

9. What Evolution Is By Ernst Mayr | Under $1.00 At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, What Evolution Is poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how our improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern ... More »

10. The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies By E. O. Wilson; Bert Holldobler | 60% Off The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually spectacular volume.The Superorganism promises to be one of the most important scientific works published in this decade. Coming eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands ... More »

11. The Selfish Gene By Richard Dawkins | Used Price: 60% Off Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands ... More »

12. To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science By Steven Weinberg In To Explain the World, pre-eminent theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg offers a rich and irreverent history of science from a unique perspective - that of a scientist. Moving from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad to Oxford, and from the Museum of Alexandria to the Royal Society of London, ... More »

13. The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes By Denis Noble The gene's eye view of life, proposed in Richard Dawkins acclaimed bestseller The Selfish Gene, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of genetic codes. But in The Music of Life, world renowned physiologist Denis Noble argues that, to truly understand life, we must look beyond ... More »

14. A Brief History of Time By Stephen Hawking | Used Price: 60% Off #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawkingâ€™s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe beginâ€”and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unendingâ€”or are there ... More »

15. Godel, Escher, Bach By Douglas R. Hofstadter | 60% Off Douglas Hofstadterâ€™s book is concerned directly with the nature of Â“mapsâ€Â 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 ... More »

16. King Solomon's Ring By Konrad Lorenz | Used Price: 80% Off Solomon, the legend goes, had a magic ring which enabled him to speak to the animals in their own language. Konrad Lorenz was gifted with a similar power of understanding the animal world. He was that rare beast, a brilliant scientist who could write (and indeed draw) beautifully. ... More »

17. What is Life? By Erwin Schrodinger Nobel laureate Erwin SchrÃ¶dinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. It was written for the layman, but proved to be one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA. What is Life? appears ... More »

18. The Making of the Atomic Bomb By Richard Rhodes | Used Price: 80% Off Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award TWENTY-FIVE YEARS after its initial publication, The Making of the Atomic Bomb remains the seminal and complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy ... More »

19. The Elegant Universe By Brian Greene | Used Price: 70% Off The international bestseller that inspired a major Nova special and sparked a new understanding of the universe, now with a new preface and epilogue. Brian Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away layers of mystery to reveal a universe that consists of eleven dimensions, where ... More »

20. Atkins' Molecules By Peter Atkins | Used Price: 50% Off In this new edition of the book that was called "the most beautiful chemistry book ever written," Peter Atkins reveals the molecules responsible for the experiences of our everyday life in fabrics, drugs, plastics, explosives, detergents, fragrances, tastes, and sex. Atkins gives a non-technical account of a ... More »

21. Silent Spring By Rachel Carson | Used Price: 80% Off Rachel Carsonâ€™s Silent Spring was first published in three serialized excerpts in the New Yorker in June of 1962. The book appeared in September of that year and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our ... More »

22. Against Method By Paul Feyerabend Paul Feyerabendâ€™s globally acclaimed work, which sparked and continues to stimulate fierce debate, examines the deficiencies of many widespread ideas about scientific progress and the nature of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that scientific advances can only be understood in a historical context. He looks at the way the philosophy ... More »

23. Coming of Age in the Milky Way By Timothy Ferris | Used Price: 70% Off From the second-century celestial models of Ptolemy to modern-day research institutes and quantum theory, this classic book offers a breathtaking tour of astronomy and the brilliant, eccentric personalities who have shaped it. From the first time mankind had an inkling of the vast space that surrounds us, those ... More »

24. Wonderful Life By Stephen Jay Gould | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 "[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."â€”James Gleick, New York Times Book Review High in the Canadian ... More »

25. The Realm of the Nebulae By Edwin Hubble No modern astronomer made a more profound contribution to our understanding of the cosmos than did Edwin Hubble, who first conclusively demonstrated that the universe is expanding. Basing his theory on the observation of the change in distanct galaxies, called red shift, Hubble showed that this is ... More »

26. Global Warming: The Complete Briefing By John Houghton | Used Price: 80% Off John Houghton's market-leading textbook is now in full color and includes the latest IPCC findings, making it the definitive guide to climate change. Written for students across a wide range of disciplines, its simple, logical flow of ideas gives an invaluable grounding in the science and impacts of ... More »

27. ABC of Relativity By Bertrand Russell First published in 1925, Bertrand Russellâ€™s ABC of Relativity was considered a masterwork of its time, contributing significantly to the mass popularisation of science. Authoritative and accessible, it provides a remarkable introductory guide to Einsteinâ€™s theory of Relativity for a general readership. One of the most definitive reference ... More »

28. Microbe Hunters By Paul de Kruif | Used Price: 80% Off This science classic by Paul de Kruif chronicles the pioneering bacteriological work of the first scientists to see and learn from the microscopic world. Â Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented ... More »

29. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science By Werner Heisenberg | Under $1.00 The seminal work by one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, Physics and Philosophy is Werner Heisenberg's concise and accessible narrative of the revolution in modern physics, in which he played a towering role. The outgrowth of a celebrated lecture series, this book remains as ... More »

30. The Same and Not the Same By Roald Hoffmann | Used Price: 80% Off Positioned at the crossroads of the physical and biological sciences, chemistry deals with neither the infinitely small, nor the infinitely large, nor directly with life. So it is sometimes thought of as dull, the way things in the middle often are. But this middle ground is precisely where ... More »

31. The Fractal Geometry of Nature By Benoit Mandelbrot | Used Price: 80% Off Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, and lightening does not travel in a straight line. The complexity of nature's shapes differs in kind, not merely degree, from that of the shapes of ordinary geometry, the geometry of fractal shapes. Now that the field has expanded greatly ... More »

32. Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature By Niels Bohr Niels Bohr (1885-1962) was a Danish physicist who played a key role in the development of atomic theory and quantum mechanics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. First published in 1934, and reprinted in 1961, this collection contains four articles and an introductory survey. ... More »

33. The Expanding Universe By Arthur Eddington | Used Price: 60% Off Long out of print, this classic book investigates the experimental determination of one of the fundamental constants of astrophysics and its significance for astronmy. The Expanding Universe offers a unique sidelight on the history of ideas and Eddington's artistry; his evident enjoyment of writing and exposition ... More »

34. The Beginnings of Western Science By David C. Lindberg | Used Price: 70% Off When it was first published in 1992, The Beginnings of Western Science was lauded as the first successful attempt ever to present a unified account of both ancient and medieval science in a single volume. Chronicling the development of scientific ideas, practices, and institutions from pre-Socratic Greek philosophy ... More »

35. What Is Mathematics? By Richard Courant; Herbert Robbins; Ian Stewart For more than two thousand years a familiarity with mathematics has been regarded as an indispensable part of the intellectual equipment of every cultured person. Today, unfortunately, the traditional place of mathematics in education is in grave danger. The teaching and learning of mathematics has degenerated into the ... More »

36. The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind By Steven Pinker | Used Price: 80% Off In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, ... More »

37. Reaching for the Sun: How Plants Work By John King From their ability to use energy from sunlight to make their own food, to combating attacks from diseases and predators, plants have evolved an amazing range of life-sustaining strategies. Written with the non-specialist in mind, John King's lively natural history explains how plants function, from how they gain ... More »

38. The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics By Roger Penrose | Used Price: 90% Off For decades, proponents of artificial intelligence have argued that computers will soon be doing everything that a human mind can do. Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human ... More »

39. Classical Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum By George Hrabovsky; Leonard Susskind This is the ultimate master class in modern physics. World-class physicist and father of string theory Leonard Susskind and citizen-scientist George Hrabovsky combine forces in a primer that teaches the skills you need to do physics yourself. Combining crystal-clear explanations of the laws of the universe with basic ... More »

40. New Views on an Old Planet By Tjeerd H. van Andel | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Earth Science is history, and because the earth is changing every day, earth history is being added every moment. Professor van Andel's now famous book on earth history interweaves three main themes: the evolution of the solid earth; the history of oceans and atmospheres; and the ... More »

41. Wholeness and the Implicate Order By David Bohm | Used Price: 50% Off David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose ... More »

42. Science and the Modern World By Alfred North Whitehead | 70% Off Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science. Presaging by more than half a century most of today's cutting-edge thought on the cultural ramifications of science and technology, Whitehead demands that readers understand and celebrate the contemporary, ... More »

43. The Human Story: A New History of Mankind's Evolution By Robin Dunbar A wonderfully accessible, up-to-the-minute account of human evolution by 'one of the most respected evolutionary psychologists in Britain' (Guardian). Of the dozen or so hominid species once in existence, why are we the only one to have survived? What is it that sets us so firmly apart from ... More »

44. The Fabric of Reality By David Deutsch | Used Price: 80% Off For David Deutsch, a young physicist of unusual originality, quantum theory contains our most fundamental knowledge of the physical world. Taken literally, it implies that there are many universes â€œparallelâ€Â to the one we see around us. This multiplicity of universes, according to Deutsch, turns out to be ... More »

45. Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers By Max Planck In this fascinating autobiography from the foremost genius of twentieth-century physics, Max Planck tells the story of his life, his aims, and his thinking. Published posthumously, the papers in this volume were written for the general reader and make accessible his scientific theories as well as his philosophical ... More »

46. General Chemistry By Linus Pauling | Used Price: 70% Off "An excellent text, highly recommended." â€” ChoiceWhen it was first published, this first-year chemistry text revolutionized the teaching of chemistry by presenting it in terms of unifying principles instead of as a body of unrelated facts. Those principles included modern theories of atomic and molecular structure, quantum mechanics, ... More »

47. Cosmos By Carl Sagan | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 The best-selling science book ever published in the English language, COSMOS is a magnificent overview of the past, present, and future of science. Brilliant and provocative, it traces today's knowledge and scientific methods to their historical roots, blending science and philosophy in a wholly energetic and irresistible way. More »

48. Calculus Made Easy By Silvanus P. Thompson; Martin Gardner Calculus Made Easy has long been the most popular calculus primer, and this major revision of the classic math text makes the subject at hand still more comprehensible to readers of all levels. With a new introduction, three new chapters, modernized language and methods throughout, and an appendix ... More »

49. Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science By Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar | 70% Off "What a splendid book! Reading it is a joy, and for me, at least, continuing reading it became compulsive. . . . Chandrasekhar is a distinguished astrophysicist and every one of the lectures bears the hallmark of all his work: precision, thoroughness, lucidity."â€”Sir Hermann Bondi, NatureThe late S. ... More »

50. A Mathematician's Apology By G. H. Hardy | Used Price: 50% Off G. H. Hardy was one of this century's finest mathematical thinkers, renowned among his contemporaries as a 'real mathematician ... the purest of the pure'. He was also, as C. P. Snow recounts in his Foreword, 'unorthodox, eccentric, radical, ready to talk about anything'. This 'apology', written in ... More »

51. Digging Dinosaurs By John R. Horner; James Gorman | Price: $0.01 A reissue of the now-classic book that revolutionized the way we think about dinosaurs. "Popular-science writing at its best."--Los Angeles Times More »

52. Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking By William H. Cropper | Used Price: 90% Off Here is a lively history of modern physics, as seen through the lives of thirty men and women from the pantheon of physics. William H. Cropper vividly portrays the life and accomplishments of such giants as Galileo and Isaac Newton, Marie Curie and Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein and ... More »

53. Why Chemical Reactions Happen By James Keeler; Peter Wothers | 50% Off By tackling the most central ideas in chemistry, Why Chemical Reactions Happen provides the reader with all the tools and concepts needed to think like a chemist. The text takes a unified approach to the subject, aiming to help the reader develop a real overview of chemical processes, ... More »

54. Molecular Biology of the Cell By Bruce Alberts; Peter Walter; Julian Lewis For nearly a quarter century Molecular Biology of the Cell has been the leading cell biology textbook. This tradition continues with the new Fifth Edition, which has been completely revised and updated to describe our current, rapidly advancing understanding of cell biology. To list but a few examples, ... More »

55. The Natural Philosophy of James Clerk Maxwell By P. M. Harman This book provides an introductory yet comprehensive account of James Clerk Maxwell's (1831-79) physics and world view. The argument is structured by a focus on the fundamental themes that shaped Maxwell's science: analogy and geometry, models and mechanical explanation, statistical representation and the limitations of dynamical reasoning, and ... More »

56. Thermodynamics By Enrico Fermi | Used Price: 70% Off Indisputably, this is a modern classic of science. Based on a course of lectures delivered by the author at Columbia University, the text is elementary in treatment and remarkable for its clarity and organization. Although it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the fundamental facts of ... More »

57. Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life By Carl Zimmer | Used Price: 70% Off A Best Book of the YearSeed Magazine â€¢ Granta Magazine â€¢ The Plain-DealerIn this fascinating and utterly engaging book, Carl Zimmer traces E. coli's pivotal role in the history of biology, from the discovery of DNA to the latest advances in biotechnology. He reveals the many surprising and ... More »

58. For Love of Insects By Thomas Eisner | Used Price: 60% Off Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers--and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, ... More »

59. Number: The Language of Science By Tobias Dantzig; Joseph Mazur | 80% Off Number is an eloquent, accessible tour de force that reveals how the concept of number evolved from prehistoric times through the twentieth century. Tobias Dantzig shows that the development of mathâ€”from the invention of counting to the discovery of infinityâ€”is a profoundly human story that progressed by ... More »

60. Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century By Philip Ball | Used Price: 70% Off Made to Measure introduces a general audience to one of today's most exciting areas of scientific research: materials science. Philip Ball describes how scientists are currently inventing thousands of new materials, ranging from synthetic skin, blood, and bone to ... More »

61. On the Rocks: Earth Science for Everyone By John S. Dickey | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Explore the fundamental forces of nature in this lively, engrossing panorama of earth and planetary science. Professor John S. Dickey takes you on a tour that begins with the stardust that formed the Earth and ends on the outer reaches of the galaxy. Along the way you'll read ... More »

62. Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World By Abraham Pais | Used Price: 80% Off Abraham Pais' 'Subtle is the Lord...'--the award-winning biography of Albert Einstein--received high acclaim from The New York Times Book Review which hailed it as "a monument to sound scholarship and graceful style," and from The Christian Science Monitor which called it "an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary man." ... More »

63. Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth By Andrew H. Knoll | Used Price: 70% Off Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites--such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll explores the deep history of life ... More »

64. The New Quantum Universe By Tony Hey; Patrick Walters | 90% Off The principles of quantum mechanics are the basis of everything in the physical world--from atoms to stars, from nuclei to lasers. Quantum paradoxes and the eventful life of Schroedinger's Cat are explained, along with the Many Universe explanation of quantum measurement in this newly revised edition. Updated throughout, ... More »

65. Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry By Patrick Coffey | Used Price: 50% Off In Cathedrals of Science, Patrick Coffey describes how chemistry got its modern footing-how thirteen brilliant men and one woman struggled with the laws of the universe and with each other. They wanted to discover how the world worked, but they also wanted credit for making those discoveries, ... More »

66. Evolution By Nicholas Barton; Derek Briggs; Jonathan Eisen Evolution is a new book on evolutionary biology that elegantly synthesizes traditional evolutionary theories with contemporary concepts from genomics, developmental biology, human genetics, and other areas of molecular biology. As an innovative, interdisciplinary, and thoroughly integrated book on evolutionary biology with world-renowned author, Evolution thoroughly illuminates this major ... More »

68. Genetics and the Origin of Species By Theodosius Dobzhansky Featuring an introduction by Stephen Jay Gould, "Genetics and the Origin of Species" presents the first edition of Dobzhansky's groundbreaking and now classic inquiry into what has emerged as the most important single area of scientific inquiry in the twentieth century: biological theory of evolution. Genetics and the ... More »

69. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth By James Lovelock | Used Price: 80% Off In this classic work that continues to inspire its many readers, James Lovelock deftly explains his idea that life on earth functions as a single organism. Written for the non-scientist, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence with which to support a new ... More »

70. Emerging Viruses By Stephen S. Morse | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 New epidemics such as AIDS and "mad cow" disease have dramatized the need to explore the factors underlying rapid viral evolution and emerging viruses. This comprehensive volume is the first to describe this multifaceted new field. It places viral evolution and emergence in a historical context, ... More »

71. The Human Brain: A Guided Tour By Susan A. Greenfield | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 What would you see if you removed the skull from the human brain and then slowly worked your way deeper and deeper into the brain, to the level of an individual neuron? With renowned brain researcher Susan Greenfield as your guide, here is your chance to gain a ... More »

72. Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie By Barbara Goldsmith | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over sixty years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the mythâ€”an all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is ... More »

73. Advice To A Young Scientist By P. B. Medawar | Under $1.00 To those interested in a life in science, Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel laureate, deflates the myths of invincibility, superiority, and genius; instead, he demonstrates it is common sense and an inquiring mind that are essential to the scientistâ€™s calling. He deflates the myths surrounding scientistsÂ—invincibility, superiority, and genius; ... More »

74. Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements By John Emsley Written by award-winning science writer John Emsley, this informative and highly enjoyable book explains the what, the why and the wherefore of the elements. Arranged alphabetically, from Actinium to Zirconium, it is a complete guide to all the elements that are currently known, with more extensive coverage of ... More »

75. Magic Molecules: How Drugs Work By Susan Aldridge | Used Price: 90% Off We have all been drug users at one time or another. Drugs can be used as medicines, as food additives, for pleasure, and to protect our long-term health. With so many new drugs on the market and an ever-widening definition of what exactly makes a drug a drug, ... More »

76. Chaos By James Gleick | Used Price: 80% Off The million-copy bestseller by National Book Award nominee and Pulitzer Prize finalist James Gleick that reveals the science behind chaos theoryNational bestsellerMore than a million copies soldA work of popular science in the tradition of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, this 20th-anniversary edition of James Gleickâ€™s groundbreaking bestseller ... More »

77. The Pleasures of Counting By T. W. Korner | Used Price: 70% Off In this engaging and readable book, Dr. KÃ¶rner describes a variety of lively topics that continue to intrigue professional mathematicians. The topics range from the design of anchors and the Battle of the Atlantic to the outbreak of cholera in Victorian Soho. The author uses relatively simple terms ... More »

78. The Logic of Scientific Discovery By Karl Popper Described by the philosopher A.J. Ayer as a work of 'great originality and power', this book revolutionized contemporary thinking on science and knowledge. Ideas such asÂ the now legendary doctrine of 'falsificationism' electrified the scientific community, influencing even working scientists, as well as post-war philosophy. This astonishing work ranks ... More »

79. One Two Three ... Infinity By George Gamow | Used Price: 70% Off ". . . full of intellectual treats and tricks, of whimsy and deep scientific philosophy. It is highbrow entertainment at its best, a teasing challenge to all who aspire to think about the universe." â€” New York Herald TribuneOne of the world's foremost nuclear physicists (celebrated for his ... More »

80. Through Our Eyes Only?: The Search for Animal Consciousness By Marian Stamp Dawkins | 90% Off What goes on inside the minds of other animals? Do they have thoughts and feelings like our own? To many people, particularly pet owners, the answers seem absurdly obvious. Others feel that the issue of animal consciousness is beyond the scope of science. In Through Our Eyes Only, ... More »

81. Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History By David E. Fastovsky; David B. Weishampel Updated with the material that instructors want, Dinosaurs continues to make science exciting and understandable to non-science majors through its narrative of scientific concepts rather than endless facts. It now contains new material on pterosaurs, an expanded section on the evolution of the dinosaurs and new photographs to ... More »

82. Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine By Roy Porter | Used Price: 50% Off "Chock-full of astonishing facts and fascinating illustrations."â€”Booklist An eminently readable, entertaining romp through the history of our vain and valiant efforts to heal ourselves. Mankind's battle to stay alive and healthy for as long as possible is our oldest, most universal struggle. With his characteristic wit and vastly ... More »

83. The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don't Fall through the Floor By J. E. Gordon | Used Price: 60% Off This new edition of J. E. Gordon's classic introduction to the properties of materials used in engineering answers some fundamental and fascinating questions about how the material world around us functions. In particular, Gordon focuses on so-called strong materials, such as metals, wood, ceramics, ... More »

84. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat By Oliver Sacks | Used Price: 80% Off In his most extraordinary book, â€œone of the great clinical writers of the twentieth centuryâ€Â (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders.Oliver Sacksâ€™s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells ... More »

85. Between Genius and Genocide: The Tragedy of Fritz Haber By Dan Charles In January 1934, as Hitler's shadow began to fall across Europe, a short, bald man carrying a German passport arrived at the Hotel Euler in Basle. He seemed haunted and restless, as though he urgently needed to be elsewhere. Fritz Haber, Nobel laureate in chemistry, confidante of Albert ... More »

86. Diatoms to Dinosaurs: The Size and Scale of Living Things By Chris McGowan; Julian Mulock | Price: $0.01 In "Diatoms to Dinosaurs," Chris McGowan takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the natural world, and examines life in all its various forms. He imparts the excitement of discovery and the joy of understanding as he demonstrates the central importance of size and scale to the ... More »

87. The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology By Horace Freeland Judson 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 ... More »

88. How We Live and Why We Die: The Secret Lives of Cells By Lewis Wolpert | Used Price: 90% Off Acclaimed biologist Lewis Wolpert eloquently narrates the basics of human life through the lens of its smallest component: the cell. Everything about our existence-movement and memory, imagination and reproduction, birth, and ultimately death-is governed by our cells. They are the basis of all life in the universe, from ... More »

89. The Century of the Gene By Evelyn Fox Keller | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful, profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular biology in the twentieth ... More »

90. The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology By Robert Wright | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics--as ... More »

91. Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet By Ted Nield | Used Price: 50% Off To understand continental drift and plate tectonics, the shifting and collisions that make and unmake continents, requires a long view. The Earth, after all, is 4.6 billion years old. This book extends our vision to take in the greatest geological cycle of allâ€”one so vast that our ... More »

92. When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time By Michael Benton | Under $1.00 "The focus is the most severe mass extinction known in earth's historyâ€¦.The science on which the book is based is up-to-date, thorough, and balanced. Highly recommended."â€”ChoiceToday it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of ... More »

93. Warped Passages By Lisa Randall | Rock-bottom Price: $0.01 The universe has many secrets. It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize. There might even be another universe adjacent to ours, invisible and unattainable . . . for now.Warped Passages is a brilliantly readable and altogether exhilarating journey that tracks ... More »

94. The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates By Frans de Waal In this lively and illuminating discussion of his landmark research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal argues that human morality is not imposed from above but instead comes from within. Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution. For many ... More »

95. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software By Charles Petzold | Used Price: 50% Off 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 ... More »

96. Elegance in Science By Ian Glynn | Used Price: 90% Off We usually associate a sense of elegance with art or fashion design, poetry or dance, but the idea of elegance is surprisingly important in science as well. The use of the term is most apparent in the "elegant proofs" of mathematics--which Bertrand Russell once described as "capable of ... More »

97. Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped our History By Dorothy H. Crawford Ever since we started huddling together in communities, the story of human history has been inextricably entwined with the story of microbes. They have evolved and spread amongst us, shaping our culture through infection, disease, and pandemic. At the same time, our changing human culture has itself influenced ... More »

98. Pathologic Basis of Disease By Vinay Kumar; Abul K. Abbas; Jon C. Aster One of the best-selling medical textbooks of all time, Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease is the one book that nearly all medical students purchase, and is also widely used by physicians worldwide. A "who's who" of pathology experts delivers the most dependable, current, and complete coverage ... More »

99. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer By Siddhartha Mukherjee | 60% Off Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane â€œbiographyâ€Â of cancerâ€”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, ... More »

100. Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey By Peter J. Bowler; Iwan Rhys Morus | 50% Off The development of science, according to respected scholars Peter J. Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus, expands our knowledge and control of the world in ways that affect-but are also affected by-society and culture. In Making Modern Science, a text designed for introductory college courses in the history of ... More »

The 100 Best Science Books of All Time list contains a mixture of classic and popular works, chosen for their accessibility and relevance. Most of the books selected are suitable for a well educated layman with only a few being for a more serious reader. The list covers the obvious subjects: biology, chemistry, and physics, as well as mathematics, the philosophy of science, and the history of science. It also includes several biographies.Each author is only represented by one book on the list. We recommend that you look at author pages to find more great works. It's especially worth looking for more works by Richard Feynman, Ernst Mayr, Bertrand Russell, Peter Atkins, Rachel Carson, and George Gamow.