I’m in a science book club. We’re reading Moral Minds right now, which didn’t thrill me. Anyone have any suggestions for next month.
It’d help if we had more info. What kind of books does your club read?
What’s your background? Are you professional scientists? Science majors? Ordinary joes with an interest in science but not much knowledge?
What books have you read and liked?
Do you only read current books on science, or will you read older ones? Do you want to learn about the sciences themselves or about the philosophical implications of the sciences?
Blindly offering general science books:
The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
In the Beginning by John Gribbin
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
The Ancestor’s Tale, by Richard Dawkins. Well, maybe not the whole thing–it’s pretty huge. But if you read the first two chapters, you can read any other tales you want, in just about whatever sequence you want.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. I haven’t read the most recent edition. I read whatever edition was out in the mid- to late 90’s. It was a good book then, though, and I’ll bet the quality hasn’t suffered with updates that have been made to the new edition.
You might also be interested in books by Carl Zimmer. I’m sure I’ve read his articles in Nature and Science, though I don’t really remember them, but I’ve never read his books. Zimmer’s longer works were recommended to me by a student I had last summer–a woman who was pretty smart and an avid reader. My guess is that, if she likes Zimmer’s writing, it’s probably pretty good.
How about Spencer Wells’ book–the title of which I don’t remember. But he’s the guy in charge of the National Genographic Project. I’m too lazy to link to it right now, but if you feed that phrase into Google, you’ll get more info on it pretty fast. I haven’t read Wells’ book, but one of the people in my lab has, and she said it was fascinating.
Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” ought to do nicely.
Also Carl Sagan. And S.J. Gould.
We’re only just starting. Moral Minds is the first book we read. There is a mix of science people like myself and non-scientists. I’m looking for anything interesting and readable, as both my boyfriend and I felt like we were walking through honey with this one.
What did you dislike about Moral Minds? What different qualities do you want in the books you’ll read from now on? I presume you’re looking for something more than just “interesting and readable,” since it’s easy to come up with a list of interesting and readable books that have nothing to do with science.