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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorWonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Stephen Jay Gould · 350 pages
Life: An Unauthorised Biography: A Natural History of the First Four Thousand Million Years of Life on Earth
Richard Fortey · 416 pages
Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment befo
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson · 560 pages
A Short History of Nearly Everything by American author Bill Bryson is a popular science book that explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language that appeals more so to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject. It was one of the bestselling popular science books of 2005 in the United Kingdom, selling over 300,000 copies. A Short History deviates from
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
Simon Winchester · 432 pages
The Ascent of Man
Jacob Bronowski · 448 pages
Traces the development of science and the discoveries that have made man unique among animal species.
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
Edward J. Larson · 368 pages
"In this work, science historian Edward J. Larson takes us on a guided tour of Darwin's "dangerous idea," from its theoretical antecedents in the early nineteenth century to the brilliant breakthroughs of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, to Watson and Crick's stunning discovery of the DNA double helix, and to today's triumphant neo-Darwinian synthesis and rising sociobiology." "Along the way, Lar
The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth
Alan Cutler · 228 pages
The tale of a seventeenth-century scientist-turned-priest who forever changed our understanding of the Earth and created a new field of science. It was an ancient puzzle: How did the fossils of seashells find their way far inland, sometimes high up into the mountains? Fossils only made sense in a world old enough to form them, and in the seventeenth century, few people could imagine such a thing--
A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth
Samantha Weinberg · 240 pages
"Just before Christmas 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, the young curator of a small South African museum, spotted a strange-looking fish on a trawler's deck. It was five feet long, with steel-blue scales, luminescent eyes, and remarkable limb-like fins - unlike those of any fish she had ever seen. Determined to preserve her unusual find, she searched for days for a way to save it, but ended up w
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond · 592 pages
"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G
T. Rex and the Crater of Doom
Walter Alvarez · 185 pages
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mt. Everest slammed into the Earth, causing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized impactor and debris from the impact site were blasted out through the atmosphere, falling back to Earth all around the globe. Terrible environmental disasters ensued, including a giant tsunami, continent-s
The Day the Universe Changed: How Galileo's Telescope Changed the Truth
James Burke · 353 pages
Cosmos
Carl Sagan · 365 pages
This book is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilization grew up together. It is the story of our long journey of discovery and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science, including Democritus, Hypatia, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Champollion, Lowell and Humason. The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the researc
The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire and Phosphorus
John Emsley · 327 pages
It was discovered by alchemists, prescribed by apothecaries, exploited by the industrialists of the nineteenth century, and abused by the combatants of the twentieth century. It can be found in many things that have improved our everyday life, from toothpaste to detergents to food additives. For more than 300 years, phosphorus--one of nature's deadliest creations--has continued to fascinate us wit
A Little History of Science
William F. Bynum · 272 pages
Science is wonderful. It tells us about the infinite reaches of space, the tiniest living organism, the human body and the history of our planet. Science has always been about making sense of the world and harnessing its power. From ancient Greek philosophers through Einstein and Watson and Crick to the computer-assisted scientists of today, men and women have wondered, examined, experimented, cal
Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science
David Lindley · 272 pages
The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.--Werner HeisenbergThat God would choose to play dice with the world is something I cannot believe.--Albert EinsteinNothing exists until it is measured.--Neils BohrThe remarkable story of a startling scientific idea that ignited a battle among the greatest minds of the twentieth
Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution
Rebecca Stott · 396 pages
Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin received a letter that deeply unsettled him. He had expected criticism. Letters were arriving every day like swarms, some expressing praise, most outrage and accusations of heresy. But the letter from the Reverend Powell was different.
Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History
Penny Le Couteur, Jay Burreson · 384 pages
Napoleon's Buttons is the fascinating account of seventeen groups of molecules that have greatly influenced the course of history. These molecules provided the impetus for early exploration, and made possible the voyages of discovery that ensued. The molecules resulted in grand feats of engineering and spurred advances in medicine and law; they determined what we now eat, drink, and wear. A change
The Invention of Air
Steven Johnson · 254 pages
Bestselling author Steven Johnson recounts—in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion—the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America’s Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a book of world-changing ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change th
Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
Simon Singh · 336 pages
xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy
The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
Thomas Hager · 340 pages
The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. It was sulfa, the first synthetic antibiotic. Science writer Hager chronicles the history of the drug that shaped modern medicine. Sulfa saved millions of lives--among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.--but even more, it
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
Bill Wasik, Monica Murphy · 288 pages
Charts the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies, documenting how before its vaccine the disease caused fatal brain infections and sparked the creations of monsters, including werewolves, vampires and zombies.
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery
Sam Kean · 432 pages