A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Randall Munroe · 312 pages

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Mary Roach · 304 pages

A hilarious and witty look into the history of using cadavers for science, grave diggers, and options to consider about your burial plan. A dark and uncomfortable subject made more palatable and downright funny.

Proof: The Science of Booze

Adam Rogers

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan · 429 pages

“Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space

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

Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease

Sharon Moalem · 279 pages

Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity is a 2007 New York Times Bestselling science book by Sharon Moalem, an evolutionary biologist and neurogeneticist, and Jonathan Prince, senior advisor and speechwriter for the Clinton administration. It was originally titled, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease.

The Grand Design

Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow · 200 pages

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent grand design of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe is presented, in language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. The G

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Michio Kaku · 389 pages

Free ebook link: brautech.co.za/info/FuturePhysics.pdf

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

Joshua Foer · 307 pages

The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory “Highly entertaining.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory.” —The Boston Globe An instant bestseller that has now become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlo

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard Feynman · 350 pages

The biography of the physicist and Nobel prize winner Richard P. Feynman - a collection of short stories, chapters told to and written down by Ralph Leighton. Feynman tells of his childhood and youth and goes into his adult life, both personally and professionally.

Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Bloomsbury Sigma)

Kathryn Harkup · 305 pages

Bully for Brontosaurus

Stephen Jay Gould · 540 pages

Essays from the author's column This view of life, published in Natural history.

Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask

New Scientist · 211 pages

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks · 243 pages

In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who

Origins: 14 Bllion Years of Cosmic Evolution

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Donald Goldsmith · 336 pages

"Drawing on the current cross-pollination among geology, biology, astrophysics, and cosmology, Origins explains the soul-stirring leaps in our understanding of the universe while capturing the importance of such extraordinary events as the first image of a galaxy being born and the exploration of Martian frontiers by Spirit Rover. Distilling complex science into clear and lively prose, coauthors N

Old Man's War

John Scalzi · 319 pages

John Scalzi channels Robert Heinlein (including a wry sense of humor) in a novel about a future Earth engaged in an interstellar war against more advanced species. Citizens volunteer for the Colonial Defense Forces after retirement, in exchange for which they have their consciousness transferred into a young body, cloned from their DNA but enhanced. If, against the odds, they survive two years o

I Think You'll Find it's a Bit More Complicated Than That

Ben Goldacre · 485 pages

The very best journalism from one of Britain's most admired and outspoken science writers, author of the bestselling Bad Science and Bad Pharma. In 'Bad Science', Ben Goldacre hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science. In 'Bad Pharma', he put the $600 billion global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. Now the pick of the journalism by one of our wi

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

David Quammen · 592 pages

This work examines the emergence and causes of new diseases all over the world, describing a process called "spillover" where illness originates in wild animals before being passed to humans and discusses the potential for the next huge pandemic. The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pan

My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs

Brian Switek · 264 pages

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Neil Shubin · 240 pages

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

Olivia Judson · 320 pages

Do your genitals explode? Are you 200,000 times smaller than your mate? Do you drug your lover with a potion that keeps her faithful? You may not get up to such tricks, but some creatures do: sex is one of the most powerful forces in nature, and generates an astounding diversity of forms and behaviors. But why? Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation explores the science of sex, considering eve

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

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Ed Yong · 368 pages

Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on earth. Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Richard Dawkins · 272 pages

What are things made of? What is the sun? Why is there night and day, winter and summer? Why do bad things happen? Are we alone? Throughout history people all over the world have invented stories to answer profound questions such as these. Have you heard the tale of how the sun hatched out of an emu's egg? Or what about the great catfish that carries the world on its back? Has anyone ever t