I’m not going after the NYT here, as this observation may simply reflect a dearth of science books published in 2023. However, the paper’s list of 100 best books of the year (click below), divided into 50 fiction books and 50 nonfiction books, has only a single book that I’d classify as “a science book”: that is, one that isn’t about the interaction of science with humanity, as in global warming (there’s one of those). Click below to see the list:
And here’s the sole, lonely science book on the list:
I’m sure that there are some new science books out, but perhaps they weren’t very good. Whatever the situation, it’s sad that the public doesn’t get a chance to read some good science. If you know of a good science book that appeared this year, please put it in the comments.
I haven’t read the owl book, but I have read two on the list, both nonfiction. They were both recommended by friends, and were both very good:
This one, the story of a ship voyage, was unexpectedly good—a page turner. It’s about the grimmest voyage you can imagine, and it’s true.
And here are two I want to read, for I remain fascinated and inspired by the civil rights era of the Fifties and Sixties:
On the Times page itself, each title links to the NYT review of the book (I haven’t put those links here). I won’t list any more books save one, for recently we had a lively discussion of recommended books, and that, combined with recommendations from friends, has led to me having a pile of six or seven books to read on my headboard. Right now I’m reading the one below, and will finish it tonight.
Because I love the works of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, it was only natural for me to want to read about the legendary editor who discovered these men and helped them craft their fiction: Maxwell Perkins of Scribners. He was perhaps the most important figure in shaping the twentieth-century novel, though he never wrote a book himself. He was a laconic man of immense talent, who also jump-starterd the careers of Ring Lardner and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (read The Yearling!). Max Perkins: Editor of Genius won the National Book Award.
Click to go to the Amazon link:
I bought ‘Generations’ by ‘Jean Twenge PhD’ [ shades of the risible convention in N American science fiction TV/movies that the science geek is now usually a woman, and is usually addressed in dialogue as ‘Doctor’ ] published 2023. Sociology that should’ve been on the NYT list.
BTW Max Perkins may have been the most influential editor for US literary fiction in the 20th C, but the global picture is murky. Readers may know the traditional gatekeepers of Francophone literature have been a couple of elite publishing houses, eg Gallimard, which incorporated in 1920s Jacques Shiffrin’s Pleiade editions.
Here’s the Kirkus Reviews list, Best Science & Nature Books of 2023. I haven’t read any on this list. I’m most interested in the biography of Katalin Karikó. Notice that there’s another book about owls on this list. The Year of the Strigiformes!
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-lists/best-science-nature-books-2023/
No more book recommendations! Just kidding, I love recommendations, but I keep accumulating more books than I can read; and I just ordered The Wager. I think I have a problem.
Tell me about 🤭🤪 & I have read about 85 this year, some fairly short, spending less time on the interweb.
If I could read 85 a year, I might be able to catch up. Them’s a lot o’ books, short or not. Cheers!
Here are two that came out this year and that I thought were good:
Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken, about ultra processed food and the harm it can do. Quite eye opening. https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind-Food/dp/1324036729/
Escape from Model land by Erica Thomson, about models and how (sometimes not) to interpret them. Very clear and informative. https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Model-Land-Mathematical-Models/dp/1541600983 (Apparently published in December 2022 but I think I only read a review in this year).
Royal Society book prize –
https://royalsociety.org/news/2023/09/book-prize-2023-shortlist/
Oh yes want to read Rovelli’s White Holes & Slimak’s The Naked Neanderthal, Oppenheimer’s Mountains if Fire: Secret Lives of Volcanoes,
https://www.waterstones.com/blog/the-best-books-of-2023-popular-science
I long ago deplored the NYT policy that sidelines science and nature, and also puts reviews of fiction up front ahead of nonfiction. I think this exhibits anti intellectualism and I guess the reviewers, not being up to snuff on science, just sideline it as a
kind of hobby of those elitists who actually know something about nature. The is a kind of snobbishness. It is also vexing to find out how few people read nonfiction. No wonder this country is faltering. The more scientists and researchers learn about our planet, its natural systems and life forms, and the universe, the less the mass media deal with it.
I would really like more people to read my book: “What’s in Your Genome: 90% of your genome is junk.” It may not win any prizes but I’d like to think that I raise some interesting questions about the quality of science writing and scientific misconceptions. Jerry will like the section on the importance of random genetic drift. 🙂
https://utorontopress.com/9781487508593/whats-in-your-genome/
Yes, I have that on my list to read, and I admire your intrepid defense of the mostly-junk genome view, with which I agree!
Ruddy Nora -that ain’t cheap!
Cave of Bones, about Homo naledi, was very good. Evidence seems to indicate that this small-brained hominid disposed of its dead (maybe even buried them), made etchings in stone, and controlled fire.
I’m a big fan of Mattthew Cobb’s books, especially “The Idea of the Brain”, and very much enjoyed his latest, “The Genetic Age”, aka “As Gods”.
I’m not generally such a huge fan of Sean Carroll’s popular stuff, but I really liked “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe (Space, time, and motion)” – it’s one step up from a pop sci book, in that it contains quite a few equations, but not too hard, and really explains outstandingly well what Einstein’s general theory of relativity is about. At a similar level, but to my mind a bit less successful, although still very enjoyable, is Anthony Zee’s “Quantum Field Theory as Simply as Possible”. Sean Carrol has a similar book on QFT out next year which should be good.
Oliver Johnson, a Professor of Maths at Bristol was, IMO one of the most clear-headed and sane commentators on Twitter during the pandemic, and has published a good book called “Numbercrunch: A Mathematician’s Toolkit for Making Sense of Your World” on mathematical reasoning for the masses.
And one which I enjoyed was “More than Curious”, an autobiography by William Press. Some readers may be familiar with him as the co-author of “Numerical Recipes”. He is a physicist who has interacted with a huge variety of the major figures in the subject, as well as two US Presidents and other luminaries, and it’s a fascinating read. It is even available free online:
http://morethancurious.com/
Thanks for all these recommendations! Why didn’t the NYT pick up some of these books?
The NYT did review Prof Cobb’s latest under its US title of “As Gods”, although I felt the review missed the nuances of the Professor’s arguments:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/books/review/as-gods-matthew-cobb.html
The Carroll & Zee books are probably a bit too mathematical and niche for the NYT. “Numbercrunch” may not yet have appeared in a US edition. I believe that Kit Yates’ book “The Maths of Life and Death” did not get a review in the US until it was published there as “The Math of Life and Death”. And the William Press book may be too niche for the general public, even though he talks about people at least some of whom a lot of people have heard of: “Richard Feynman, S. Chandrasekhar, Edward Teller, Ya. B. Zel’dovich, John Wheeler, James Watson, Julian Schwinger, Fred Hoyle, Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Ed Witten, and many others”
I’m currently reading Bill Press’s book (which is officially available for free, with Bill’s blessing). Whatever one thinks of Bill Press, it is one of the most entertaining things I’ve read in a long time. There is a longer version in escrow until all involved are dead. Sometimes I thought that I must have got the long version by mistake, as the book is very candid.
Side note: I’ve been commenting here for years. FINALLY my info is saved until next time (although the box was always ticked).
Matthew Cobb’s “Idea of the Brain” was published in 2020. I recommend it to friends as a superb description of the way science works. Dr. Cobb traces the history of the science concerning the brain and its relationship to the mind. About a quarter of the way into the book he reaches the 1800s and the Theory of Evolution. Strangely William Wallace believed the human brain and thought could not have evolved from natural selection. He thought the human mind required some sort of supernatural intervention.
Time to Think by Hannah Barnes. It’s about science as applied to humans, ie medicine, and is an absolutely excellent case study into how that process go wrong in a very harmful way.
Determined by Robert Sapolsky.
I quite enjoyed Laurence Kraus’ new book, “The Known Unknowns”. It’s very much popular physics, but I thought it explained a few of the concepts very well and should be on such a list as the NYT’s that is aimed at a general readership. The chapters on life and consciousness were not quite as good as the harder physics, which I suppose is his bread and butter.
”Smart Until It’s Dumb” by Emmanuel Maggiori was interesting and explores the relatively simple systems on which modern AI is based. His thesis is that AI will soon run up against some insurmountable roadblocks, which is something of a dissenting view at the moment.
On a side note, I often worry about lists by most mainstream media these days. Particularly on the left. DEI goals often carry as much or more weight than simply it being a good book. I read an otherwise very good list of 50 best classic novellas, but whose compiler explicitly states that she was sad she had to pick books by dead white men. Made me very suspicious of her list of 50 best contemporary classics.
Looks like some good recommendations in the comments here and by Jerry.
I was interested in Cat Bohanon’s “Eve: how the female body drove 200 million years of evolution” after I heard part of her interview with Andrew Sullivan. I listened to the rest of the interview and my bs flags went up as she sounds more like an ideologue pushing an agenda than a scientist.
Noah Whiteman’s “Most Delicious Poison” is pretty good! Has appeared on some end of year lists …
Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins―From Spices to Vices https://a.co/d/1Evm9vN
“Material World” by Ed Conway was entertaining and informative.
This is an old post, and I just figured out how to leave a comment (not on Word Press). A terrific science book I read at the end of last year was “On the Origin of Time”. by Thomas Hertog, an astrophysicist/cosmologist who worked with Stephen Hawking. It’s completely fascinating, and very readable, even by a person like me, who had to give up on physics and astronomy in college when the more advanced math got beyond me (I wound up a pediatrician).