{"id":5385,"date":"2017-01-27T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/?p=5385"},"modified":"2017-01-27T14:08:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T14:08:55","slug":"the-power-of-science-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/2017\/01\/27\/the-power-of-science-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking the propulsive power of science books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"station-839208_960_720\"<\/a>What makes a science tome so audacious, original and right that it kickstarts a life’s journey, propelling someone to the bench or field? Science writer Ann Finkbeiner (of The Last Word on Nothing<\/a>) has written <\/a>about that for A View from the Bridge. And when Academic Book Week<\/a> fired up on 23 January, I started musing anew about encounters with remarkable books.<\/p>\n

Academic Book Week celebrates “the diversity, innovation and influence of academic books” as forces shaping modern Britain. The popular vote went to economist John Maynard Keynes<\/a>‘s 1936 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money<\/em>. But despite the inclusion of works by Stephen Hawking<\/a>, Richard Dawkins<\/a> and James Watson<\/a> in the ABW top 20, I saw a relative dearth of science in there. (No mention, for instance, of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species<\/em><\/a> or D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form<\/a><\/em>.) Books that reveal the complexities of a culture to itself are essential. Books that unpick the complexities of nature seem as key.<\/p>\n

So we asked readers to vote for their top science read – broadening the discussion by including any in the English language. Science writer David Quammen, for instance, cites David Hull’s 1988 Science as a Process<\/em> and Horace Judson’s The Eighth Day of Creation<\/em> (1979). Dawkins and Hawking are a noted presence, while Carl Sagan<\/a> looms largest. Here’s a sampling:<\/p>\n

\"1\"\"2\"<\/a>\"3\"<\/a>\"4\"<\/a>\"6\"\"7\"\"8\"\"9\"\"10\"\"11\"\"12\"\"13\"<\/a>\"14\"\"15\"\"16\"\"17\"\"18\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A straw poll among colleagues yielded more rich pickings. <\/em>US news editor Lauren Morello recalls reading The New York Times Guide to the Return of Halley’s Comet<\/em> (1985) cover to cover at age seven, while James Gleick’s 1992 Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman<\/em> proved a beacon in high school. Podcast editor Kerri Smith extols Oliver Sacks<\/a>‘s 1985 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat<\/em>, “which made science feel like storytelling and was so much more pleasurable to read than the classic but quite dense pop science I had read before”. She notes further: “Maybe not a causal relationship, but I did a MSc in neuroscience a couple of years later.”
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Nature<\/em> reporters reported no less galvanising reads. Heidi Ledford recalls encountering Cosmos<\/em> early on – and “how excited I felt whenever I picked it up”. As a teenager, Lizzie Gibney found that Hawking’s A Brief History of Time <\/em>“really made me think science.\u00a0The Time and Space of Uncle Albert<\/em> had a huge influence too.” Ewen Callaway names thrilleresque 1995 The Hot Zone<\/em> – Richard Preston’s non-fiction tome\u00a0on viral haemorrhagic fever – as key. And Amy Maxmen opts for E.O. Wilson’s 1994\u00a0Naturalist<\/em>, which she writes “made me get serious about bug collecting in high school,\u00a0which resulted in a 10-year detour in science”.<\/p>\n

What science classic pried open the door to your life in science? We’d love to know: answers either to the comments on A View from the Bridge, or to @naturenews with the hashtag #AcBookWeek.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For\u00a0<\/strong>Nature<\/strong><\/em>\u2019s full coverage of science in culture, visit www.nature.com\/news\/booksandarts.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What makes a science tome so audacious, original and right that it kickstarts a life\u2019s journey, propelling someone to the bench or field? Science writer Ann Finkbeiner (of The Last Word on Nothing) has written about that for A View from the Bridge. And when Academic Book Week fired up on 23 January, I started musing anew about encounters with remarkable books.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,37,73,314395,602897],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-astronomy","category-genetics","category-publishing","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}