Ackerman, Dianne, A Natural History of the Senses. Vintage, 1991.

A lush, lyrical, scholarly, intimate, exuberant exploration of our five sensory portals to reality by the gifted poet and nature writer Ackerman. Through science, Ackerman helps us rediscover the mystery of our selves.

Angier, Natalie, Woman: An Intimate Geography. Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Female physiology is the ideal topic for this smart, tough, funny, sexy (I hope it’s not sexist to say) writer, who puts more effort into a single sentence than many of us put into whole articles. (more…)

Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time. Basic Books, 1988.

Often derided as the book that everybody buys and nobody reads, Brief History remains a clever, concise reflection on whether physics can achieve a theory that explains, well, everything. Here, Hawking says it can, but since then he’s wisely changed his mind.

Hofstadter, Douglas, Godel, Escher, Bach. Basic Books, 1979.

This wildly inventive exploration of recursion, self-referentiality, human and machine minds and all manner of other metatopics by Martin Gardner’s successor as a columnist for Scientific American (Hofstadter’s “Metamagical Themas” was an anagram of Gardner’s “Mathematical Games”) still exudes an aura of geek chic. (more…)

Rhodes, Richard, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon & Shuster, 1986.

Rhodes’s book remains the definitive history of science’s most momentous, terrible application. The still-haunting question: Did the U.S. need to demonstrate the bomb’s power by destroying not just one but two Japanese cities?

Sacks, Oliver, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Harper Perennial, 1987.

In his first book, the neurologist transforms medical case studies of brain-damaged patients into gripping forays into the mysteries of mind, knowledge and reality. Question: Does Sacks confirm or contradict Noam Chomsky’s dictum that we will always learn more about ourselves from literature than from science? (more…)

We at the Center for Science Writings began compiling “The Stevens Greatest Science Books” in late 2005. Written primarily by scientists but also by philosophers, historians, journalists and other worthies, these books stand out for their subject matter, rhetorical style and impact on science and the rest of culture. Although our original goal was 100 books, we’re stopping at the “Stevens Seventy,” which has a mnemonic ring to it. Also, we worried that a larger list might seem boastful, like a list of “My 100 Closest Friends.”

Our list includes books published since 1900 (allowing us to include Interpretation of Dreams and Varieties of Religious Experiences but regrettably eliminating the all-time greatest science book, On the Origin of Species). We allow only one book per author, forcing some difficult choices. We exclude books by Stevens employees. Since we want people to read the books, they must be available from Amazon or other retailers, even if they are not currently in print (although most are).

The list favors books I’ve read, usually as research for my own writing, and hence books published in the last few decades. The list is personal, idiosyncratic, arbitrary—in short, debatable, and that’s the point. Like everything we do at the Center for Science Writings, the “Stevens Seventy” is intended to start a conversation. What makes a particular science book “great”? Facts, ideas, arguments? Or rhetoric? That is, substance or style? How important are qualities such as authority, clarity, thoroughness, originality? If ongoing research undermines a book’s credibility, is it no longer “great”?

We hope you grapple with these questions, affirm or fault our choices, nominate your own books. Change our minds and we’ll change the list.

-John Horgan

As you might have noticed, we just redesigned our site. As part of this re-launch, we’ve published “The Stevens Seventy Greatest Science Books.” Written primarily by scientists but also by philosophers, historians, journalists and other worthies, these books stand out for their subject matter, rhetorical style and impact on science and the rest of culture. Although our original goal when we conceived this project two years ago was 100 books, we think “Stevens Seventy” has a mnemonic ring to it. Also, we worried that a larger list might seem boastful, like a list of “My 100 Closest Friends.”

Our list includes books published since 1900 (allowing us to include Interpretation of Dreams and Varieties of Religious Experiences but regrettably eliminating the all-time greatest science book, On the Origin of Species). We allow only one book per author, forcing some difficult choices, and exclude books by Stevens employees. Since we want people to read the books, they must be available from Amazon or other retailers, even if they are not currently in print (although most are).

The list favors books I’ve read, usually as research for my own writing, and hence books published in the last few decades. The list is personal, idiosyncratic, arbitrary—in short, debatable, and that’s the point. Like everything we do at the Center for Science Writings, the “Stevens Seventy” is intended to start a conversation. What makes a particular science book “great”? Facts, ideas, arguments? Or rhetoric? That is, substance or style? How important are qualities such as authority, clarity, thoroughness, originality? If ongoing research undermines a book’s credibility, is it no longer “great”?

We hope you grapple with these questions, affirm or fault our choices, nominate your own books. Change our minds and we’ll change the list. For now, please comment on the Stevens Seventy as a response to this post.