Books Every Science Writer Should Read

Boyce Rensberger, Director of the Knight Fellowships, wrote up a list of books every science writer should read. Here it is. The list is more offhand than authoritative or exhaustive. Boyce admits he hasn't read every book on the list himself.

Consider the list a work in progress. We welcome your suggestions for additional books and your arguments for removing a particular book.

Classics

• Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
• Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Albert Einstein
• Nature of the Chemical Bond, Linus Pauling
• Microbe Hunters, Paul de Kruif
• Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
• Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod
• The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior, George B. Schaller
• The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
• What is Life?, Erwin Schrödinger

Books that Teach

• Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
• On Human Nature, Edward O. Wilson
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
• Annals of the Former World, John A. McPhee (Includes McPhee's four books: Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California)
• Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
• Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley
  
• Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth, Lynn Margulis and Karlene V. Schwartz
• The Whole Shebang, Timothy Ferris
  
• The Insect Societies, Edward O. Wilson
  
• The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
  
• In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall

Outstanding Modern Books

• Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
• The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter
• The Hot Zone, Richard Preston
  
• The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
  
• The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner
  
• The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
  
• The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky

Biography, History, Memoir

• The Double Helix, James D. Watson
  
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman
  
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
  
• A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
  
• Ever Since Darwin:Reflections in Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould
  
• Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson
  
• The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology, Horace Freeland Judson

Science and Society, Analysis or Philosophy of Science

• Science: The Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
  
• The Art of the Soluble, Peter B. Medawar
  
• The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
  
• The Two Cultures, C.P. Snow
  
• Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski