I am quite pleased to put my popular science book reading hobby/obsession to good use and give a 20 minute presentation to fellow science communicators at the Science Talk ’19 conference.

Before I provide the list of books presented, many authored by women, you may be interested in the fact that I maintain a list of women science writers. Check that out at Women Science Book Writers.

I am also trying to be smart about keeping track of books that are coming out in 2019, and have that list at 2019 Science Books.

What follows are the books I shared at #SciTalk19 along with the category I assigned them to. Many of the books could fall into several categories and the categories are ones that I created and are not canon by any stretch.

There are so many books out there, and due to time constraints, surely I forgot some of your favorites! Thanks for understanding that I could not list even all of my favorites.

A good story: Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

How Science is Done

• The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Genetic Mystery, a Lethal Cancer and the Improbable Invention of a Lifesaving Treatment by Jessica Wapner
• P53: The Gene That Cracked the Cancer Code by Sue Armstrong
• How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution by Lee Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut
• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte

Scientists Tell Us Their Story

• A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg
• In Search of Nature by E.O. Wilson and Laura Southworth (Illustrator)
• The Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome by Venki Ramakrishnan
• The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier and Longer by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel

Archival

• The Einstein File: The FBI’s Secret War Against the World’s Most Famous Scientist by Fred Jerome
• The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone

Explainer/Larger Picture

• Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry by Christie Wilcox
• She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer
• Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want it Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future by Rob Dunn
• From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlyn Doughty
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

Clarion Call

• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
• The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell
• The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters by Rose George
• Big Chicken: the Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats by Maryn McKenna
• Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
• Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research that’s Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Relating to the Everyday

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
• How to Teach (Quantum) Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel
• Newton’s Football: The Science behind America’s Game by Ainissa G. Ramirez, PhD and Allen St. John
• The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure by Henry Petroski
• The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies are Changing the Way We Have Kids–and the Kids We Have by Bonnie Rochman
• Endure: Mind, Body and Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson
• Dynamics of Disaster by Susan W. Kieffer

Overview

• The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• What a Wonderful World: One Man’s Attempt to Explain the Big Stuff by Marcus Chown
• The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics (and related) by Clifford Pickover
• The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Tale of the Elements by Sam Kean

Historical Narrative/Coming of Age

• Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin
• The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn by Louisa Gilder
• The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
• Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA by Amy Shira Teitel

Personal Narrative

• The Family Gene: A Mission to Turn My Deadly Inheritance into a Hopeful Future by Joselyn Linder
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (also historical narrative)

Biographical

• Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr
• Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From the Missiles, to Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf
• The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom by Graham Farmelo

Perspectival

• The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum
• Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman

How-to, Q & A

• Mr. Shaha’s Recipes for Wonder: Adventures in Science Round the Kitchen Table by Alom Shaha
• Kitchen Science Lab for Kids by Liz Heineke
• Why is Snot Green: And other extremely important questions (and answers) from the Science Museum by Glenn Murphy

Natural History/Field Guides

• Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
• A Field Guide to Bacteria by Betsy Dexter Dyer
• The Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites by O. Richard Norton

Illustrated Children’s Books

• Ankylosaur Attack by Daniel Loxton
• Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life (Series) by Penny Chisholm and Molly Bang
• Eye on the Wild: Brown Bear (series) by Suzie Eszterhas
• Really Big Numbers by Richard Evan Schwartz

Illustrated/Photos

• The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theo Gray
• Light: The Visible Spectrum and Beyond by Kim Arcand and Megan Watzke
• Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
• What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions Randall Munroe (also Q & A, maybe also Graphic Novel)
• Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas that Shape Our Reality by Ben Orlin

Graphic Novels

• The Dialogues: Conversations About the Nature of the Universe by Clifford Johnson
• Cartoon Guide to The Environment by Adam Gopnik and Alice Ouwater
• Gallery of the Infinite by Richard Evan Schwartz