The Best of Popular Science?

Stront asks: "No doubt like many on Slashdot, I am an avid reader of popular science, and am constantly on the search for good examples of the genre. Now, The Elegant Universe is probably the best on Superstrings; the excellent Genome received a very favourable review on Slashdot; and probably the most anticipated book on Quantum physics is the soon to be released The New Quantum Universe, the follow up to the highly rated The Quantum Universe. Now of the thousands of Popular Science books available, what does Slashdot recommend for the other innumerable sciences such as of relativity, molecular biology, consciousness, astronomy etc?"

Comments

Here's a Few

[Inexile2002]

Godel Escher Bach - Not really science. It's about patterns, number theory and such. I get the sense that Niel Stephensen read it before he wrote Cryptonomicon excellent read

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - Excellent book on Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Outstanding really.

The Ambidextrous Universe - Really interesting read on symetry and asymetry in nature. Looks at symetry in various biology, physics of the small, physics of the large, physics of the every day. Really good coffee shop science book. (Older title, hard to find.)

Origin of the Species - Worth reading just to see what all the fuss is about.

Also, check out 2thing.org. Basically, it's fairly good site devoted to exactly this topic - good books on a variety of subjects - and most of their recommends are decent. They even have a popular science section.