{short description of image}Books for Biologists

 

A selection of popular science books that you might enjoy.
Want to write a review of one of these for extra class credit?
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Shelf 1: Non-fiction


Author and Title Reviews and Reader's comments taken from
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{short description of image} Charles Darwin:
Voyage of
the Beagle		 A student at Evergreen: Had to read it for class, thought it would be dull, But No. As I said, I had to read this for my Natural history class. My first thought were "Ohh Gawd, I bet this book will be about a page a hour. But it was really good. Not only do you learn about what he did, but how he thinks, and about the people and culture he visited at the time. So if you like natural history, this is a must read!! 
{short description of image} Charles Darwin:
The Origin
of Species		 Comments by a student: Without a doubt The Origin of Species is one of the most seminal, controversial, and misunderstood books ever written. Charles Darwin is one of the giants of intellectual history, not because every single word he wrote was gospel truth, but because his main ideas have withstood the test of time and evidence. Natural Selection is a theory of incredible descriptive power. Few who criticize the theory have bothered reading this book or even attempted to understand what the theory means, which is a shame. This is a great book by a great and courageous man. 
See Mr. Darwin's Shooter on shelf 5
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Henry Gee:
In Search of Deep Time		 Scientists used to categorize life forms according to how similar they looked. If an animal had a wing, it was a bird; if it had a fin, it was a fish. But then, is a penguin a bird? Is a whale a mammal? While the answer to these questions is yes, it doesn't mean much scientifically. The real answers to how life evolved and how life forms are related come from cladistic analysis, from measuring the tremendous variety of genetic and anatomic variations between species and juggling them with computer technology. Because of cladistics, scientists have come to believe that hippos are more closely related to whales than pigs. We have learned that the old way of understanding nature, in which we squashed the teeming variety of life on earth into our own haphazard and arbitrary categories, must be replaced by understanding precisely how similar, and how different, each species measurably is. Read an excerpt from the book. 
{short description of image} Daniel Dennett:
Darwin's 
Dangerous Idea		 One of the best descriptions of the nature and implications of Darwinian evolution ever written, it is firmly based in biological information and appropriately extrapolated to possible applications to engineering and cultural evolution. Read an excerpt from the book.
{short description of image} Jonathan Weiner:
The Beak of 
the Finch		 A reader from Boston: This is a stunning and compelling book. I read it straight through over a period of 2-3 days; it isn't often that I can't put down a science based book... Watching the evolutionary process in fast forward was fascinating and the chapters about diseases and insects were both horrifying and gripping. The literary quality of the book bolsters its solid (and to me revolutionary in impact) scientific merits. 
{short description of image} Ernst Mayr:
This is
Biology 		...biology has always been something of a poor relation to the other physical sciences--subjects such as physics or chemistry that have strict rules of cause and effect and a certain predictability. Biology, on the other hand, is based on a muddle of combined causes, pure chance, and evidence drawn from unrelated areas, yet it is the one science that addresses those aspects of nature that can't be reduced to mere laws of chemistry or physics. In his book This Is Biology, Ernst Mayr sets out to show us how and why. 
{short description of image} Murray Gell-Mann:
The Quark and 
the Jaguar		 The Nobel Prize-winner's story of finding the connections between the basic laws of physics and the diversity of the natural world links such disparate subjects as chimpanzee behavior, avalanche mechanics, superstring theory, and Gilbert and Sullivan.
{short description of image} Stuart Kaufmann:
At Home in 
the Universe		 The best treatment I have yet encountered about how order emerges naturally -- and possibly even necessarily -- out of chaos. Profoundly important, and considerably more informed than better-known pop-science treatments of chaos theory. Very highly recommended. 
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Werner R.
Loewenstein:
The Touchstone of Life 		 A world-renowned biophysicist answers the ancient riddles of life by applying information theory to recent discoveries in molecular biology. The book offers a breathtaking view of that hidden world where molecular information turns the wheels of life. Read an excerpt from the book. 
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