any good laymanish sciencey books??

I liked dawkins stuff before he went off the deep end with his god rants


Jay Gould is a bit too heavy for me





recommend anything inbetween?? Essay collections are good too

 

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What kind of science are you interested in?

 

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You don't like Dawkins' science books because he wrote a book about God? How about Jared Diamond?

 

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You cannot go past my all-time hero Dr. Carl Sagan. :worship:

All his books are absolute gems. He does tend to heavily favour the astronomical sciences as that was his field, but he had an amazing ability to discuss and link together numerous different fields of science. And he frames his discussions in the context of science history and the development of knowledge from ancient times to the modern day. His writing style contains the most amazingly beautiful prose and turn-of-phrase that no one else has ever been able to match (in my opinion).

Of course, I also love him as a great skeptic who challenged the woo-woos and educated the public on the scientific method.

 

it's true that his religious works combine alot of historic and societal arguments with science based arguments - i wouldn't describe the god delusion as a science book but it is a fantastic read esp. for those who are scientifically minded.[which i'm not i hasten to add]

dawkins is a great place to start due to the elegance of his writing - selfish gene was the first popular science book i read and have been hooked ever since.
i hated brief history - any one else agree?

 

Isaac Asimov, in addition to his SciFi, did a ton of nonfiction books about science. Here's a list from his website: http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html