http://jwojdylo.wordpress.com

Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Universe-T-Shirt-Quest-Theory-Everything/dp/1559707070

A Short History of Nearly Everything's also a great read, if on a slightly different angle...noticed that in the comments and wanted to bump it.

Complexity is a great book also gives you a taste of all the subjects around complexity

i recommend also

Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Helix Books)
by John Holland (Author)

You can read my review here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R28NRFC1H6RIW8/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

"Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" by Steven Johnson

You can't read a book on an iPhone anyway, so just forget it.

How about you read them for us and we'll download the MP3s?

JIff
http://www.privacy.es.tc

Readers should also seek out "The Dreaming Universe" by Fred Alan Wolf.

1. The Singularity is Near

2. Wholeness and the Implicate Order

3. The Cosmic Jackpot

4. The Physics of Immortality

"QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" by Richard P. Feynman

"Proust Was a Neuroscientist" by Jonah Lehrer

A great account of how physics in the last half-century has failed to present a revolutionary concept because of the obsession with string theory and its inability to be experimentally tested.

Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan

It's a pretty light read, nothing terribly complicated, but there is something so inspiring in the way that Carl Sagan brings wonder and excitement to the world of science and especially the evolution of human intelligence.

"Programming the Universe" is really good. It is not only because of the discussion of quantum computing that makes it good. Moreover, the book has shown so many thoughts on understanding the fundamental of information and information processing, which could be very critical for the future of Internet computing.

I have written two parts of review of this book before, which could be interesting if any one of you would like to watch a few content before diving into the book.

Part 1, and Part 2>/a> are here.

Besides, "Linked" is indeed another great book that might also be in this list.

Yihong

for teens interested in science and who have read or written any science fiction i think it can be a great eye opener. it is written so as to be easily readable and contains many contrary theories that highlight both its antiquity and the fact that the knowledge we gain from scientific methods is never concrete, but it is never so blunt as to be forcing a point, which is an aspect of scientific writing that i think is often overlooked.

There's one I read over and over and over until I lost it. Black Holes and Warped Spacetime. My introduction to astrophysics and cosmology. I can't remember who author was.

Black Holes and Warped Spacetime by Kip Thorne was on my shortlist, almost made it but I choose Seth Lloyd's book instead because it is more modern. Nevertheless, Kip's book is by far my favorite book on cosmology, I like it better than Hawkins books because of how it builds up.

And here even more gems which are related to this ones according to amazon.com

Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter
Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop
At Home in the Universe, by Stuart Kauffman
The User Illusion, by Tor Norretranders
Programming the Universe, by Seth Lloyd

Enjoy

martin

I also second Gabba's pick - "A Brief History of Nearly Everything"; it's easier to read than GEB and you'll find you won't be able to put it down.

Even if you don't believe in string theory, it's a great book to get you thinking about the world around you!

http://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/0393058581/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222974722&sr=8-1

Fantastic, weaves a fantastic story about complexity, emerging systemn, ecology and environmental health.

I know it is controversial, especially among popular press authors who have not read it, but if you want the unvarnished, politically incorrect truth, I highly recommend this important work.

Here is a link to a torrent of the audio book of it. I liked it so much I went out and bought the hard copy after listening to it.

http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Bill-Bryson-A-Short-History-Of-Nearly-Everything/3778f4d20180c171a3fdbd34e303342d5e97a4b60f3d

Possibly the best and most important "layman's guide to science" ever written. I think you should update your list...

Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.

It is of a similar ilk to Bill Bryson's book but it is superior in every way. It was published earlier, covers topics in more depth and is packed with the interesting parts of the lives of the people who made the discoveries. I cannot recommend it enough.

###
### Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness
###
### by Itzhak Bentov
###

"How odd that the author got his work published and then met his death two years later. Perhaps his "job" on this reality had been accomplished."

the fabric of the cosmos by brian greene
the rise and fall of the third chimpanzee by jared diamond

Thanks for the great list of books.

"A brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to the Black Hole" By Stephen Hawking is a great read as well.

Thanks
Sridhar

Great read, easy to digest makes you think about what it is to be a living breathing human

Both of Brian Greene's books (The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of Reality)for how beautifully and simply they elucidate many of the most mind-bending concepts in physics today.

I realize neither of these guys really need much of a cheering squad in 2008 as compared to some of these other authors, but their books are just that damned good, and do a far finer job of explaining things in an accessible manner without dumbing down the concepts as compared to most other science books.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a highly over-rated book IMO. It's fun, for sure, and definitely imparts some knowledge, but not nearly enough. No scientific principle you come across is explored enough to be meaningful. It's all brief snippets about who invented or discovered what with almost no break-down of the science involved. A big disappointment to me after all the hype.

Freeman Dyson's Origins of Life is one of the most provocative (in the good way) science books ever. It's about the probable bio and molecular chemistry behind the origins of life by a physicist, but it's good enough that it was the first book I had to read in my basic undergrad bio class. As taught by evolution god David Jablonski. If the bio/chem sci is good enough for him, then far be it from humanities/soc-sci oriented me to argue that Dyson hasn't enough experience in the fields he's discussing. Since its publication in '85 he's gotten a generation of biologists to consider whether or not there might have been two separate inceptions of life: one that created life capable of metabolism but not replication, and a later one that created the reverse. The latter form of life may have then used the former as a host.

Plus, it's only 90 pages long. The math is nearly inscrutable to the non math/physicist PhD, but hasn't been criticised in 23 years. The biology can be followed with either basic biological knowledge or a dictionary and/or the Google for reference.

Voyage of the Beagle for how good a read it is, and On the Origin of the Species for how good a read it is and how it still is one of the finest general AND comprehensive introductions to natural selection and the principles by which it operates. As Dawkins keeps hammering home, natural selection has no direction. It doesn't have any aim culminating in the most complex, the brainiest or even the physically strongest organism. As Darwin laid out so brilliantly, its only principle is that at any time and place any traits that confer an added ability to survive and that can be passed on to subsequent generations will be selected for. That's it. Finito.

Yes, there are some parts that aren't as pleasurable to read as others, and yes some of his ideas have been proven wrong since. Remarkably few, however. It's comprehensiveness and clarity still make this book, on of the two most influential in history.

Then there are the writings of Chuck's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, an originator of evolutionary theory (granted, without any knowledge of mechanisms such as natural selection). His book Zoönomia (available here for free-as-in-beer in Google Books) was written at the end of the 18th Century and included such gems as:

Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!

I repeat, END OF THE 18th CENTURY. Them Darwins had some mighty smart genes.

Okay, I haven't read all of Zoönomia, but I have read all of his joyous paean to evolution, a poem following the development of life from it's most basic micro-organisms to the complex societies of his time, The Temple of Nature here by the University of Maryland).

An admittedly well-publicized taste:

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

He's also a great speaker, and you can download the lectures from his "Physics For Future Presidents" course at Cal from their website.

Totally recommend INFORMATION - The New Language of Science, by Hans Christian von Baeyer. Breathtaking, exciting, packed with new ideas!

(Thanks for removing it, anyway ;-)