Science books can have a long, long shelf life. For some writers, their rivals are, ironically enough, themselves. Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene came out in 1976, for example, and can still give his new books a run for their money. So what gives a book staying power? What recent titles will become modern classics?
Excellence and authority are key. For excellence, there’s Ernst Mayr, a grand master of biology, tackling one of the biggest questions in biology in What Evolution Is (Basic Books). Or read Ian Tattersall’s insights into the human condition in The Monkey in the Mirror (Harcourt…
