CultureLab’s pick of science books that would make great gifts
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1 by Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, Columbia University Press, £19.95/$29.95
Many of us have a soft spot for Big Foot or Nessie. These “cryptid”, or hidden, creatures are not recognised as existing by science, so why do they continue to hold such a fascination? Find out in this walk on the wild side.
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2 by Tom Jackson, Worth Press/Shelter Harbor Press, £20/$24.95
This good-looking, accessible book is part of a series called Ponderables. It tackles 100 of the breakthroughs that have changed physics, while also reaching for the mysteries still to come in a post-Higgs world.
3 by David Baker, Haynes, £21.99
When Apollo 13 launched on 11 April 1970, who knew that hidden within millions of components were flawed parts that would bring the mission close to catastrophe? Gripping, detailed stuff for the true space fanatic, penned by someone who was actually at Mission Control during the flight.
4 by Simon Singh, Bloomsbury, £18.99
What have Homer and Bart got to do with Euler’s equation, the googolplex or the topology of doughnuts? The writers of The Simpsons have slipped a multitude of mathematical references into the show. Simon Singh has fun weaving great mathematics stories around our favourite TV characters
5 by Eric Chaline, Apple Press, £12.99
From flint and obsidian through salt and clay to tungsten and plutonium, Eric Chaline makes a good case for the minerals he thinks have altered history. A great primer for everyone who likes their science embedded in culture.
6 by Whitney Cranshaw and Richard Redak, Princeton University Press, £37.95
When two entomologists who clearly love their subject get stuck in, the result is pure joy. With more than 830 colour photos, this book is a great desk guide to help you tell a crane fly from a giant mosquito.
7 by Chris North and Paul Abel, BBC Books, £12.99
Keen to find out what makes a gassy giant or a wandering star? You can’t go wrong with this starter book from the BBC’s Sky at Night team. There’s even an introduction by Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May.
8 by Gilbert White, edited by Anne Secord, Oxford University Press, £14.99/$24.95
A natural history must-read in a new edition. The letters of 18th-century parson Gilbert White shine anew as he captures 20 years of changing seasons in rural Hampshire. Scholar Anne Secord has added illustrations by Thomas Pennant, one of White’s main correspondents.
9 by Michael Bright, The Robson Press, £12.99/$16.99
This is a book about the ocean’s marvels, mythical and real – among them the metre-long epaulette shark that does indeed walk on its paddle-shaped fins. At the other end of the scale is the whale shark that can grow to more than 12 metres and whose presence, fishers say, brings good luck.
10 by Clive Catterall, Chicago Review Press, $14.95
Lighting and launching mini hot air balloons may be de rigueur at all the best parties, but making them from scratch is more technical than it looks, and involves the ideal gas law. Complex fun for the family.
11 by Timothy Paul Smith, Oxford University Press, £25/$39.95
There are more than 45 orders of magnitude between the largest and smallest things measured. And 40-plus orders of magnitude between the fastest and slowest events ever recorded. Humans, happily, live somewhere in the middle of those ranges – from where they can write and read beguiling books about the subject.
12 by Caspar Henderson, Granta, £10.99
The real is often more wondrous than the imaginary. So it proves with – ranging from the amazing jumping spider to Venus’s Girdle, an ancient comb jelly – out now in paperback.
PLUS: by Christopher Lloyd and Andy Forshaw, What on Earth Publishing, £17.50
Too big for our book pile, this wallchart book is a great way for your kids (or you) to learn. It covers everything from Greek astronomer Aristarchus to the invention of the spinning wheel and the discovery of the Higgs boson.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Well read”
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