I’ve always been fascinated by the quest to understand how nature works and to find patterns amid complexity. This drew me towards physics, which seemed unparalleled in its ability to uncover general rules. In contrast, biology seemed merely descriptive, and despite a fondness for wildlife, I stayed away from the subject in school. It turns out, however, that physics and biology are perfect companions; a whole field, biophysics, explores how physical principles are central to the workings of living things. I became a biophysicist, researching topics like the organization of gut microbes and teaching and writing about biophysics more broadly, at scales from DNA to ecosystems.
Once upon a time, we were unaware of DNA. We could tell that taller parents have taller kids, we could select tomato plants for sweeter fruit, and we could even construct plausible relationships between long-extinct animals and their descendants. Still, the nature of the stuff from which these links are made and how it works or fails to work remained a mystery.
Solving this mystery is one of humanity’s most remarkable achievements, and Mukherjee tells the tale with style and humor, weaving in recollections of his family’s encounters with mental illness. Despite my familiarity with the end result, the modern picture of genes, I found much of the history surprising and surprisingly colorful, full of dead ends and creative leaps. The last third of the book, on complex traits like intelligence and illnesses like schizophrenia, isn’t quite as good as the rest, but that takes us to our second book of the list.
Selected as a Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Economist, Independent, Observer and Mail on Sunday
THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
`Dramatic and precise... [A] thrilling and comprehensive account of what seems certain to be the most radical, controversial and, to borrow from the subtitle, intimate science of our time... He is a natural storyteller... A page-turner... Read this book and steel yourself for what comes next' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
The Gene is the story of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in our…
What does DNA have to do with education, social justice, income inequality, and other weighty topics? I’ve never read anything that makes such a compelling case that the modern revolution in genetics should impact how we structure society as much as it impacts how we treat disease. First, Harden presents wonderful, accessible descriptions of the current state of genetics, including how we know what we know. Genes have a huge impact on life outcomes.
Harden firmly believes that it would be a mistake to sweep genetic research under the rug for misguided but well-meaning reasons; this seems obvious, but it is radical in current social science. Harden explains that taking genetics seriously has surprising consequences for what we consider a fair society; we shouldn’t mistake being genetically lucky for being good.
The book is controversial, and I certainly found myself disagreeing with some of Harden’s conclusions while at the same time being awed by her brilliant and thought-provoking book.
A provocative and timely case for how the science of genetics can help create a more just and equal society
In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health-and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society.
In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows…
Malcolm Before X is about finding a way to continue moving forward after everything has been taken from you. While in prison, Malcolm Little discovered the power of reading and found a way to transform his character and become a better man. This half-biography focuses on that transformation, especially his…
I shouldn't admit this, but I've never found biochemistry at all interesting. I'm a biophysicist and routinely amazed by the versatility of physics and enchanted by the variety of biology. Lists of amino acids or the chemical reactions of the various types of sugars bore me to tears, though; I appreciate their importance, but I couldn't imagine studying them.
Therefore, reading this book was a revelation: Lane makes biochemistry seem sensible, deep, and fundamental, with rules and consequences central to life's origin. As an added bonus, Lane connects all this to vexing current problems, like the nature of cancer.
What brings the Earth to life, and our own lives to an end?
For decades, biology has been dominated by the study of genetic information. Information is important, but it is only part of what makes us alive. Our inheritance also includes our living metabolic network, a flame passed from generation to generation, right back to the origin of life. In Transformer, biochemist Nick Lane reveals a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight -how the same simple chemistry gives rise to life and causes our demise.
Lane is among the vanguard of researchers asking why the Krebs cycle,…
I started out as a fairly standard physicist, working with magnets, nanocrystals, and other inert “stuff.” I ended up a biophysicist, studying living things through a physical lens. A bit like Dorothy in Oz, I found myself in a world with amazing vibrancy and variety but still with many echoes of familiar past experiences.
There wasn’t a single tornado that took me to the Oz of biophysics but several, one of which was this book. Vogel describes the challenges of living in the physical world and nature’s ingenious schemes for meeting these challenges. We learn how prairie dogs keep from suffocating in their burrows, the speed limit of ducks, and how trees struggle with air bubbles.
Vogel’s writing is warm and folksy, and though this book is the only book on this list with many equations, the style makes it a delight even for the reader who might like to skip it.
This entertaining and informative book describes how living things bump up against non-biological reality. "My immodest aim," says the author, "is to change how you view your immediate surroundings." He asks us to wonder about the design of plants and animals around us: why a fish swims more rapidly than a duck can paddle, why healthy trees more commonly uproot than break, how a shark manages with such a flimsy skeleton, or how a mouse can easily survive a fall onto any surface from any height. The book will not only fascinate the general reader but will also serve as…
Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France takes readers into the moral labyrinth of the Occupation years, 1940-45, to examine how the medical community dealt with the evil authority imposed on them. Anti-Jewish laws prevented many doctors from practicing, inspiring many to form secret medical…
This isn’t a book about biology, but it makes the list anyway. Genes, chemistry, and mechanics stretch our conception of life. Still, there’s more needed to make sense of it all: the emerging understanding that dynamic interactions, feedback loops, and a bit of randomness make life alive. We need more books that lay this out; this was one of my motivations for writing my book.
Philip Ball’s very recent How Life Works seems masterful, and I’m sure it would make this list if I were writing a month or two later, after I’ve finished reading it. But since I can’t list either my book or his, I’ll list Gleick’s book, one of the best popular science books ever. It dives into the science of order and chaos, from the turbulence of Jupiter’s red spot to the unpredictability of weather, with a bit of biological pattern formation in the mix.
Gleick beautifully combines descriptions of science with fascinating insights into the history of the chaos “revolution,” whose impact is still being felt in areas including biology.
Uncover one of the most exciting frontiers of modern physics in this fascinating, insightful and accessible overview of Chaos theory.
'An exceedingly readable introduction to a new intellectual world' Observer
From the turbulence of the weather to the complicated rythmns of the human heart, 'chaos' is at the centre of our day to day lives. Cutting across several scientific disciplines, James Gleick explores and elucidates the science of the unpredicatable with an immensely readable narrative style and flair.
'An awe-inspiring book. Reading Chaos gave me the sensation that someone had just found the light-switch' Douglas Adams
The variety of life is dazzling. Living things can soar through the skies, extract energy from sunlight, and reproduce using a clever molecular code. Are there broad principles underlying this variety? Yes. In recent years, we have seen remarkable advances in the field of biophysics, which explores the intersection between physical concepts and biological phenomena, giving us deep insights into how life works.
Despite its beauty and importance, biophysics is largely absent from the pop-science landscape, spurring me to write my book. We explore building blocks like proteins, learning along the way reasons to avoid cannibalism, multicellular communities like developing embryos, learning how random motions reliably set the locations of your fingers, and new technologies for reshaping the genetic code of organisms, humans included.
What happens when a novelist with a “razor-sharp wit” (Newsday), a “singular sensibility” (Huff Post), and a lifetime of fear about getting sick finds a lump where no lump should be? Months of medical mishaps, coded language, and Doctors who don't get it.
With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling…
The Dark Backward is the story of the strangest case ever tried in a court of law. The defendant, who does not speak English or any other language anyone can identify, had been found on an island no one knew existed and charged with murder, rape, and incest.
