Cafe Scientifique Books

I have been giving thought to starting-up a Cafe Scientifique in my town, and would like to provide a list of the best science reads for begginers in the following categories:

Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry
Cognitive Science
Complex Systems
Computer Science
Earth Sciences
Engineering
Geology
Science, General
Science, History of
Science, Philosophy of
Mathematics
Medicine
Physics
Psychology

Naturally, I have some titles in mind, but I would appreciate suggestions for any of these categories. Suggested titles, along with categories not already in this list are also welcome.

My recommendations.

Biology

Matt Ridley's Genome
Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene
David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo

Cognitive Science

Gary Marcus's The Birth of the Mind
Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works

Complex Systems

Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach

Science, General

Carl Sagan's Cosmos
Any of the Best American Science Writing series

Science, History of

Carl Zimmer's Soul Made Flesh

Medicine

Anything by Atul Gawande is supposed to be good

For true beginners, a few really nice mathematics books are:

Mathematics in Western Culture by Morris Kline (His Mathematics for the Nonmathematician has much of the same material, but is less engaging. Really, I think all his books have much of the same material.)

Mathematics and the Imagination by Kasner and Newman

Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell (An enjoyable read, but notoriously riddled with inaccuracies.)

Eli Maor's books

John Paulos' popular books

A few slightly more challenging / content-rich reads are:

What is Mathematics? by Courant and Robbins

Geometry and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen

Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries: Development and History by Martin Greenberg

Experiments in Topology by Stephen Barr

There's a huge range of popular general science /history /philosophy books.
Bill Bryson's A Short history of nearly everything and the Science of Discworld I trilogy cover most basics

For Astonomy and universe theory Stephen Hawking's Universe in a nutshell is much more understandable than his other works. And you can get versions with pretty pictures.

Chemistry is hard - I haven't come across non-text books. Perhaps an A level book or the General Chemsitry by Peter Atkins which is fairly understandable without too much prior knowledge.

Okay, some of my favorites:

Astronomy - Lonely Planets, Mapping Mars, Seeing in the dark : how backyard stargazers are probing deep space and guarding earth from interplanetary peril, Asteroids
Biology - The Blind Watchmaker, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Bully for Brontosaur,
Chemistry - anything by Joseph A. Schwarz
Earth Sciences, Geology - The Earth in Turmoil, A Crack at the Edge of the World, Frozen Earth, The Discovery of Global Warming
Physics - Boltzmann's Atom, A matter of degrees : what temperature reveals about the past and future of our species, planet, and universe
Psychology

Hot damn, I know I am forgetting some...

I'll add to this as I remember ...

Astronomy First Light, by Richard Preston
Biology The Crucible of Creation by Simon Conway Morris
Chemistry
Cognitive Science
Complex Systems Chaos by James Gleick
Computer Science
Earth Sciences
Engineering
Geology The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester
Science, General
Science, History of
Science, Philosophy of Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett
Mathematics
Medicine Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
Physics
Psychology

All,

Thank you for your suggestions-- there are quite a few suggestions that are new to me.

I'm not sure if you'd file this under Psychology or Cognitive Science, but anything by Oliver Sacks. Noisy mentioned Awakenings, but I'd also add Anthropologist on Mars and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat to the list.

For a neuroscience/memory book, I'd also recommend Searching for Memory: the brain, the mind, and the past by Daniel Schacter. for earth sciences I could potentially recommend Extinction: how life on earth nearly ended 250 million years ago. I just started it, but so far it has lived up to the positive reviews.

#4 I have avoided Bill Bryson's A short history of nearly everything for the rather lame reason that he is a layman straying into a topic outside of his usual territory.

Am I wrong to do this? Is this a good book that I should add to my collection of books on physics and the cosmos?

>9 darrow:

I don't think you're wrong. Read my review. If you've got other things on your 'to be read' list that focus on specific subjects, then I'd think that you'd get far more out of them than the high-level overview that Bryson provides. It's very well written - and it certainly uncovers things that are less than well known - but there's not much meat on the bones.

Thanks Noisy. Your review confirmed my suspicions.

In the area of Complex Systems, you might consider:

Exploring complexity : an introduction by Gregoire Nicolis

The Complexity of cooperation by Robert Axelrod

Hidden order : How adaptation builds complexity by John H. Holland

At home in the universe : The search for the laws of self-organization and complexity by Stuart Kauffman

My favorite in both the Physics and Complexity categories is The Quark and the Jaguar by Murry Gell-Mann

#9 "Is this a good book that I should add to my collection of books on physics and the cosmos"

No. I wouldn't have it as a Physics and Cosmos book, but then I didn't recommend it on those grounds. Its a "science, general" book covering a broad range of topics including the scientific method, and much else - lightly. Its a worthwhile read to get a basic grounding in those areas you don't already know much about. I found it to be well written, in an approachable style, unlike a lot of similar works. I didn't spot any particularly gross errors, so for a layman he did a good job.

For biology, add The Eighth Day of Creation. It's a fascinating and thorough history of the development of molecular biology. It doesn't skimp on necessary technical detail, and explains everything very well.

I'd also throw in Watson's The Double Helix.

John Gribbin - Science: A History 1534-2001 is a good introduction to the development of science and Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World is an excellent introduction to the philosophy of science and the rules of evidence.

The War of the Soups and the Sparks is a book that hits both neuroscience and biology as well as history of science.

My all-time favorites include What is Life by Erwin Schrödinger, On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, and The Character of Physical Law by Richard Feynman

14>

I spotted several gross errors in Bryson's book, myself. (He promulgates the old error that "glass flows" on historic timescales and that this is responsible for centuries-old windows being thicker on the bottom, for instance.) There's also an unfortunate and totally irrelevant injection of homophobia that I found quite jarring. And that's the less-specialist stuff; I'm more ready to forgive errors in modern physics since that's harder to understand. (The fact that a micro-black-hole inadvertantly created in an accelerator would evaporate rather than eat the Earth, for instance, requires some fairly specialized knowledge.)

It may have merit as a set of capsule biographies of scientists, and it's certainly an entertaining read, but I wouldn't recommend it for actually learning *science*.

Our church book group read A Short History of Nearly Everything.

I noticed early on that he said a proton, I think, was infinitely small. That is not true, and I mentioned it. One of the wiser folks in the group asked me whether the whole book was spoiled by that error. I replied that it was not but that I had been put en garde. The rest of the group declined to be bothered by it.

I kept waiting for him to get back to cosmology. He didn't so I thought it was an incomplete book.

Nevertheless, it was written by a literate non-scientist. It was a pleasant read and informative enough. People who will never read Michio Kaku or Lee Smolin, among others, will know more from having read the book than by ignoring it, and it is accessible to them. If you mention a false vacuum to a biologist or psychologist, you will receive a dumbfounded stare in reply (usually). (I have to say that I cannot tell you much about a false vacuum, but I think I can at least describe the hypothetical peril we are in because of it.)

Robert

I also recently enjoyed Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin on how some of our anatomy and physiology developed from fish and other lower vertebrates. A fun read!

Yes, I remember Bryson's flagrant physics errors. (In addition to the ones that have already been mentioned, he also describes intrinsic spin as rotation about an axis and presents entanglement as a violation of relativity.) I'm not ready to forgive his black hole doomsaying, since I expect it's helping to spread this nonsense. He doesn't need to prove micro black holes will immediately evaporate, or even understand why that's the case, but he does need to get his facts straight, especially when predicting the end of the world.

Did this ruin the book for me? In part, at least -- it made it obvious Bryson didn't get his facts (physics facts, at least) checked by an expert, who would have been all over any of these like a ton of bricks. In all the other fields I don't know so well, I had to keep wondering how much I could trust.

Other problems I had were his irrelevant tangents, bizarre factoids, and focus on quirky characters, rather than the material I picked up the book to read about. I'm sure it's all meant to be entertaining, but if you're not in the right frame of mind, it's just tedious. On the other hand, I read A Short History of Nearly Everything just after reading Angels and Demons, so I know it could be much worse. Here's the review I wrote a few years ago.

Here's my two cents.

Medicine/psychiatry:
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky
and
biology/development/psychology:
The Dependent Gene by David Moore

The latter is a great help in correcting lay people's misunderstandings about genetics. Biologists may scoff.
#22 - I threw Angels and Demons accross the room in a fit of disgust...I almost never disrespect a book that way.

* edited to add: BTW Cafe Scientifique is great!

I was going to go back and update my previous list, but it would have lost a number of touchstones that still work. I've recently read Almost Everyones Guide to Science by John Gribbin, and thought it excellent. It's in the pile awaiting review ...

Another great biology one (for evo-devo fans ) is Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll. Its really approachable for beginners (I made my mom read it!)

I also really like On Growth and Form but it is a gigantic book.

Dear Mista Logic-
I am much more intererested in your idea of a Cafe Scientific than the description in their formal website.
I tracked down my local group's site as well, and it seems much more high level professional topics than hanging out and discussing the pros and cons of evo-devo or John Gribbin's journeys. I am a thoroughly amateur but PASSIONATE afficianado of the natural sciences. I read voraciously, and love to discuss topics and nuances with my several kindred spirits. Current: Golden Guide's Zoology from the 1958's Burnett, Fisher and Zim. with illustrations (important to mention in the old versions!) by J.G.Irving. Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature, Larry Ream's Gems and Minerals of Washington, Ernest Williams Jr.'s The Nature Handbook (an extraordinary book on linked thinking) and a relative in that vein of organized perception Schuster and Carpenter's Patterns That Connect.

What about Uncle Tungsten or Napoleon's Buttons for chemistry?

Biology Jane Goodall or Rachel Carson and A Guinea Pig's Guide to Biology

Science, History of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and The Discoverers

Mathematics Innumeracy and The Lady Tasting Tea (actually statistics, but good)

Medicine Biography of a Germ, The Ghost Map, The American Plague

Psychology Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (at least in part)

I would add Anthropology Guns, Germs, and Steel

OK, the first step to starting a cafe in your town should be to move to my town.

Much success to you.

The Café Scientifique is a great idea! Just a few more suggestions:

K. Thorne, Black holes and time warps
R. Feynman, Surely, you're joking Mr Feynman
R. Feynman, What do you care what other people think?
P. Medawar, Advice to a young scientist
L. Smolin, The trouble with physics
R. Rhodes, The making of the atomic bomb
J.-M. Levy-Leblond, La pierre de touche
S. G. Krantz, Mathematical apocrypha

Good luck!

LF

1. Do marketing studies
2. Register or copyright your trade names
3. Attempt a pilot project, perhaps online or through eBay.
4. Attempt to answer "what is the market's unique need or desire I am trying to fulfill?"
5. Start more threads here on the whole idea.

I can recall someone starting a similar idea here, with a storefront in a prominent location. After perhaps two years the store failed. I think the guy was too focused on his expectations and desires, vs. those of his potential customers. I think he lacked the sales and interpersonal skills required.

I hope I don't repeat any, but here are some of my favourites

Biology
Last Chance to See Douglas Adams

Chemistry (or maybe History of Science)
Mauve: How one man invented a colour that changed the world Simon Garfield
Bright Earth: The invention of Colour Philip Ball

Mathematics
The Code Book Simon SIngh

Earth Sciences
Flotsametrics and the floating world EbbesmeyerScigliano
Mapping the Deep Robert Kunzig

Medicine
Maggots, Murder and Men Erzinclioglu
My stroke of insight Jill Bolte-Taylor

Some Malcolm Gladwell might also qualify.

When I think wich books good fo a Sicientfic Cafee is, I hink at the following Books, that I not could find in this lists.

The Sientist
The Omega-Point Theory
The Tpology

But it can be that this Books are to philosopical for your inovation.

To fall under 'Science, Philosophy of', I suggest The Trouble with Science by Robin Dunbar.

Dear johnnylogic,

Did you ever start up you Cafe Scientifique?

What is it like? Food? Drink? Decor? Seating? Events? Etc?

What gets people coming in?

Got pictures?

Chris Rippel