Science Journalism
Those who report on science have never been better prepared to do so, according to Los Angeles Times science and technology writer Robert Lee Hotz, whose insights open our section on science journalism. But as Hotz also observes, the challenges these reporters confront have never been larger: Newsroom cutbacks mean the reporters “are stretched to cover increasingly complex science stories ….” And their task is made harder by the dearth of impartial sources, forcing them “to look as hard at the scientists as we look at the science itself.” – Melissa Ludtke, Editor
This list of recommended books has been assembled by Boyce Rensberger, director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It represents only a start on background reading and is not meant as an exhaustive compilation.
Classics
Books That Teach
Outstanding Modern Books
Biography, History, Memoir
Science and Society, Analysis or Philosophy of Science
Classics
- The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
- Relativity, Albert Einstein
- The Nature of the Chemical Bond, Linus Pauling
- Microbe Hunters, Paul de Kruif
- Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
- Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod
- The Mountain Gorilla, George B. Schaller
- The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
- What is Life?, Erwin Schrödinger
Books That Teach
- A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
- On Human Nature, Edward O. Wilson
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Richard P. Feynman
- The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
- Annals of the Former World, John McPhee (Includes four of McPhee’s books: Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California.)
- Chaos, James Gleick
- Genome, Matt Ridley
- Five Kingdoms, Lynn Margulis and Karlene V. Schwartz
- The Whole Shebang, Timothy Ferris
- The Insect Societies, Edward O. Wilson
- The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
- In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall
Outstanding Modern Books
- Gun, Germs, and Steel, Jared M. Diamond
- Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas R. Hofstadter
- The Hot Zone, Richard Preston
- The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
- The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner
- The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
- The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky
Biography, History, Memoir
- The Double Helix, James D. Watson
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard P. Feynman
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
- A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
- Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould
- Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson
- The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland Judson
Science and Society, Analysis or Philosophy of Science
- Science, the Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn
- The Art of the Soluble, Peter B. Medawar
- The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
- The Two Cultures, C.P. Snow
- Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski
