Discover Magazine: The 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time
The list is worth a look, especially since they’ve reproduced the covers/frontispieces from each book. The graphics emphasize at a glance how venerable most of the winning books are – we’re talking Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, Hooke, Vesalius. I wonder whether the average person ought to struggle through these older texts, instead of recent, updated popularizations of the fields; I personally found The Elegant Universe (a runner-up) immensely more enjoyable than A Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems. But as far as biology is concerned, no one says what Darwin thought about evolution better than Darwin himself.
Also very amusing are the quotes from eminent scientists that follow each blurb:
“You don’t have to be a Newton junkie like me to really find it gripping. I mean how amazing is it that this guy was able to figure out that the same force that lets a bird poop on your head governs the motions of planets in the heavens? That is towering genius, no?” —psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman, Cornell University