Writing
Style
Chicago
Manual of Style, 15th Edition (University
of Chicago)
Science
Writing Books
The
Chicago Guide to Communicating Science (2002, Scott Montgomery)
The
Best American Science Writing 2004 (Editors: Java Sobel, Jesse
Cohen)
Other graduate journals:
Berkeley Science
Review
Books every
scientific writer should read
(compiled by the MIT
Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program)
Classics
• Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
• Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Albert Einstein
• Nature of the Chemical Bond, Linus Pauling
• Microbe Hunters, Paul de Kruif
• Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
• Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod
• The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior, George B. Schaller
• The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
• What is Life?, Erwin Schrödinger
Books that teach
• Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
• On Human Nature, Edward O. Wilson
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
• Annals of the Former World, John A. McPhee (Includes: Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California.)
• Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
• Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley
• Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth, 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 Diamond
• The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas 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 Feynman
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
• A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold
• Ever Since Darwin, Reflections in Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould
• Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson
• The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology, Horace Freeland Judson
Science and society, analysis or philosophy of science
• Science, the Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas 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