NYT Science: Best Selling Science Books

Best Selling Science Books
By Unknown Author

A selection of best-selling nonfiction books about the sciences.

1 BEING MORTAL, by Atul Gawande. Metropolitan/Holt. The surgeon and New Yorker writer on how doctors fail patients at the end of life, and how they can do better. (Last month’s ranking: 2)

2 THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot. Crown. The story of an African-American woman whose cancerous cells were extensively cultured without her permission in 1951.

3 WHAT IF? by Randall Munroe. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Humorous answers to science questions, drawn in part on the author’s website,xkcd.com. (1)

4 ALAN TURING: THE ENIGMA , by Andrew Hodges. Princeton University. A biography of the brilliant mathematician who cracked the German Enigma code.

5 THE POWER OF HABIT, by Charles Duhigg. Random House. An examination of the science behind habits, how we form them and break them. (8)

6 QUIET, by Susan Cain. Crown. Introverts — one-third of the population — are undervalued in American society. (6)

7 A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, by Stephen W. Hawking. Bantam. The classic primer for nonscientists on the origins of the universe. (5)

8 THINKING, FAST AND SLOW, by Daniel Kahneman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A Nobel Prize-winning economist discusses how we make choices and when we cannot trust our intuitions. (7)

9 THE SIXTH EXTINCTION, by Elizabeth Kolbert. Picador. The New Yorker writer examines the role of human influence in plant and animal loss.

10 THE INNOVATORS, by Walter Isaacson. Simon & Schuster. Studies of the people who created computers and the Internet, beginning in the 1840s. (3)

11 THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, by Naomi Klein. Simon & Schuster. The author of “The Shock Doctrine” argues that the free market created and is worsening climate change.

12 IN THE KINGDOM OF ICE, by Hampton Sides. Doubleday. An 1879 polar voyage gone terribly wrong. (4)

13 THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2014, edited by Deborah Blum and Tim Folger. Mariner. An anthology of science and nature reporting and essays.

14 THE MARSHMALLOW TEST, by Walter Mischel. Little, Brown. A psychologist explores the complicated neurological processes behind willpower.

15 UNDENIABLE, by Bill Nye. St. Martin’s. The “Science Guy” on how evolution shapes our lives. (10)

16 THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, by Edward O. Wilson. Liveright. The Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist grapples with existential questions.

17 WHAT SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT? edited by John Brockman. Harper Perennial. Real scenarios that keep scientists up at night.

18 THE MAN WHO COULDN’T STOP, by David Adam. Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. A memoir of the author’s experience with obsessive compulsive disorder.

19 HOW WE GOT TO NOW, by Steven Johnson. Riverhead. A history of innovation focused on six key technologies; the companion volume to a PBS series. (9)

20 A GARDEN OF MARVELS, by Ruth Kassinger. Morrow/HarperCollins. How we discovered that flowers have sex and other plant secrets.