Six Science Books That Changed My Life. They Could Change Yours Too.

A few months ago, after the release of my fifth mainstream science book, Immortality, Inc. — Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions and the Quest to Live Forever (for National Geographic), The Week magazine asked me to suggest six of my all-time favorite science books. I could have come up with dozens, but these are the ones I felt have had the most profound effects upon me. I’ve expanded the orginal article a bit here. Don’t be put off by their ages. They are timeless. I can attest to that because I discovered many of them well after they were published myself. I hope you find them useful.

Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan (1977)

Few thinkers combined eloquence and science more eloquently and effectively than Carl Sagan, which is one reason why he won the Pulitzer Prize for this remarkable book about the evolution of human intelligence. When I first read the book, it often stopped me cold, and revealed to me how science and writing could be fused in a way that made me see the world and myself in utterly new and powerful ways. Because Sagan could always see the big picture, even when writing about nitty gritty science, you are always engaged. You persnally care about what he is writing about. And he is the master of the ah-ha! moment, the kind of insights that differentiate good science writing from…