r/askscience · 2019
Top books in r/askscience during 2019
Ranked by mentions in r/askscience threads dated 2019. Useful for spotting what r/askscience was picking up or putting down that year.
#1 A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking explains black holes, the Big Bang, and the edge of time to people who never took a physics class.
#2 The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution makes more sense when you stop rooting for the organism and start watching the gene.
#3 The Elegant Universe
Brian Greene
Brian Greene walks you from Newton to superstrings using astronauts, blinking lights, and rubber-sheet gravity — no physics degree required.
#4 What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe
Randall Munroe takes absurd physics questions — what if a baseball traveled at 90% the speed of light? — and answers them with actual math.
#5 Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
John D. Clark
A rocket chemist's irreverent account of the people who spent the Cold War blowing things up in pursuit of the perfect propellant.
#6 Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive
Philipp Dettmer
Philipp Dettmer of Kurzgesagt turns the immune system into a 300-page illustrated war story, written for the person who watched every YouTube video and still wanted more.
#7 The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Richard P. Feynman
Feynman's three-volume lecture series, free online, used to teach Caltech freshmen physics from particles to gravity.
#8 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
A Black woman's cancer cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951, then used in nearly every major biomedical breakthrough for decades while her family knew nothing.