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Science book communities on Reddit

Frequently mentioned science books — from Sagan and Feynman to Dawkins, Hawking, and Mukherjee, drawn from r/askscience.

Updated September 2026 — rankings refresh with each new data release.

Subreddit

Books indexed

191

Combined mentions

26.0M

Combined members

Subreddits in this theme

r/askscience

26.0M members

r/askscience is a moderated Q&A forum where verified scientists and informed enthusiasts answer questions spanning biology, physics, chemistry, and earth sciences.

Hot recently in Science

Ranked by mentions in the latest six observed months for this subreddit.

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins

A biologist argues you're not really driving the car — your genes are, and they've been doing it since before there was a you.

3 recent

Cosmos

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan's 1980 tour of 15 billion years of cosmic history, written for anyone who once looked up and wanted a real answer.

2 recent

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking explains black holes, time, and the universe's beginning without a single equation, for readers who never took physics.

1 recent

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson asks how anyone actually knows a mass extinction wasn't caused by an asteroid, and answers it one solved mystery at a time.

1 recent

The Double Helix

James D. Watson

James Watson tells the story of discovering DNA's structure in 1953, and treats Rosalind Franklin badly enough on the page that the argument has outlasted the science.

1 recent

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

In 1951 doctors took cancer cells from a poor Black woman without asking her, and those cells are still alive and multiplying in labs around the world today.

1 recent

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Randall Munroe

A cartoonist answers a stranger's question about dropping an entire thunderstorm as one giant raindrop, then keeps doing that for 300 pages.

1 recent

Most-mentioned in Science

Combined mentions across this subreddit in the theme.

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins

A biologist argues you're not really driving the car — your genes are, and they've been doing it since before there was a you.

25 in this theme

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

Randall Munroe

A cartoonist answers a stranger's question about dropping an entire thunderstorm as one giant raindrop, then keeps doing that for 300 pages.

18 in this theme

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee traces cancer from ancient Egyptian scrolls calling it untreatable to his own oncology ward, and calls the four-thousand-year fight a biography, not a history.

16 in this theme

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

Neil Shubin

A paleontologist traces the five-fingered human hand back through Tiktaalik to the fins of a 375-million-year-old fish.

16 in this theme

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

A naturalist explains how species arise without a designer, backed by decades of finch beaks, barnacles, and pigeon breeders.

14 in this theme

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking explains black holes, time, and the universe's beginning without a single equation, for readers who never took physics.

13 in this theme

Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

Philipp Dettmer

Philipp Dettmer, the voice behind Kurzgesagt, explains why your body sets off a full-scale war every time you catch a cold.

13 in this theme

Cosmos

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan's 1980 tour of 15 billion years of cosmic history, written for anyone who once looked up and wanted a real answer.

12 in this theme

The Double Helix

James D. Watson

James Watson tells the story of discovering DNA's structure in 1953, and treats Rosalind Franklin badly enough on the page that the argument has outlasted the science.

11 in this theme

#10

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

In 1951 doctors took cancer cells from a poor Black woman without asking her, and those cells are still alive and multiplying in labs around the world today.

10 in this theme

#11

Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

John D. Clark

John D. Clark spent a career trying to ignite rocket fuel that mostly wanted to explode, corrode, or both, and wrote the funniest history of failing at it.

7 in this theme

#12

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson asks how anyone actually knows a mass extinction wasn't caused by an asteroid, and answers it one solved mystery at a time.

6 in this theme

#13

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

Ed Yong

Ed Yong takes the microbiome from lab jargon to something that makes you look at every living thing differently.

6 in this theme

#14

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Douglas R. Hofstadter

A Pulitzer-winning tour through Gödel's incompleteness theorem, Bach's fugues, and Escher's impossible loops — all in service of one question: what is consciousness?

5 in this theme

#15

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 in this theme

#16

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.

4 in this theme

#17

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Oliver Sacks

A neurologist's case files: patients who lost the ability to recognize faces, bodies, and the right side of the world — and remained fully themselves.

4 in this theme

#18

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Richard P. Feynman

A Nobel physicist recounts the anecdotes behind the equations, cracking safes and playing bongos at Los Alamos on his way to explaining what energy actually is.

3 in this theme

#19

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Ed Yong

Ed Yong maps the hidden sensory worlds of animals — from the electric fields sharks feel to the ultraviolet colors butterflies see — that exist just outside human perception.

2 in this theme

#20

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky

A neuroscientist traces one punch backward through hormones, childhood, evolution, and culture to explain why anyone throws it at all.

1 in this theme

#21

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel van der Kolk

Bessel van der Kolk spent his career arguing trauma changes the nervous system, and r/CPTSD made the book its shared vocabulary for what happened to them.

1 in this theme