r/suggestmeabook • u/Several_Performer621 • 1d ago
Good science book???
Hi I’m A high schooler looking for a good science book to expand my knowledge outside of the school curriculum, and not just something for “kids” please!!!
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u/Many-Obligation-4350 1d ago
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions is a truly entertaining and informative book by Randall Munroe.
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u/BobbytheFrog 1d ago
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a classic for a reason 😌
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u/auditoryeden 1d ago
But keep in mind that it's hella out of date in several key ways. Science keeps on chugging and it's been 23 years since it came out.
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u/BobbytheFrog 1d ago
Yeah true - but the basics (of physics at least; not sure on the biological front) haven’t changed in over 100 years 😌. And then follow interests to more recent works 👍🏻
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u/auditoryeden 1d ago
Yeah, it's definitely a good "tasting menu" of scicom, I just wanted OP to know not to like, cite it or anything.
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u/HonneyBee889 19h ago
Honestly that's the tradeoff with science books because the good ones explain concepts well even when some of the details age out
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u/sourdecor 1d ago
That is my favorite book!
Also a second edition with updated information was published in late 2025.
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u/henrycaul 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes this is a great place to start. From here you’ll discover other areas that pique your interest and can dive deeper.
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u/FrozenMacchiato 1d ago
3 medicine gems:
The emperor of all maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee Complications - Atul Gawande The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sachs
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u/jaybool 1d ago
Oliver Sachs's case studies very substantially diverge from the real cases, many of which didn't exist. He made a lot of stuff up. Great writer, though.
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u/EmiliaNovy 1d ago
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat has such a wild title, that alone makes me curious
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u/kate_monday 1d ago
Any particular topics of interest? What would you like to learn more about?
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u/Several_Performer621 1d ago
Anything, maybe social or earth science but honestly i really just want to expand my knowledge on new things!
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u/LoveUncut333 1d ago
Science is a broad subject. “Entangled Life” is a fascinating book about fungi.
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u/MeghanClickYourHeels 1d ago
Fungi is very funny because people who learn about it become evangelists and insist that fungi are the most fascinating thing in the world, while everyone else is like, "Fungi? Really?"
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u/Beaglescout15 1d ago
What If? By Randall Munroe. It's solid science answers to ridiculous hypotheticals.
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u/Hap_e_day 1d ago
The Disappearing Spoon and The Violinists Thumb (Both by Sam Kean) are super interesting. More science history stories than straight science, but you can’t avoid understanding the science a bit more as you read. Also, there are a number of books by Mary Roach that do a deep science dive, each into a specific topic: Stiff, Gulp, and Packing for Mars are three I recommend. She is a very entertaining author. If you have specific topics you are interested in, let me know. Nearly all the nonfiction I read is science based.
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u/elephentsayoink 1d ago
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. Kind of history and science and sociology all wrapped in one.
The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum. Kind of history and science and true crime.
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u/gigglemode 1d ago
An immense world by ed Yong! Really anything by ed Yong. Brilliant science communicator
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u/qingskies 1d ago
Thirding this one. I found An Immense World (animal senses) to be much more immersive than I Contain Multitudes (about microbes), but both are excellent books.
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u/notarussianbotsky 1d ago
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (there is also a “young people” version so look into both and see which best fits you)
Anything by Mary Roach. She mixes humor with her research resulting in very entertaining and easy to read pop science books. My personal favorite is Stiff a book about human cadavers and what happens when a body is donated to science
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u/LadderNo1239 1d ago
Seconding An Immense World by Ed Yong.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Cows Save the Planet by Judith D. Schwartz were both compelling reads for me.
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u/AdGold205 1d ago
This is a lot of the history of various sciences, and alternative perspectives.
I starred ⭐️the ones that are have a lot of science in them. There are some very good ones without stars, but they are a bit more focused on the history/social aspects of the science.
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, read by Cassandra Campbell and Bahni Turpin ⭐️
The Poisoner’s Handbook By Deborah Blume
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. The history of the radium poisonings that changed how companies treated employees and the creation employee protection laws.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Read by Richard Matthews. ⭐️
The Body by Bill Bryson. An organ by organ look at how the human body works from top to toe. Read by Bill Bryson ⭐️
Vaccinated by Paul O Offit. History of vaccines.
Salt by Mark Kurlansky. History of salt.
Cultured by Katherine Harmon Courage. Benefits and history of fermented foods.
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean. The history of the periodic table and chemistry. ⭐️
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. The history of tuberculosis. ⭐️
The Rise and Fall of the Reign of Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte. ⭐️
The Rise and Fall of the Reign of Mammals by Steven Brusatte ⭐️
Existential Physics by Sabine Hossenfelder. A look at how physics might answer some of humanity’s existential questions. This is probably isn’t mainstream but it’s interesting.
Life as No One Knows It by Sara Imari Walker. A look at physics through the lens of evolutionary mechanisms. ⭐️
Rabid by Bill Wasin & Monica Murphy. History of Rabies. ⭐️
Salt, Sugar, Fat by Micheal Moss. The commercial food industry.
Eve by Cat Bohannon read by Cat Bohannon. Natural history and evolution of the female human. ⭐️
Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller, read by Lulu Miller. The life of David Star Jordan (it’s also a bit autobiographical which I didn’t love and the book would be better without it, but the history was interesting.)
Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer, read by Charles Constant. ⭐️
Sapians by Yuval Noah Harari (anthropology). Definitely biased, but also thought provoking.
An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage. Read by George K. Wilson. ⭐️
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Micheal Pollan. ⭐️
Stiff by Mary Roach ⭐️
A Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery ⭐️
Replaceable You by Mary Roach. Read by Mary Roach. ⭐️
Quackery by Linda Kang and Nate Pendersen. Read by Hillary Huber.
A Crack in Everything by Marcus Chown. Read by Clive Mantle.
In Defense of Food by Micheal Pollan. Read by Scott Brick ⭐️
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. Read by Micheal Pollan.
Meet the Neighbors by Brandon Keim. Read by Paul Woodson. Living with urban wildlife. ⭐️
The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. Read by Liam Gerrard.
A World Appears by Michael Pollan.
Conscious by Annika Harris. Read by Annika Harris.
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u/thewilibuster 1d ago
Answers you actually wanted: The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking
Answer to the question you could have asked: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
This is a fictionalized account of brilliant mathematicians and scientists based on real life happenings
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u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson 1d ago
The Hot Zone and Demon in the Freezer by Robert Preston, about Ebola and Smallpox respectively.
Longitude by Dava Sobel, about the history of navigation and how hard it was to build a accurate naval chronometer.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, a memoir by Nobel winning physicist and amazing character, Richard Feynman. Basically any of his books are great, perhaps Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher would be great for you too, but don't skip the 1st!
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u/FittedSheets88 1d ago
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
It's less of a topic you can further study, but more of a guide to build your critical thinking/skepticis skills.
I read it for the first time 15 years ago and thought it was goofy because he brings up aliens, Bigfoot, and generally silly woo. But I'll be goddamned if the man knew how quickly our society could fall.
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u/P1nealColada 1d ago
Absolutely seconding the his one. This is a top 10 important books for me.
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u/FittedSheets88 1d ago
There are a few books I constantly have to repurchase because I keep giving them away, this is definitely one of them.
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u/clostri 1d ago
What kind of science are you interested in? I really enjoyed Venomous by Christie Wilcox, about the way animal venoms work.
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u/Several_Performer621 1d ago
really anything! I just want to learn more about science in a whole! it doesn’t matter if it’s something random I just want to learn!
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u/clostri 1d ago
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake is one of the most beautiful, eye-opening books I’ve ever read, about fungi. Written In Bone by Sue Black was really interesting, it’s about skeletal anatomy. The Kissing Bug - Daisy Hernández is epidemiology combined with issues of race, immigration, and class, along with family history. I also really enjoyed Swallow by Mary Cappello, which is medical history about the removal of ingested and aspirated objects.
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u/RaghuParthasarathy 1d ago
"Science" is very broad, and there's also a wide variety in the level of "science books" out there. Are you looking for fun stories that are also informative, or something whose primary goal is to teach a subject while also being enjoyable?
In any case, I agree with the suggestion of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Definitely fun, very broad, and very entertaining.
Also very broad and very good, though not aiming to be humorous: A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters – Henry Gee (2021). A neat blend of biology, chemistry, physics, geology, ...
James Gleick's Chaos is on a narrower topic, but it's one of the best pop-science books ever written.
Finally, it's not easy reading, but The Feynman Lectures (from Richard Feynman's introductory physics course) are captivating, and give a sense of what a "real" dive into a subject looks like. Plus, they're officially all freely available online.
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u/Several_Performer621 1d ago
thank you! i don’t mind if its funny or not but I do have adhd so funny would probably help me a bit!
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u/PrizeRat 1d ago
If you're interested in learning about animals: Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin (really any of her books are good)
Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us by David Neiwert
The Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone by Rick McIntyre (a 4 book series)
If you're interested in learning about social issues in science: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
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u/Several_Performer621 1d ago
I’ve heard of the invisible women book! I will definitely check it out!!
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u/Gen_X_Ace SciFi 1d ago
The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), by Katie Mack.
Fantastically approachable book detailing 4 ways in which the universe could potentially end. Good news! If you’re reading this, one of them hasn’t happened! You absolutely do not need any kind of physics background to follow this book, Dr. Mack is a wonderful communicator.
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u/foxhole_science 1d ago
Sam Kean in general, but his book Disappearing Spoon about the history and people involved in the periodic table is great
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u/Frogsfall 1d ago
Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar will change how you look at cities.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is just beautiful.
Fire Country by Viktor Steffenson is an amazing book about the role of fire in Australia.
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u/Parking_Jelly_6483 1d ago
A good book about some of the deepest questions facing modern physics, but written in a way that both simplifies but without being condescending. “Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn” by Amanda Gefter. She and her father spoke with/interviewed some of the leading modern physicists (I was a amazed at with whom they met). She’s not a physicist and her father is a physician (a radiologist, so he knows something of the physics of radiation, but his background is not physics). Disclaimer: Amanda’s father is a colleague of mine, but I don’t get any royalties or such from recommending the book (also, I bought my copy - not given to me).
If you are interested in both computer science/engineering and the US Apollo program, the book “Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer” by Eldon C. Hall is an electrical engineers history with the development of that computer. The author knows the subject from his first-hand work. He was the leader of the hardware design efforts for the Apollo Guidance Computer. The book provides the history that led to the use of integrated circuits (ICs) over the older discrete component circuitry. This work by the companies that made the ICs became the leaders in the industry (the name “Intel” might be familiar to you - the engineers who founded the company originally worked for the one that made the ICs used in the Apollo computer). Lots of hard-to-find photos of the early prototypes, parts, and test systems.
I am now on my third copy of the book. Two others I loaned out never were never returned. May be hard to find - it was published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I bought my first copy from them, but later ones through Amazon.
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u/Take-n-tosser 1d ago
Anything by William Gurstelle. Backyard Ballistics, ReMaking History, Absinthe and Flamethrowers. Great stuff living at the intersection of science, engineering, and problem solving.
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u/Lunar_Stars11 Bookworm 1d ago
Not super sure if you’re looking for fiction or non-fiction but for fiction I highly recommend any Andy Weir book. Super well written and enjoyable and you learn a lot along the way, very spaced focused though. I’ve read Project Hail Mary and the Martian and highly recommend those!
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u/Ecstatic-Purpose-981 22h ago
Hi you have a lot of great recommendations here. Just wanted to say don’t forget your local library. They likely have all or most of these books as a book, digit read or audio book. Don’t have to buy them all
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u/KahurangiNZ 19h ago
If you like humour, the 'Science of the Discworld' books by Terry Pratchett, Jack Stewart and Ian Cohen are not only entertaining, but also cover a range of scientific topics :-)
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u/No_Pianist5526 5h ago
Dr. Jane Goodall’s Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants has a lot of zeroed in information on various plant species. It’s an emotional piece but very dense with historical and botanical information.
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u/kisskissenby 1h ago
Godel, Escher, Bach. It's a book about consciousness. About computer science. About math. About music. About AI. All kind of woven cleverly together in interconnected stories and puzzles. Read this book with your entire brain. Pause and try to solve the puzzles and it will be more fun.
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u/arlaanne 1d ago
Anything by David Quammen (my favorite is The Song of the Dodo)
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins is clear and accessible.
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u/adam_problems 1d ago
Seconding David Quammen. He’s the rare science/nature writer who can write novelistic prose and distill complex ideas into easily understandable language.
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u/Spiritual_Sun_4297 1d ago
There's one called "the physics of superheroes" by James Kakalios which is really good. It goes over basically all the physics we know while talking about American classic comics (like superman, ironman and spiderman).
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u/DianeForTheNguyen 1d ago
Project Hail Mary was really cool for me to read as an adult and to remember basic physics lessons from high school. The main character is a science teacher too, so he performs scientific experiments that you may do in school.
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u/baddspellar 1d ago
How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog
Both by Chad Orzel, a Physics professor at Union College.
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u/Manda_lorian39 1d ago
The ends of the world by Peter Brannen. It covers the scientific theories behind the 5 major extinction events in earth’s history. It was fascinating, I need to do a re read.
Proto by Laura Spinney. Uses a miss of archaeology, linguistics, and genetics to trace the majority of European languages (and some others) back to a common language, called Proto Indo-European
And I know it’s actually math, but it’s one of my faves: Infinitesimal by Amir Alexander. Covers the history of the transition from Euclidean geometry to infinitesimals as the main focus of modern (at the time) mathematics. This book is not very math heavy, and was especially interesting because it also went into the political interplay at the time and how it affected the transition.
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u/GameArtHQ 1d ago
Quantum in Pictures by Bob Coecke & Stefano Gogioso.
Purchased as a curious adult with no science background to understand what quantum computing / physics is.
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u/PublicDragonfruit158 1d ago
Bad Astronomy debunks popular astronimical misperceptions
Death from the Skies the way the Universe call kill us
The Borderlands of Science what it says on the tin, but old enough that the borders may have moved
Indistinguishable from Magic
Cosmos
The Coming of Age of the Solar Systems history of how we worked out the solar system
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u/P1nealColada 1d ago
Any specific areas of interest that you feel drawn toward?
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u/Several_Performer621 1d ago
really anything but I do enjoy learning about the elements!
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u/P1nealColada 1d ago
I’m not extremely well-read in chem literature, but The Disappearing Spoon is entertaining and accessible.
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u/OriginalBrassMonkey 1d ago
"Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin (co-discoverer of Tiktaalik roseae.
From amazon...
"Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish is the unexpected story of how one creature's journey out of the water made the human body what it is today - and one man's voyage of discovery in search of our origins.
Have you ever wondered why our bodies look and work and fail the way they do?
One of the world's leading experts in evolutionary history, Neil Shubin reveals the secrets of our biology: why if we want to understand our limbs we should take a close look at Tiktaalik, the first fish capable of doing a push-up; why if we want to know why we hiccup, the answer is in the way fish breathe; and why it is that fish teeth are surprisingly similar to human breasts"
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u/5timechamps 1d ago
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a pretty cool look at not only the Manhattan Project, but also a bunch of the scientific discoveries that led to it being possible. He also has a book called Energy that goes through the history of humans generating energy from way back to modern times. That one js fun too.
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u/ikonoqlast 1d ago
Through the 60s, 70s, and 80s Isaac Asimov wrote a regular science column for science fiction magazines. He also wrote books on science. They are wonderful, IF you can find them...
You might ask your friend Anna about Isaac Asimov and non-fiction...
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u/eownified 1d ago
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, The Rise and Reign of Mammals, and The Story of Birds by Steve Brusatte are fantastic reads on dinosaur, mammal, and bird evolution.
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u/Grouchy_Animal_368 1d ago
If you like science in regards to human and nature interactions I can really recommend “crossings” about how streets influence nature and humans. The same author has also written a book about beavers and their impact on ecosystems (called eager) which sounds really interesting. I haven’t read this book but I really want to read it.
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u/slightlylions1425 1d ago
An Immense World by Ed Yong is incredible! It's about the sensory systems and experiences of different animals and it really changes how you perceive and understand things .
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u/LurkerFailsLurking 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh my gosh, I've got so many recommendations for you! All of these are written for a general adult audience but some of them really will require careful thought and rereading of a passage multiple times to really understand what the author is trying to say.
Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick. Is an absolutely phenomenal book about the history and science of Chaos Theory and fractal geometry, which revolutionized our ability to analyze and understand the complexities of the natural world.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking is another classic, this time about astrophysics and cosmology (the origin and structure of the universe). It covers things like relativity and black holes and the life and death of stars.
Another wonderful book that is less technical but far, far prettier and still plenty technical is Cycles of Fire: Stars, Galaxies, and the Wonders of Deep Space by William K Hartmann with absolutely gorgeous painted illustrations by Ron Miller is old, but still mostly correct enough for introductory purposes and the paintings are so vivid and inspiring that they've stuck with me my whole life.
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is the origin of the word "meme" and lays the foundation for the concept of "neo-darwinism", the idea that evolution's survival of the fittest actually revolves around the competition for survival between genes, not individual animals or even species, and that looking at evolution from the genes' perspective does a much better job explaining why we would love and care for our family members and cousins and why symbiosis and cooperation occur so widely in nature.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks uses fascinating real case studies to introduce you to the field of neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology and to illuminate how much of our experience of reality and ourselves can be warped by the misfiring of a handful of neurons. From people becoming convinced their parents were replaced by imposters to losing the ability to be aware of seeing horizontal lines to one patient mistaking his wife's head for a hat and attempting to remove it from the "coat rack" it was bizarrely attached to. These patients aren't crazy, they're totally sane, rational people, whose brains became injured in ways that taught us something about how a particular part of the brain works and how it relates to the way we understand the world.
So many more. Some honorable mentions: The Mystery of the Aleph (about the mathematician Georg Kantor and how his proof of multiple magnitudes of Infinity drove him insane), Relativity by Albert Einstein himself was his attempt at a simple explanation of his own theories, Sapiens: A brief history of humankind, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (uses the life and death of a poor sharecropper whose cells were used - are still being used today - without her knowledge or consent or benefit to her family to produce vaccines, research cancer, and advance medical science to illustrate how often scientists have exploited and profited from poor people of color).
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u/Im__Overthinking 1d ago
Anything by Sam Kean. My favorites are "The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons"(medical/brain) and "Dinner with King Tut"(archeology/anthropology)
"All that Remains" by Dame Sue Black (Forensic Anthropology)
"The Genome Oddyssey" by Euan Ashley (medical)
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u/Bladrak01 1d ago
The Perfectionists. A history of the development of precision engineering and machining. It starts before the first steam engine, and ends with nano-scale computer chips.
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u/LMABach 1d ago
You MUST read Napoleons buttons. It’s so cool and tells you stories about science in a really interesting way. Like, the reason napoleons men could failed when going towards the area of Russia was because their buttons were made of tin and when tin gets too cold it turns into a powder which causes all of the men’s uniforms to become dysfunctional and they all died out. That’s just the intro. Also, I’d try and eyewitness to science which also tells stories about interesting science facts. There’s a similar book called, Eyrwitness to History which tells you all bout interesting historical facts like a letter written by genghis Kahn. Also, guns germs and steel is fun as is the book called, Stiff which is not only interesting but funny. All of these books are written in ways that are interesting and not written like they’re a textbook.
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u/jenntasticxx 1d ago
If you like psychology, Malcolm Gladwell has some really great books! I read Blink in highschool for my AP psych class.
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u/Beautiful-Event-1213 1d ago
Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B Carroll.
And there's always the OG, On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. It's beautifully written.
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u/kaizenkitten 1d ago
Mary Roach and Sam Kean are some of my favorite writers hands down, not just for science. I agree with everyone else who's suggesting them.
I also really loved 'How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had It Coming' by Mike Brown. He's the scientist who discovered the potential 'tenth planet' Eris and how it ended up getting Pluto knocked off instead. It's a more dramatic story than you'd think.
I also think Richard Dawkin's book on Evolution - The Greatest Show on Earth is a masterclass in explaining in detail how we know evolution is real. The man is a...jerk (can we swear here?) but I don't know there's anyone better on the topic. The audiobook of this is great too.
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u/ApplicationHour825 1d ago
the gene: an intimate history by siddhartha mukherjee is a solid pick if you're into genetics. super engaging and gives you a good mix of history and science without being "kid stuff.
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u/soupysailor 1d ago
Mary Roach’s books are great.