Modern people need constant replenishment of their knowledge base, so they often choose for themselves those books that are not only entertaining, but also educational. Such literature today attracts considerable attention. Because of this, the authors try to study the areas of life that are useful for a person more scrupulously and share the data obtained with readers.
It is worth noting that not 100% scientific books are especially popular, but those that are associated with an artistic direction. People are always more interested in watching vivid plot events and simultaneously receiving important information than just getting acquainted with dry facts.
The new popular educational literature contains many features of a wide variety of genres. Thanks to the competent approach of the authors to the combination of elements, real masterpieces are obtained, which as a result become bestsellers.
But in addition to such accessible works, special educational literature is also relevant, which is aimed at displaying a scientific approach and demonstrating important data. Such works contain well-described studies and methodological recommendations that may become useful in a particular professional field.
Scientific literature is also produced for children, only it differs in a somewhat simplified approach to submitting data. Naturally, the child will not perceive and assimilate information displayed in the same style as for adults, therefore, foreign and Russian educational literature for children is adapted to the requirements of kids and allows you to assimilate the information described in the creation.
Works of a fantastic plan can also be called scientific works, because, unlike artistic fantasy, the creations of the aforementioned genre imply the creation of a plot based on real, reliable and verified facts. Due to this feature, the popularity of works in this direction is increasing every year.
Popular medical literature often contains only the best practical and theoretical advice that will contribute to the self-education of a person who wants to gain the necessary knowledge in this area.
Be that as it may, but among modern books, it is not so difficult to find creations of the scientific and educational direction, you just need to visit our portal. A special website was created so that people can download electronic files to their devices or read the works they like online.
Each visitor of the portal can download for free without registration in epub, fb2, pdf, rtf and txt format any work that aroused his interest and seemed very worthy. Thanks to such sites, a person understands that it is easy to develop, you just need to make the right choice.
It's no secret that in our pragmatic age, popular science literature is becoming more and more in demand, giving odds to fiction of all stripes. For those who think it's never too late to learn, Other Literature has compiled a list of real gems in the "sci-pop" genre.
1. Eric Kandel. Looking for a memory
2. Penny Lecuter, Jay Burreson. Napoleon buttons. Seventeen Molecules That Changed the World
3. Chris Frith. Brain and soul.
4. Jessica Snyder Saks. Microbes are good and bad. Our health and survival in the world
5. Armand Marie Leroy. Mutants
6. Nick Lane. Ladder of life. Ten Greatest Inventions of Evolution
7. Ian Stewart. Truth and beauty. World History of Symmetry
8. Alex Vilenkin. World of many worlds. Physicists in search of parallel universes
9. Neil Shubin Inner fish. The history of the human body since ancient times...
10. John Derbyshire Simple obsession. Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
11. Sean Carroll. Adapt and survive! DNA as a record of evolution
12. Neil Shubin The universe is within us. What do stones, planets and people have in common
13. Manjit Kumar. Quantum. Einstein, Bohr and the great controversy about the nature of reality
14. Mark Changizi. Revolution in vision
15. Matt Ridley. Genome
16. Norman Doidge. Brain plasticity
17. Michio Kaku. The future of the mind
18. N. P. Bekhtereva. Brain magic and labyrinths of life
19. Richard Dawkins. The Selfish Gene
20 Stephen Hawking Brief history of time. From the Big Bang to Black Holes
21. Carl Sagan A world full of demons. Science is like a candle in the dark
22. What we believe but cannot prove. Intellectuals of the 21st century about modern science
23. Richard F. Feynman. Of course you are joking, Mr. Feynman!
24. Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose. The nature of space and time
25. Fridtjof Capra. Tao of physics. An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and the mysticism of the East
26. Mary Roach. Kadavr. How the body after death serves science
27. Shintan Yau, Steve Nadis. String Theory and the Hidden Dimensions of the Universe
28. Karl Zimmer. Evolution. The triumph of the idea
29. Oliver Sachs. Anthropologist on Mars
30. Asya Kazantseva. Who would have thought! How the brain makes us do stupid things
31. Leonard Mlodinov. (Neo)conscious. How the unconscious mind controls our behavior
32. Albert Einstein. The world as I see it
33. Philip Ball. Critical mass. How one thing gives rise to another
34. Bill Bryson. A Brief History of Almost Everything
35. Jared Diamond. Guns, germs and steel. The fate of human societies
36. Irina Levontina. Russian with a dictionary
37. Jack Kelly. Powder. From alchemy to artillery. The story of the substance that changed the world
38. Masha Gessen. Perfect severity. Grigory Perelman: genius and task of the millennium
39. David Deutsch. The structure of reality. The Science of Parallel Universes
40. Stephen Strogatz. Pleasure from x. A fascinating excursion into the world of mathematics from one of the best teachers in the world
41. Thomas Kuhn. The structure of scientific revolutions
42. Jim Baggott. Higgs boson. From a scientific idea to a "particle of God"
43. Paul Halpern. Collider
44. Richard Dawkins. Devil's chaplain. Reflections on hope, lies, science and love
45. Lisa Randall Knockin 'on Heaven. Scientific view of the structure of the universe
46. Michio Kaku. Hyperspace. A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Worlds, Holes in Time, and the Tenth Dimension
47. Stephen Hawking My brief history
48. Yakov Perelman. Entertaining algebra. Interesting geometry
49. Stephen Hawking, R. Penrose, A. Shimoni, N. Cartwright. Big, small and human mind
50. George Johnson. Ten most beautiful experiments in the history of science
Popular science literature combines the pleasant with the useful: in an accessible language, it introduces us to the most complex scientific facts. What are the best books in this series so far?
1. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
The book of the famous American astrophysicist was first published in 1988. Of all the physical formulas, he left only one in the book. Everything else is a living, understandable language, which brought this work into the category of bestsellers. The author fascinatingly talks about elementary particles and black holes, about the causes of phenomena and consequences, about space and time. In short, want to know more about our universe? Hawking's book will help you with this!
2. Michio Kaku, The Physics of the Impossible
The book by one of the authors of string theory, the American physicist Michio Kaku, will be of interest not only to science lovers, but also to fans of science fiction. The author makes predictions and assumptions about what scientific fantasies of writers will come true in our century. Perhaps it will be telepathy and teleportation, and perhaps even interplanetary travel and communication with representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations. Despite such serious topics, the book is by no means boring. It has many interesting stories and anecdotes.
3. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Despite the fact that the book of the famous biologist was published in 1976, it still arouses great interest among the reader. Still would! After all, the scientist puts the microscopic gene at the basis of evolution. It is he who, according to Dawkins, “commands” both our behavior and our choices. And, even, the same gene is guilty of “ideas are in the air”!
4. Desmond Morris, The Naked Monkey
The book, published back in 1967, brought its author immense popularity. It was after its publication that Morris changed his scientific activity to creative. In particular, he began to write books and paintings. Based on this work, a film was made in 1973.On the pages of the book, the author reflects on how far man has gone from the monkey in his behavior. With humor, the writer examines human behavior in a given situation from different angles. By the way, do you want to know his theory of the origin of Homo sapiens? Then read on!
5. Vladimir Plungyan, “Why languages are so different”
The book of the famous linguist and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences was published in 2010. What could be better than being able to communicate? There are more than 5000 languages in the world, they are as different as their speakers. In a popular book, the author fascinatingly tells how and in what way one language differs from another. Be sure that after reading it, you will want to learn some other language besides your own! Akimushkin Igor Ivanovich (1929-1993)Scientist, popularizer of biology. Author of more than 60 scientific, artistic and children's books.
Born in Moscow in the family of an engineer. Graduated from the biology and soil faculty of Moscow State University (1952). Published since 1956.
Author of popular science books about the life of animals (mostly poorly studied): "Traces of Unseen Beasts", "Trail of Legends", "Primates of the Sea", "Tragedy of Wild Animals", etc.The first book of The World of Animals (the author wrote six such books) tells about seven orders of the class of mammals: cloacae, marsupials, insectivores, coleoptera, carnivores, equids and artiodactyls. The second is devoted to the remaining twelve orders of mammals: bats, primates, edentulous, pangolins, hares, rodents, cetaceans, pinnipeds, aardvarks, hyraxes, sirens and proboscis.The famous science fiction writer, world-famous scientist, great popularizer of science, author of many popular science, fantasy, detective, historical and humorous publications invites you to the world of mysteries of the past, present and future.The Bible says that God created man in his own image and likeness. Science has forced theologians to retreat on a number of issues concerning the origin of man. Even the Pope acknowledged that the human body could have arisen naturally, as proven by science. However, churchmen cannot completely abandon the biblical myth of the creation of man even in our time.Throughout its history, mankind has been faced with a variety of catastrophes and cataclysms. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, as well as vehicle crashes... Built in the form of a chronicle, the book will tell you about famous and little-known cataclysms and catastrophes - from the beginning of time to the 21st century.
The publication is intended for a wide range of readers.The book tells about the development of ideas about gravity throughout the history of science. In describing the current state of gravitational theory, the main attention is paid to the general theory of relativity, but other theories are also discussed. The formation and structure of black holes, the generation and prospects for detecting gravitational waves, the evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present era, and possible future scenarios are discussed.It is impossible to protect oneself from many troubles in life, but, according to the author of this book, crimes are not one of them. Thousands of people become victims of crime every year. And do not think that this is what happens to others - it is much better to arm yourself with the necessary knowledge, and not rely on fate. Author of the book "What is not taught in school.Many celestial phenomena seem mysterious and unusual to believers. Often, when they see a comet in the sky, they say: "To be in trouble, this sign is not good"; noticing the fall of a meteorite, they say: "Someone's soul has sunk." The author of the brochure, an employee of the Moscow Planetarium, in a lively and accessible form for the widest reader, talks about the real causes of these phenomena, that there is nothing mysterious and supernatural ...The book is devoted to the formation of the main ideas of classical science in the 17th century, a process that has been called the scientific revolution. The main place is given to the physical and mathematical sciences, in the development of which the main features of the scientific revolution were most clearly reflected. The main lines of this process are traced, associated primarily with the names of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Huygens and Newton.A study of the earliest sedimentary rocks shows that cellular life forms were present on Earth about 3.85 billion years ago, that is, they appeared shortly after the creation of conditions compatible with life. This means that precellular evolution, with all its complexity, could be carried out in a very short period of time (10-50 million years). According to another version, precellular evolution took place outside the Earth (panspermia).
You may not have noticed, but this year there are many science books that deserve attention. Perhaps there is no longer any need to complain about the lack of good popular science literature, as it was possible to do just a few years ago. The problem often lies in choosing from all this variety not just good, but really the best books.
We have compiled our subjective list of popular science and simply educational books that we remember this year. They will make the reader think, tell about something new, improve his ability to think about a variety of things, and perhaps even make his life a little more meaningful.
1. Yuval Harari. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
An international bestseller written by an Israeli medievalist historian and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The book was published in 2011 and quickly conquered bookstores in many countries of the world. By 2016, it had already been translated into 30 languages.
Among the devoted fans of the book is Mark Zuckerberg, who encouraged everyone to read this work and included it in his project. "Year of Books", and Bill Gates, who admitted that he would take her with him to a desert island.
The book of Harari is a book about how man got his dominant position on this planet. This is a story about the development of human societies from small tribes of hunter-gatherers to modern states with a complex bureaucratic apparatus, and about the main inventions of mankind, to which the author refers agriculture, religion, money economy, science, and, above all, the ability to create fictions. A great continuation of the tradition of large-scale and exciting non-fiction in the spirit of Jared Diamond.
Other animals that ended up at the top of the pyramid - lions, sharks - went to this for millions of years, and a person got to the top almost instantly. Many historical catastrophes, including devastating wars and ecosystem violence, stem from our too hasty rise to power. Mankind is not a pack of wolves that suddenly took possession of tanks and atomic bombs, but rather we are a herd of sheep, which, due to an incomprehensible whim of evolution, has learned to make and use tanks and missiles. And armed sheep are much more dangerous than armed wolves.
2. Frank Wilczek The beauty of physics. Comprehending the structure of nature
The book by the famous physicist and Nobel Prize winner tells how people comprehended the Universe throughout history, and what we know about its structure thanks to modern scientific discoveries. Wilczek starts with the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato, stops at the discoveries of Newton and Maxwell, and then, through Einstein, approaches the physical theory of the late 20th century.
In this narrative, scientific theories are intertwined with reflections on the beauty of the cosmos, the universe and the process of scientific research.
The complex and multifaceted narrative that turned out as a result will give each reader something of his own. The text is complemented by beautiful illustrations that make the book an even more interesting example of popular science literature. It is important that the author does not simply try to convey some scientific truth to us, but makes assumptions and seeks to make the reader an accomplice in his thoughts.
Recent advances in cosmology suggest that the part of the universe that we can currently explore with even the most powerful instruments is just a small part of the multiverse, the distant parts of which could look completely different. If this became known for sure, it would reinforce the idea that has repeatedly sounded before: the "world" given in the sensations of each person is only one of billions of the same (at least one per person); Earth is only one of the planets of our Sun; our Sun is just one of the billions of stars in our Galaxy called the Milky Way; our galaxy is just one of billions in the visible universe.
3. Paul Kalanithi When breath dissolves into air
The autobiography of a neurosurgeon who died of cancer at the age of 37, who continued to observe the course of the disease for the last two years of his life, to study, work, improve and write penetrating notes, which are included in this book. It quickly reached number one on The New York Times bestseller list, was translated into 37 languages, and was a revelation to many readers.
Kalanithi's book is a brilliant story about the everyday life and everyday tragedies of a neurosurgeon, a sincere and deep story about how our sense of self changes on the eve of death. It can hardly be called a popular science work, although science is present in it. Rather, it is a reflection on the meaning of life, felt from one's own experience and in style balancing somewhere on the verge between the works of Montaigne and Oliver Sachs.
The morning was coming to an end and I was washing my hands before my last operation. Suddenly I was terrified. Am I doing this for the last time? Maybe it is so. I looked at the soapy water dripping from my hands into the sink. A few minutes later he entered the operating room, dressed in surgical clothes and covered the patient, leaving the operating field. I wanted this operation to be perfect.
4. Frans de Waal. Are we smart enough to judge the intelligence of animals?
A new book by an ethologist and primatologist, who has earned recognition both for his research and experiments, and for his remarkable popular science works (his Origins of Morality and Politics in Chimpanzees have already been translated into Russian). This is a thoughtful and engaging story about how we differ from animals and whether these differences are really as great as we sometimes think.
Even Charles Darwin wrote that "no matter how great the difference in the mental abilities of man and higher animals, it undoubtedly lies in quantity, and not in quality."
Frans de Waal's book draws on the results of modern research to shed new light on this claim. To what extent are animals capable of experiencing emotions? Do they have friendship, love and hate, politics, enmity and cooperation? Through a story about the evolution of animal cognitive abilities, observations and experiments, the author answers these questions and leads us to a new understanding of what it means to be human.
Yes, we are smart enough to appreciate other species, but it took hundreds of facts, initially completely rejected by science, to break through our stubbornness. The reasons why we got rid of excess prejudice and anthropocentrism are to be found in what we have learned and rethought in the past. In evaluating these changes, I inevitably bring in my own point of view, which favors the integrity of evolution at the expense of traditional dualism.
5. Lisa Randall. Dark matter and dinosaurs. The amazing interconnection of events in the universe
Lisa Randall is a professor at Harvard University, a theoretical physicist and science communicator. Her hypothesis that the death of dinosaurs 66 million years ago is associated with the passage of dark matter through the disk was put forward back in 2014 and received conflicting assessments. The opinion of scientists boils down mainly to the following: it looks plausible, but there is not enough evidence. However, the book deserves attention not only because of this hypothesis.
In fact, "Dark Matter and Dinosaurs" is a fascinating introduction to modern ideas about cosmology, the solar system and the development of biological species, in which astrophysics is intertwined with particle physics, geology and even biology. Scattered across disciplines, scientific knowledge and theories need to be brought together if we are to better understand our place in this universe.
I would like to show the variety of incredible interconnections, as a result of which we appeared and were able to understand what is happening now. […] As I began to ponder the conceptual ideas of the book, I was struck not only by the extent of current knowledge about our environment (on Earth, in the solar system, in the galaxy, and in the universe), but also by how much we hope to eventually understand based on on the bits of knowledge gained here on Earth.
6. Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst. No wallet, no life. Alternative medicine under investigation
A book by eminent British experts on alternative medicine, published with the support of the Evolution Foundation, talks about whether acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism and other similar practices really help to cope with diseases. Edzard Ernst had been a homeopath himself for a long time, but abandoned these methods when he began to understand how they work. Thanks to this experience, the book not only retained its scientific authenticity, but also added depth and brightness to the material.
"No wallet, no life" will introduce the reader to the basics of scientific medicine. How are medicines and medical practices tested? What is double blind method? Which doctor's statements can be trusted, and which ones should you stay away from? In addition to answering these questions, the book contains a small guide to non-traditional therapies, from anthroposophic medicine to Bach's flower therapy.
Vaccination eradicated deadly infections. Diseases that affect millions of people and were previously considered incurable - appendicitis, diabetes and many others - are now treatable. Child mortality has dropped significantly. Pain can be controlled in most cases. And in general, we live longer and enjoy a better quality of life. And all this thanks to the application of the scientific method in health care and medicine. Alternative medicine, on the other hand, is by its very nature a relic of the Middle Ages.
7. Asya Kazantseva. Someone is wrong on the internet
In the latest book by renowned science communicator and Illuminator Award winner, you'll find out what the latest scientific research has to say about these important questions: Is the theory of evolution correct? Does homeopathy work? Are GMOs Dangerous? Is it good to be a vegetarian?
People can argue passionately on these and other topics, but very rarely use the right arguments.
Kazantseva's book not only answers the questions posed, but also helps to understand where to take these arguments. It begins with an analysis of the main thinking errors that constantly mislead us, and ends with a "Short Course in the Search for Truth." The main advantage of the book is not even that it presents scientific facts in a fascinating and accessible way, but that it helps the reader get rid of prejudices, learn to think critically and independently.
My ambitions as a writer are not primarily to force a set of correct memes on you, to convince you that homeopathy does not work, GMOs are safe, and so on. I have another main task: to cut down the branch on which I sit, to make the reader less dependent on a scientific journalist in the search and analysis of information. In this case, it is not even the question of whether homeopathy works that matters to me. It is more important to show exactly how I arrived at the answer.
8. Sergey Kavtaradze. Anatomy of architecture. Seven Books on Logic, Form and Meaning
This book by a Russian art historian, dedicated to how to understand, study and love architecture, was published a year ago, but this year it attracted our attention: in 2016, the author was awarded the Enlightener Prize for it in the Humanities nomination . The book appeals not to a specialist, but to the widest readership: it will acquaint you with the history of the development of architecture on a global scale and teach you to see meaning where only forms were seen before.
We all live among and within architecture, but we rarely think about what that means. How did architectural canons change, what values do architects put into their works? How does architecture evoke feelings in us and even serve as a way to connect with God? The book combines the author's narration, images and photographs, as well as quotations from important writings on architecture. For those who want to learn more about this topic, it will serve as an excellent introduction.
No art has power over people like architecture. Architecture can imperceptibly issue commands, effectively controlling human behavior, forcing him to move not only in certain directions, but also in a certain rhythm, at the desired pace and even in the right manner. And that is not all. Architecture has power over both feelings and thoughts.
9. Ian Tattersall Skeletons in the closet. Dramatic human evolution
The book of one of the world's largest experts in paleoanthropology is the result of more than half a century of work on the study of the origins of mankind from ancient people and primates. Like Wilczek's The Beauty of Physics, this book is written in the genre of intellectual history: Tattersall tells how our ideas about the origin and nature of man have changed from Aristotle to the present day.
This story is full of facts and stories from the workshop of paleoanthropologists, in which the author spent most of his life. How did people learn to ask new questions? How did the discovery of scientific methods and tools like radiocarbon dating come about? The author offers the reader not only a presentation of the theoretical foundations of his discipline, but also gives him the opportunity to immerse himself in the process of scientific knowledge - with all its contradictions, subtleties and details.
The science of human evolution continues to be oppressed by the past, our ideas of yesterday have a huge impact on what we think today. [...] This is a strange and confusing story of paleoanthropology, showing how every new fact about human evolution calls into question everything we knew before, even if there are often many convincing counterarguments against it.
10. Maria Konnikova. The psychology of distrust. How not to get scammed
A well-known American psychologist of Russian origin, columnist for The New Yorker and Scientific American wrote a book about the principles that underlie trust and deceit and why we sometimes believe false promises so easily. We may think that we will easily expose fraud if we encounter it in our lives. This book proves that it is not necessary to be so self-confident: we are all deceived, and very often we do not even notice it.
Scientific narrative at times flows into a detective story. How do scammers pull off their scams by playing on our fears, hopes and doubts? How not to succumb to deception and notice traps even before you fall into them? The reasons for lying lie in our relentless need to believe in something, to feel empathy, and to lie to ourselves when it seems right or useful to us. These are the reasons behind not only individual cases of deceit, but also behind the manipulation of public opinion.
It does not matter what we are dealing with - a financial pyramid or falsification of data, information stuffing or deliberately false information, artistic forgery or a dubious diagnosis, an unreliable presentation of the past or dubious promises for the future. At a fundamental level, it all boils down to trust - or rather, abuse of it.
In the design of the article, Boris Kustodiev’s painting “Maslenitsa” (1916) was used.
