Science books can have a long, long shelf life. For some writers, their rivals are, ironically enough, themselves. Richard Dawkins鈥檚 The Selfish Gene came out in 1976, for example, and can still give his new books a run for their money. So what gives a book staying power? What recent titles will become modern classics?
Excellence and authority are key. For excellence, there鈥檚 Ernst Mayr, a grand master of biology, tackling one of the biggest questions in biology in What Evolution Is (Basic Books). Or read Ian Tattersall鈥檚 insights into the human condition in The Monkey in the Mirror (Harcourt Brace). For the origins of it all, The Cradle of Life by William Schopf (Princeton) is clear and authoritative on life on Earth, while Robert Kirshner lays bare the underlying physics in The Extravagant Universe (Princeton). And scholars who have captured the high ground tend to remain there. The second part of Janet Browne鈥檚 biography of Darwin, Charles Darwin: The power of place (Knopf), confirms her place as top dog on Darwin.
Biography has the power to redress wrongs and make rights clear. Brenda Maddox鈥檚 Rosalind Franklin (HarperCollins) is well worth rereading in this, the 50th anniversary of DNA鈥檚 discovery. Feelings of unease at the way in which Franklin鈥檚 work was shared without her consent is amplified in Athena Unbound by Henry Etzkowitz, Carol Kemelgor and Brian Uzzi (Cambridge University Press). This is the opposite of biography: rather than concentrating on a single life, it analyses the ways in which women academics are systematically sidelined. Walter Gratzer concentrates on the hurly-burly of competing ideas 鈥� as well as personalities 鈥� in science in Eurekas and Euphorias (Oxford University Press).
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Autobiography has its place: John Beckwith managed a turbulent life of science and politics. His Making Genes, Making Waves (Harvard University Press) shows that it鈥檚 a tough act, but well worth the effort.
How to grasp the complexity of a life in science when the topic itself is complex, slippery and besieged by simple metaphors, is ably handled in Nexus by Mark Buchanan (W. W. Norton/Weidenfeld & Nicolson). He accomplishes a difficult task with elegance and clarity. To hone your thinking, read and mark Making Sense of Life by Evelyn Fox Keller (Harvard University Press), in which Keller uses her experience as a mathematician now lecturing in life sciences to show the constraints of different habits of thought. (She offers ways out.)
History obsesses readers and publishers alike. The 鈥渄aughters鈥� and 鈥渟ons鈥�, of Dava Sobel, are churning out swift takes on striking figures as exemplars of past science. But sometimes re-examining the evidence without the window dressing of personality is absorbing enough. Try The Biology of plague by Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan (Cambridge University Press), which shows the reality behind the legendary Black Death.