book review in science

Every print subscription comes with full digital access

Science News

These are science news’ favorite books of 2021.

These are the Science News staff’s picks for must-read science books of the year.

Share this:

By Science News Staff

December 8, 2021 at 9:00 am

Many of the Science News staff’s favorite books of the year challenge how we understand the world, from rethinking human history to reimagining the toilet. For a satisfying read, you can’t go wrong with any of these books, including a couple by our Science News colleagues. Find in-depth reviews here .

The Dawn of Everything David Graeber and David Wengrow Farrar, Straus and Giroux $35

This provocative history challenges the conventional wisdom that societies progressed through a series of stages that inevitably led to inequalities — instead arguing that people have experimented with a variety of social systems since the Stone Age ( SN: 11/6/21, p. 34 ).  

First Steps Jeremy DeSilva Harper $27.99

It’s impossible to pinpoint just one thing that makes humans human. But DeSilva, a paleoanthropologist, argues that the emergence of upright walking led our ancestors down an evolutionary path that resulted in the features that make humans unique ( SN: 4/24/21, p. 28 ).  

Life’s Edge Carl Zimmer Dutton $28

By considering the supposed hallmarks of life, and the exceptions to the rules, this book tackles one of biology’s thorniest questions: What makes something alive? ( SN: 3/27/21, p. 28 ).  

The Code Breaker Walter Isaacson Simon & Schuster $35

Just after winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Jennifer Doudna is the subject of a biography that looks at her foundational work on CRISPR/Cas9 and delves into the ethics of gene editing ( SN: 3/27/21, p. 29 ).  

Finding the Mother Tree Suzanne Simard Knopf $28.95

In this moving memoir, Simard recounts how she went from working at a logging company to becoming an ecologist and uncovering the hidden underground networks that connect the trees within a forest ( SN: 7/3/21 & 7/17/21, p. 36 ). 

Wild Souls Emma Marris Bloomsbury $28

Blending science and philosophy, Marris, an environmental writer, explores the ethical dilemmas associated with preserving wildlife, and forces readers to contemplate what humans owe other animals ( SN: 7/31/21, p. 28 ).  

Pipe Dreams Chelsea Wald Avid Reader Press $27

In this lively tour of toilets around the world, readers meet scientists, activists and entrepreneurs who are finding creative ways to increase access to sanitation and make the management of human waste more environmentally sustainable ( SN: 4/10/21, p. 29 ).  

Empire of Pain Patrick Radden Keefe Doubleday $32.50

Keefe, a staff writer at the New Yorker , investigates how the actions of three generations of the Sackler family — owners of the pharmaceutical company that made the painkiller OxyContin — set the stage for the opioid crisis.  

On the Fringe Michael D. Gordin Oxford Univ. $18.95

Gordin, a historian, reviews astrology, alchemy, eugenics and other subjects — many of which were once considered mainstream science — to show how challenging it is to define pseudoscience ( SN: 8/28/21, p. 30 ). 

Flashes of Creation Paul Halpern Basic Books $30

In the mid-20th century, George Gamow and Fred Hoyle stood on opposite sides of a great debate over how the universe began. By recounting the careers of these dueling physicists, this book traces how the Big Bang theory and modern cosmology came to be ( SN: 8/28/21, p. 30 ).  

Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond Ashley Jean Yeager MIT Press $24.95

Astronomer Vera Rubin provided key evidence for the existence of dark matter, an invisible substance now thought to account for the majority of the universe’s mass. In this biography, Yeager, Science News ’ associate news editor, looks at how Rubin persevered in the face of skepticism of her work and the sexism that pervaded science in the mid-20th century ( SN: 8/14/21, p. 29 ).  

Gory Details Erika Engelhaupt National Geographic $26

Readers with a morbid curiosity look no further. Engelhaupt, a frequent contributor to Science News , entertains with stories about topics that are not suitable for polite conversation . Everything from fecal transplants to leggy insects, face mites and other critters that just might give you the heebie-jeebies makes the cut ( SN: 2/27/21, p. 29 ).  

Buy these books from Bookshop.org . Science News is a Bookshop.org affiliate and will earn a commission on purchases made from links in this article.

More Stories from Science News on Science & Society

Scientists are getting serious about UFOs. Here’s why

‘Then I Am Myself the World’ ponders what it means to be conscious

Twisters asks if you can 'tame' a tornado. We have the answer

The world has water problems. This book has solutions

Does social status shape height?

In ‘Warming Up,’ the sports world’s newest opponent is climate change

‘After 1177 B.C.’ describes how societies fared when the Bronze Age ended

‘Cull of the Wild’ questions sacrificing wildlife in the name of conservation

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.

Not a subscriber? Become one now .

• Subscribe to BBC Science Focus Magazine
• Previous Issues
• Future tech
• Everyday science
• Planet Earth
• Newsletters

73 best science books you need to read in 2024

Our team has hand-picked the very best science books you should read in 2024.

A good science book won't just teach you some interesting facts: it will help you to look at the world around you in a different way. Whether it's an archaeology book that helps you to re-evaluate humans' place in the natural world, or a cosmology book that takes you back to how it all began, you'll come out the other side with a brand new perspective.

For those with a curious mind, science books are an invaluable resource for learning about subjects you have no idea about. From the more mainstream subjects like health, psychology and wildlife, to the more intense topics like quantum physics and geometry, to the more light-hearted subjects like food science, there's sure to be plenty of new stuff to learn.

Whatever your taste, there are new, brilliant science books being released every week. We've picked our choice of the very best, so read on for plenty of inspiration to expand your personal library.

If you're in the mood for something specific, we also have plenty of reading lists on various subjects to help you choose.

In no particular order, here are some of our very favourite science books.

The best science books to read in 2024

The joy of science.

Jim Al-Khalili

In Jim Al-Khalili’s latest offering, The Joy of Science , we are presented with eight lessons in how to lead a more rational life and see things as they really are. It’s an easily digestible, pocket-sized guide in how to think more scientifically, and how this can benefit us in everyday life.

Looking at things objectively can help break down social constructs and pre-existing beliefs, and the ideas at the heart of scientific method are deeply relevant as we try to navigate the complicated times that we live in.

• Listen to Jim explain the origins of the Universe on the Science Focus Podcast

Insectpedia: A Brief Compendium of Insect Lore

By Eric. R. Eaton

With hand-drawn illustrations, anecdotes, and curious facts about some of the most fascinating bug species on the planet, this pocket-friendly encyclopaedia is a delightful and entertaining collection of insect lore and storied history of entomology.

From murder hornets and jumping beans to mole crickets and zombie lady-beetles, Insectpedia has a charming blend of insect facts and mythology. It’s presented in an A-Z format, making it easy to pick up and read for only a few seconds to learn something new. This is an ideal book if you like to start conversations with, “Hey, did you know…”

Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities

By Marcia Bjornerud

Discover a treasure trove of bizarre and awe-inspiring geologic wonders that have captured our imagination over the millennia with Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities . From areology (the study of the geology of Mars) to zircon (a mineral that can outlast almost all other materials on Earth), this is an engaging and entertaining lexicon on the diversity of rocks and our interactions with them.

It covers mythology, geologic processes, and imports from diverse languages, all written with a healthy helping of humour and wit. This pocket-sized book is illustrated, and the hardback comes bound in real cloth, so it’s ideal to toss in your bag and dip into on the go.

The Science of Can and Can’t: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals

Chiara Marletto

Most laws of physics tell us what must happen. Throw a ball in the air and it will come back down. But physicist Chiara Marletto, a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, says that laws like this only tell us part of the story.

The rest, she says, lie in 'counterfactuals': things that could be. A notebook could be written in. There is no law of physics that tells us whether it will be – but we can't describe what it's for without talking about the possibility.

Marletto believes that counterfactual properties like this could hold the key to solving some of the biggest problems in science, from the biology of life, to artificial intelligence , to climate change.

• Listen to Chiara on the Science Focus Podcast

Project Hail Mary

An important memo to all fans of Andy Weir’s debut novel The Martian (and the Hollywood adaptation): read Project Hail Mary. Now.

While the premise of the new story sounds near identical to the author’s earlier work – a lone man is forced to use his scientific cunning after he becomes stranded from Earth – the introduction of a mystery lifeforce, which we won’t spoil here, blasts the plot in an unexpected direction.

Significantly, the protagonist is no Mark Watney, the astronaut played by Matt Damon in The Martian movie, either. The main character is, well, he doesn’t know what he is, waking from a coma next to two corpses, his memory banks empty. And if that’s not enough to draw you in, we don’t know what will.

• Listen to Andy on the Science Focus Podcast
• Read an interview with Andy

Foodology: A Food-lover’s Guide to Digestive Health and Happiness

Saliha Mahmood Ahmed

Foodology is part recipe book, part science book, all food. Gastroenterologist and food writer Saliha Mahmood Ahmed takes us on a tour of the digestive system, from the very first bite to... the other end. On the way, she also dives into why food makes us so happy and how a delicious smell can make our mouths water.

On top of all of this, of course, are 50 recipes designed not just to be delicious, but to support your gut health.

Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era

Rory Cellan-Jones

Wake up. Check social media. Send a 'good morning' text. Check the weather app. Check the news... From the moment our alarm apps go off in the morning to when we finally log off Instagram at night, our smartphones are always by our sides.

On the one hand, we can connect with more people than ever before and we have unlimited access to information. But on the other, these devices are encroaching on every aspect of our lives, giving tech companies more access to and more control over everything about us.

Either way, the smartphone has arguably changed our lives more than almost any tool ever invented. In Always On , Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's chief technology correspondent, explores whether this is cause for hope or fear.

Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning through Making

Anna Ploszajski

Scientists tend to think about materials in terms of quantities like their melting point, their density and how much pressure they can withstand. But humanity's earliest materials scientists didn't work in a lab measuring how much stress an object could withstand: they worked with their hands and made things.

Anna Ploszajski, herself a materials scientist, goes back to these ancient roots to explore in a hands-on way. She learns from the trial-and-error wisdom of generations of experts in clay, sugar, steel, glass, paper and more.

Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality Change

Christian Jarrett

The promise of changing your personality to become who you aspire to be might sound like the domain of life coaches and unconvincing self-help books. But it turns out that such a thing is possible, says psychologist Dr Christian Jarrett.

Using genuine science, Jarrett explains how you really can alter your personality to your liking, whether that's becoming more extroverted or conscientious, or even learning to use the 'Dark Triad' – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – to your advantage.

• Read an extract from Be Who You Want
• Listen to Christian on the Instant Genius podcast

The Motherhood Complex: The Story of Our Changing Selves

Melissa Hogenboom

People often say that becoming a parent is one of the best things someone can do. But we talk a lot less about how pregnancy and giving birth change the body.

Science journalist Melissa Hogenboom takes on this topic in The Motherhood Complex . She describes every aspect of the experience, from the psychological effect of your changing body to how pregnancy affects the brain.

She also looks at the social side of parenting, drawing on her experience as a mother of two to explore how a parent’s sense of self and relationship to the rest of the world are altered after they have a child.

Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Absolutely Everything

Jordan Ellenberg

Geometry is undoubtedly among most people's least favourite topics from school. Not only is it complicated, it often seems to have no value for the real world. When am I ever going to need to know how to draw an equilateral triangle using only a ruler and a pair of compasses?

It turns out, though, that geometry really does have real-world uses. As Jordan Ellenberg explains in Shape , not only does geometry have uses in physics and artificial intelligence, it also pops up in finance, US politics and even poetry.

• Listen to Jordan on the Instant Genius podcast

Swearing Is Good For You

The next time someone tells you off for swearing, give them a copy of this book. Byrne explains all the ways in which swearing is good for us, from pain relief to team bonding, and reveals what cursing chimpanzees can tell us about the origin of dirty words.

Mysteries Of The Quantum Universe

Thibault Damour & Mathieu Burniat

Billed as ‘Tintin meets Brian Cox’, this book performs the tricky task of making quantum physics accessible. Join Bob and his dog Rick on a journey through the world of the very small, talking atoms with Einstein and eating crêpes with Max Planck.

Only Connect: The Official Quiz Book and Only Connect: The Difficult Second Quiz Book

Jack Waley-Cohen and David McGaughey

Train yourself to win an episode of Only Connect , the BBC’s fiendish quiz hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell. Both books of puzzles get you to find the connections, finish the sequences, defeat the Connecting Walls and decode the phrases with missing vowels.

The puzzles are classics taken from the TV programme, arranged in increasing difficulty. Start with a warm-up from the first heat, and gradually work your way up to questions worthy of the final round.

• 10 of the best quiz collections and puzzle books

The Animals Among Us

John Bradshaw

Why do we keep pets? Bradshaw argues that it goes beyond cuteness and companionship, and all the way back to an ancient connection in our shared past. Weaving together psychology and evolutionary science, the book will give pet owners a newfound appreciation for their furry friends.

• Listen to John on the Science Focus Podcast

Beyond Infinity

Eugenia Cheng

It takes a talented writer to bring the concept of infinity to life, but Cheng’s infectious enthusiasm makes maths a delight. Discover why some infinities are bigger than others, and why there’s always room at an infinite hotel, even if it’s full.

• Read an extract from Beyond Infinity
• Five fascinating facts about infinity

Graphic Science: Seven Journeys of Discovery

Darryl Cunningham

With his crisp comic art, Cunningham tells the stories of seven scientists who history has rather overlooked. Mary Anning, Alfred Wegener, Fred Hoyle, Jocelyn Bell Burnell… they’re names you may have heard of, but Graphic Science underlines the importance of their work.

Testosterone Rex

Cordelia Fine

The winner of 2017's Royal Society books prize, Fine cuts through gender stereotypes with panache, dispelling the myth that testosterone creates a deep-rooted division between the sexes and discussing what this means for the society we live in.

• Read an extract from Testosterone Rex
• Read an interview with Cordelia

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story

Angela Saini

Another book on our list tackling gender stereotypes, Saini discusses how centuries of science have painted a distorted picture of sex differences, the impact this has had on women in society, and how we’re finally beginning to redress the balance.

• Listen to Angela on the Science Focus Podcast

Other Minds

Peter Godfrey-Smith

The octopus is essentially an alien species right here on Earth – a sentient being whose intelligence has evolved entirely independently from our own. Godfrey-Smith peers into the minds of these cephalopods, revealing what they can tell us about the nature of consciousness itself.

• Read an extract from Other Minds

Gastrophysics

Charles Spence

In this breezy introduction to the new science of gastrophysics, Spence explains why our mealtimes are a truly multisensory experience. It turns out that everything from the background music to the colour and shape of our plates affects the taste of our food.

• Read an interview with Charles

Women In Science

Rachel Ignotofsky

Discover (or rediscover) the work of 50 trailblazing women in science in Ignotofsky’s gorgeously illustrated book. Familiar names like Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace sit alongside lesser-known pioneers such as Maria Sibylla Merian, one of the first and more important entomologists.

• Read an extract from Women in Science

Ask An Astronaut

Who better to describe life in space than someone who’s walked the (space)walk? Tim pens answers to the public’s burning questions, revealing what space smells like, how he enjoyed a cosmic cuppa, and what it felt like to return to Earth.

• Read an interview with Tim after his return to Earth

Caesar’s Last Breath

Every breath we take tells a story as old as the Earth. Kean’s eye-opening guide to the science and history of our atmosphere takes in everything from radioactive pigs and spontaneous combustion to Julius Caesar’s final moments and some unforgettable performance art at the Moulin Rouge.

• Read an interview with Sam

Out Of Nothing

Daniel Locke & David Blandy

Combining science fact with dreamlike imagery, Locke and Blandy’s eye-popping graphic novel celebrates the ingenuity of the human mind. We travel across centuries from Gutenberg’s printing press to Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, via Picasso, Einstein, Rosalind Franklin and more.

Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

Henry Marsh

Following up 2014’s much-lauded Do No Harm was never going to be easy, but this second part of Henry Marsh’s memoir is an equally honest, human and beautifully written account of the ups and downs of his life as a brain surgeon.

To Be A Machine

Mark O’Connell

With shades of Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux, O’Connell explores the world of transhumanism, meeting the cyborgs, utopians and futurists who hope to use technology to improve the human condition. It makes for an engrossing, witty and at times disturbing read.

• Read an extract from To Be A Machine
• Listen to Mark on the Science Focus Podcast

Anatomy: A Cutaway Look Inside the Human Body

Hélène Druvert & Jean-Claude Druvert

A cutaway book of the human body, Anatomy elicited gasps of delight in the office. Its flaps and delicate lasercuts allow kids to explore the organs, systems and senses that keep us alive, while the accompanying text provides a nice introduction to human biology.

Patient H69

Vanessa Potter

One day, Vanessa Potter started to lose her sight. Within three days, she was completely blind. Patient H69 documents her descent into darkness – and her subsequent recovery as, armed with scientific insight, she began to make sense of her unique condition.

The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating

Anthony Warner

Paleo, GAPS, alkaline, detox… so many diets, but do any of them actually work? With scientific rigour and a generous helping of expletives, Warner takes on the food fads one by one, and asks why we’re so easily taken in by pseudoscience in the first place.

• Read our interview with Anthony Warner
• Listen to Anthony on the Science Focus Podcast

The Lost Words

Robert Macfarlane & Jackie Morris

Worried by the way in which natural words (acorn, dandelion, kingfisher, etc) are disappearing from children’s vocabulary, Robert Macfarlane has teamed up with illustrator Jackie Morris to produce this exquisite ‘spell book’, combining acrostic poems with hand-painted artwork.

Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave

Alice Gregory

After two decades as a prominent sleep researcher, Prof Alice Gregory is well placed to teach us how to sleep better. In Nodding Off , she explains the science of sleep and what happens if we don’t get enough of it. She also offers important tips on how to improve our shut-eye, to help us feel better in our waking hours.

• Listen to Alice on the Science Focus Podcast

Notes on a Nervous Planet

After experiencing years of anxiety and panic attacks, Matt Haig began to looks for the links between how he was feeling and what was going on around him. Notes On A Nervous Planet is Haig’s look into how to feel happy on a fast and nervous planet, and tells us how we can lead happier, healthier and saner lives.

• The science of happiness: seven books to bring a smile to your face

How to Invent Everything: Rebuild All of Civilization

Picture this: you’ve gone back in time for a casual gander at what cavemen were like, or to have a go at taming a dinosaur, but your time machine broke. And you can’t fix it. But don’t stress, you’ve got Ryan North’s informative manual on how to rebuild civilisation from scratch. Get started with inventing language, and then over 400 pages build your way up to modern computers.

• Listen to Ryan on the Science Focus Podcast

Wonders: Spectacular Moments in Nature Photography

Rhonda Rubinstein

Wonders features the award-winning images from the BigPicture Natural World Photography competition. Along with stunning photos, this science book explains the scientific phenomena and photography behind each shot.

The Happy Brain: The Science of Where Happiness Comes From, and Why

Dean Burnett

In our constant quest for happiness, we change jobs, pursue relationships, watch stand-up comedy and take up hobbies, among many, many other things. Neuroscientist Dean Burnett combines cutting-edge research and views from all kinds of experts to explain where happiness comes from, and why we need it so much.

• Listen to Dean on the Science Focus Podcast

Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics

Jeffrey Bub, Tanya Bub

In this graphic novel about entanglement, you’ll learn how quantum physics has led to wild theories about cats who are both dead and alive, and you’ll listen in on Niels Bohr’s therapy sessions with Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger. It’s more fun than you ever thought you could have learning about quantum mechanics.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions

Stephen Hawking

Published posthumously, Stephen Hawking’s last book tackles some of the Universe’s biggest questions. Is time travel possible? Is there other intelligent life in the Universe? How do we shape the future? And unlike A Brief History Of Time , this one is actually intelligible to the average armchair reader.

• Can you solve these deviously difficult Stephen Hawking-inspired questions?

Inventing Ourselves: The secret life of the teenage brain

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Adolescence is a crazy time: there’s a need for intense friendships and extreme risk-taking, and it’s also when many mental illnesses begin to develop. In her book, which won the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2018, neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore draws on cutting-edge research to explain what’s happening in the brains of teenagers, and what it can tell us about how we’ve all developed.

• Listen to Sarah-Jayne on the Science Focus Podcast
• Read an interview with Sarah-Jayne

Alex Hutchinson

The capacity to endure underlies most great athletic performances, but what limits endurance? Against the backdrop of some of the world’s best athletes trying to break the two-hour marathon mark, Alex Hutchinson explores new science around what defines our limits: is it our bodies, food, or pain? Or is it all in our heads?

• Listen to Alex on the Science Focus Podcast

The Science of Sin

We all sin to some extent, whether that’s eating more cake than we know is good for us, or carrying out more serious illicit acts. In The Science Of Sin , neurobiologist Jack Lewis talks us through why we do bad things, illuminates the neural battles between temptation and restraint, and helps us understand why we do the things we know we shouldn’t.

• Listen to Jack on the Science Focus Podcast

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 28

Rosamund Kidman Cox

The Natural History Museum’s annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition always delivers beautiful wildlife images. Portfolio 28 features the best of 2018’s competition.

Hélène Druvert, Emmanuelle Grundmann

Ocean by Hélène Druvert and Emmanuelle Grundmann explains the most fascinating facets of the sea, including waves, coral reefs and the food chain. With captivating fold-out infographics and stunning laser-cut illustrations, it’s a beautiful, interactive tome that’ll help both kids and adults appreciate our oceans.

Matt Fitch, Chris Baker, Mike Collins

Apollo tells the suspense-filled story of the first Moon landing in graphic novel form. It’s well-researched and includes rich historical detail, tracking not only the mission itself, but the political tension around the programme and the nerve-racking experience shared by the crew’s families.

Dictionary of Dinosaurs

Matthew G Baron

This beautiful book, illustrated by Dieter Braun, details every dinosaur that’s ever been discovered, from Aardonyx to Zuniceratops . It includes up-to-date facts from dinosaur experts about where these creatures lived, what they ate and when they roamed the planet.

Infinite Wonder: An Astronaut’s Photographs from a Year in Space

Scott Kelly

Astronaut Scott Kelly had a year that photographers would envy. He circled the Earth 5,400 times, witnessing 10,944 sunrises and sunsets – about 16 per day. From the International Space Station, he viewed our planet in a unique way, and shares his incredible photos with us in Infinite Wonder .

The Weil Conjectures

Karen Olsson

André and Simone Weil were brother and sister. One a renowned mathematician known for contributions to algebraic geometry and number theory, the other a famous philosopher and political activist. Maths and philosophy become entangled in this fascinating memoir of the two 20th-Century figures.

Something Deeply Hidden

Sean Carroll

From physicist Sean Carroll comes a history of quantum discoveries, and a guide to a subject that has baffled and blinded with its potential. Tackling huge questions, myths and conundrums about our Universe is no easy task, but Carroll does so elegantly.

• The parallel worlds of quantum mechanics

Jennifer Paxton and Katy Wiedemann

This beautiful book explores the human body from underneath the skin as if it were a journey through a museum. Katy Wiedemann’s delicately drawn diagrams accompany Jennifer Paxton’s detailed anatomical information for a learning experience that is quite unlike any other.

• Journey underneath the skin with these amazing pictures from the new book Anatomicum

Kit Chapman

How do scientists make elements that don’t naturally exist? In this engaging book, Kit Chapman opens our eyes to the way superheavy, unstable elements at the far reaches of the periodic table have changed our lives, and predicts what’s next for nuclear science.

• The weird ways extraordinary scientists made synthetic elements

Superior: The Return of Race Science

A timely look at the history of racism and racial bias within the scientific community. Perhaps most shocking is the sign of race science returning to modern conversations around genetics and political power.

• Read the edited transcript of the interview

The Uninhabitable Earth

David Wallace-Wells

What will continued climate change do to our planet? The future is much worse than we think, says David Wallace-Wells, who is deputy editor of New York magazine and a science writer. Sparking debate and conversation across the world, The Uninhabitable Earth is one of 2019’s best books.

The NASA Archives: 60 Years in Space

Piers Bizony, Andrew Chaikin and Roger Launius

A stunning visual journey through the NASA archives, documenting six decades of space exploration. Essays discuss the past, present and future of the American space agency, and with over 400 images, illustrations and photographs, most not widely seen by the general public, this is a coffee table book that is a delight to pick up and peruse.

Invisible Women

Caroline Criado Perez

The winner of 2019's Royal Society Science Book Prize reveals the shocking way that the world was designed with only one gender in mind. From female participants missing from research studies, to health apps allowing users to track copper intake but not periods, the holes in our knowledge of women – called the ‘gender data gap’ by Criado Perez – has led to a history of discrimination.

• Listen to Caroline on the Science Focus Podcast

Life Changing: How Humans are Altering Life on Earth

Helen Pilcher

The book that has stood out for me in 2020 is Helen Pilcher's Life Changing . It is a fascinating but complicated topic that necessarily involves bring together a lot of tricky ideas and concepts. Helen's book does exactly that, and in a brilliantly engaging way.

I had the pleasure of doing a festival event online with Helen over the summer and it was a joy to explore some of the many weird, and often not so wonderful, ways we are altering species. – Recommended by Dr Adam Hart

• 10 weird ways humans have influenced animal evolution

Is Free Speech Racist?

Gavan Titley

This is a small but mighty book.

Titley shows how racists have capitalised on free speech arguments to "reanimate racist discourses", and he soberly, succinctly skewers the claim that the big threat to free speech is from those who challenge racism, or any other kind of prejudice, including transphobia. – Recommended by Angela Saini

Stephen Hawking: A Memoir of Friendship and Physics

Leonard Mlodinow

This concise memoir of Stephen Hawking swapped back and forth between light-touch biography and personal recollections of a close friendship between Hawking and the author spanning the last fifteen years of Hawking’s life. We think we know Hawking the great scientist but this book highlights the sheer ordinariness of the many daily routines that made up the unseen part of his life.

The stories, told with humour and fondness, mean that I feel I now know Stephen Hawking a little better. – Recommended by Prof Jim Al-Khalili

• Listen to Leonard on the Science F o cus Podcast

Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA

Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin’s book is one that completely changed my understanding of evolution. I understood how small changes evolved – gradually changing colour or brains getting bigger. But it wasn’t until I read this book that I could finally get my head around how the really big changes happened, like moving from the ocean to land or learning to fly.

The things I learned from this book stayed with me – I’m still dropping facts into conversation. – Recommended by Sara Rigby

• Listen to Neil on the Science Focus Podcast

What Have I Done?

Laura Dockrill

Laura has tackled an extremely difficult and often taboo subject with searing honesty and humour. As a person struggling with postnatal mental health challenges myself, reading someone else's difficulties in print made me feel less alone. A scary number of parents suffer with similar issues but it's rarely spoken about, especially in such an open way.

I'm so sorry about what Laura went through, but am very grateful to her for sharing her story as it gives me, and I'm sure others, hope, that we can get through it. – Recommended by Roma Agrawal

Barry Lopez

I’ve been dying to read Barry Lopez’s Horizon , the long-awaited full-length follow up to his 1986 Arctic Dreams , but for various reasons I saved it until the paperback release in 2020, and I’m so glad I did.

This was the perfect 2020 book. With Lopez as my guide, I escaped on six long, inspiring journeys — from the Kenyan desert to Antarctica — that made me gasp, cry, smile and think very differently about the world. My copy is full of notes and scribbles and I know I’ll be returning to Lopez’s magnificent prose and challenging ideas for years to come. – Recommended by Dr Helen Scales

Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told about Food is Wrong

Tim Spector

Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry. That’s really the only rule I have when it comes to food. But, as I get older, my body is telling me I might need to make a few changes. The trouble is, it seems the more we understand about how food affects our health and mood, the more complicated it is to decide what we ought to put in our bodies.

Prof Tim Spector’s book is an easy-to-digest guide to all the controversies in the world of diet and nutrition right now. Do diets ever work? Should we all be eating less salt? Are carbs the devil’s work?

Without ever shying away from the complicated science, Spector's book satisfyingly arrives at some simple advice that would probably improve most diets. In short: listen to your body and eat diversely. It’s a breezy read, and I’ll be honest, probably the first book about food I’ve read cover-to-cover that that didn’t have a recipe in it. – Recommended by Daniel Bennett

• 7 food 'facts' that are completely wrong

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes is a sensitive, beautiful and very human view of our ancient relatives, the Neanderthals. Her writing is lyrical, insightful and poignant, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Highly recommended. – Recommended by Dr Helen Pilcher

• Listen to Rebecca on the History Extra Podcast
• Did Neanderthals have a society?

The Gynae Geek: Your No-Nonsense Guide to ‘Down-There’ Healthcare

Dr Anita Mitra

I’ve followed Dr Anita Mitra, aka The Gynae Geek, on Instagram for a while and always loved her accessible approach to female health. This year, I decided to treat myself to a copy of her paperback book. I have a science-based education and work at BBC Science Focus , so like to think that I have a pretty good grasp of anatomy and biology, but like many people of my age, my school sex education was abysmal.

This book not only gave no-nonsense, non-judgmental advice about ‘down there’ but also left me absolutely gob-smacked by some facts about the female reproductive system. Did you know, for example, that the Fallopian tubes are mobile, and one tube can pick up an egg from the opposite ovary? Nope, neither did I!

It’s also a wonderful form of support for anyone who is worried about pregnancy, polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis or other gynaecological concerns, and can either put your mind to rest or help you decide if you need to reach out to a healthcare professional. – Recommended by Alice Lipscombe-Southwell

• Read an extract from The Gynae Geek

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

While it's not strictly an official 'science' book, it is nonetheless an alarming, eyebrow-raising and often hilarious true life tale of what happens when a fringe political ideology clashes with the real world, in ways which incorporate economics, conservation, zoology, parasitology, environmentalism, various types of psychology and animal behaviour studies, and more. – Recommended by Dean Burnett

• Read an extract from A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear

A Perfect Planet: Our One in a Billion World Revealed

Published to accompany Sir David Attenborough’s latest five-part series due to air on BBC One in the New Year, this is a book brimming with spectacular photography and great behind-the-scenes details. Each chapter covers a major topic; the Sun, weather, the oceans, volcanoes and humans, and tells the story of how the combination of these five ingredients somehow coalesced to form our perfect planet.

It has all the major bases covered, too. Crocodiles trying to catch birds? Check. Crazy scientist standing next to an erupting volcano? Check. Cryogenic frogs that freeze their blood and later come back to life? Check!

A short review like this (especially in the hands of an untrained picture editor) can’t really do a book justice, but if you love wildlife and appreciate great photography then this is the book you want. – James Cutmore

• In pictures: Sir David Attenborough's new series A Perfect Planet

Cosmic Clouds 3-D: Where Stars Are Born

David Eicher and Brian May

Legendary Queen guitarist Brian May brings us the first book to show cosmic clouds of gas and dust – nebulae – in 3D.

I often think the beauty of the night sky is epic enough to rival the revered art that hangs in major galleries around the world. Now this gorgeous book allows us to see them like never before. – Recommended by Colin Stuart

Drugs Without the Hot Air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs

Anyone wanting a clear-headed primer on the science of what drugs are, how they work, and why people take them need look no further than David Nutt’s landmark work.

The second edition was published in early 2020 and includes the latest developments in the science as well as the addition of several up-to-date case studies. There’s a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and research to dig into here but thanks to Nutt’s direct, no nonsense writing style the book also serves as a masterclass in science communication. – Recommended by Jason Goodyer

• Read an extract from Drugs Without the Hot Air

Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut

Samantha Cristoforetti

Lately, I have become as fascinated by the way that humans relate to science and the natural world, as I am to the scientific breakthroughs themselves. I’ve also, for the first time, realised just how momentous it is to be sending people into space. Having never known a time when this hasn’t happened, it’s taken me a while to get it into perspective!

So, this diary of what it is like to go through astronaut training for a 200-day mission to the International Space Station crossed my desk at exactly the right time. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti writes with honesty. Her prose is simple and down to Earth, which increased my empathy for her story. – Dr Stuart Clark

The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

This spectacular book is more than traditional history, as many of its surprising – often strange – revelations about Viking life come not from texts, but archaeology.

Price guides us through their vast world, studding his grand narrative with extraordinary details: isotopic identification of Scandinavian skeletons in Russia, silk caps from York and Lincoln probably from the same Byzantine bale, and a candle burning until the air inside a burial chamber ran out. – Recommended by Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes

How to Argue with a Racist

Adam Rutherford

Given the renewed examination of race relations sparked by the tragic death of George Floyd, How to Argue with a Racist is doubtlessly one of the most important reads of 2020. But it’s arguably the most interesting too: debunking racial pseudoscience, geneticist and author Adam Rutherford expertly explains how all humans (including white supremacists) share African and Chinese ancestors – and how, biologically, race is near impossible to define.

As a bonus, it also demonstrates the many flaws of your ancestry DNA test results, and why most Brits are related to Edward III. Engaging and thought-provoking throughout. – Recommended by Thomas Ling

• Listen to Adam on the Science Focus Podcast

The Little Book of Cosmology

Lyman Page is a professor of astronomy at the Princeton University in New Jersey and his principal area of research has for decades been the heat afterglow of the Big Bang . Incredibly, it is still around us today, greatly cooled by cosmic expansion in the past 13.82 billion years and accounting for a whopping 99.9 per cent of the photons, or particles of light, in the Universe.

I thought this would be just another book by an academic jumping on the popular science bandwagon and short-changing the public with something pretty ordinary. But nothing could be further from the truth.

This ranks alongside Steven Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes as the best book on cosmology I have read. A compact treasure-trove of cosmic insights to be read, mulled over, and read again. – Recommended by Marcus Chown

• Read an extract from The Little Book of Cosmology

Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret

Catherine Colman Flowers

The introduction of the sewage system was one of the revolutionary inventions that changed the world.

This book is a reminder that basic waste sanitation is vital for public health, and is a wake-up call that climate change and rising sea levels will inevitably hit the underprivileged hardest. – Recommended by Jheni Osman

Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships

Dr Camilla Pang

If you want to understand how light refracts, or how proteins in the body work, read this book. If you want to make better decisions, or understand how to form fruitful friendship groups, read this book.

It came as no shock to me when Explaining Humans was chosen as The Royal Society's science book of the year in 2020. This book changed my life in many ways. It brought to light aspects of society that I didn't even know I hadn't understood, until now. It enabled me to begin unpicking my reasons for doing things a certain way, to start questioning my own routines and 'rules' for life. – Recommended by Amy Barrett

• Listen to Camilla on the Science Focus Podcast

Science book reading lists

We reckon this is a fine selection of books to read, but there are plenty more that are well worth your time from the annals of history. If you’re looking for a little inspiration, here are a few more of our book recommendations to mull over:

• 28 of the best non-fiction and fiction books we read in 2020
• 20 of the best wildlife books and nature writing
• 16 of the best maths books
• 5 best physics books, according to Jim Al-Khalili
• AI: 5 of the best must-read artificial intelligence books
• 5 race science books you must read
• Science books for kids: 5 books for budding scientists

Are you excited to read any of the books on this list? Let us know what you think of our pick of the best science books out this month by messaging us on Twitter or Facebook , tag us in a picture of you reading any of the books on Instagram , and join the Science Focus Book Club for a community of other science book lovers.

Share this article

Online staff writer, BBC Science Focus

• Terms & Conditions
• Privacy policy
• Cookies policy
• Code of conduct
• Magazine subscriptions
• Manage preferences

Books | Best Sellers

Science - september 15, 2019.

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only.

by Yuval Noah Harari

Harper Perennial

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million
• Bookshop.org

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE

by Bessel van der Kolk

BEING MORTAL

by Atul Gawande

THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

by Daniel Kahneman

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

THE MOSQUITO

by Timothy C. Winegard

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS

by Rebecca Skloot

by Beth Macy

Little, Brown

WHY WE SLEEP

by Matthew Walker

21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Spiegel & Grau

by Susan Cain

The New York Times Book Review

Talent, glamour, money, fraud: welcome to the art world.

A memoir by a former high-end dealer depicts a largely unregulated industry where jet-setting extravagance goes hand in hand with guile and deceit.

Advertisement

Weekly Best Sellers Lists

• Combined Print & E-Book Fiction
• Hardcover Fiction
• Paperback Trade Fiction
• Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction
• Hardcover Nonfiction
• Paperback Nonfiction
• Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous
• Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover
• Children’s Picture Books
• Children’s & Young Adult Series
• Young Adult Hardcover

Monthly Best Sellers Lists

Book Reviews

Book Review: Why People Collect Trees and You Should, Too

A new book about tree collectors shows how arboreal curation is an outlet for art and activism

Kathleen Yale

Book Review: Are The Wild Animals in Your Backyard a Nuisance or Neighbors?

Call off the pest control and learn to live with wildlife

Tove Danovich

Digital Access for $1

Sign up now to get 60 days of digital access

July/August 2024: Three New Books, Reviewed

A riveting quest to map the world; quantum physics in a four-act drama; climate solutions that show what we’re doing right

Dana Dunham, Maddie Bender, Amy Brady

Your Life Is Ruled by Games You Don’t Even Know You’re Playing

Our overreliance on the simplicity of game logic explains why capitalism got out of control

Carmen Maria Machado

Rats, Gardens, and Stories from a "Post-Impact" Future

Rats as you’ve never seen them; the journey of restoring a garden; stories from a “post-Impact” future

Maddie Bender, Lucy Tu, Alan Scherstuhl

Imagining a Radical New Relationship with the Mississippi River

The Mississippi River has been manipulated for decades. A new book considers alternative forms of control

Meera Subramanian

The Dark Side of Nostalgia for Wild, Untouched Places

A novel about the tensions between nature and modernity, animal social networks, and more books out now

Robin Marie MacArthur

How Plant Intelligence Can Soothe Climate Anxiety

In a new book, the wisdom of plants is a balm for our changing planet

David George Haskell

How the Strange Relationship between Chickens and Humans Shaped Our World

Chicken takeovers, the missing histories of silk, a dazzling memoir of gravity, and more books out now

How to Grieve Our Changing Planet

A new book on the perils of human exceptionalism

Megan Mayhew-Bergman

A Sexbot Gains Sentience in an Eerie New Novel

In a dark thriller, a sexbot questions her owner's demands for love

Alan Scherstuhl

What Plant Migrations Tell Us about Ourselves

New insights into why animals play, how to hunt an asteroid, and more books out now

Erica Berry

The Ten Best Science Books of 2020

New titles explore the mysterious lives of eels, the science of fear and our connections to the stars

Rachael Lallensack , Joe Spring and Corryn Wetzel

When it came to science news this year, our feeds were filled with discoveries and studies, many of them about Covid-19. Those stories, often about potential vaccines and transmission rates, but also about space travel and forest fires, certainly demanded attention. But it’s important that this year’s longer works about science don’t get lost in the deluge of content. Compelling books came out on everything from researchers’ efforts to understand fear to the importance of astronomy to a concentrated mission to learn about a charismatic owl. These impressive and entertaining works, which we’ve rounded up here after online debates and votes via Zoom meetings, offer the best way to slow down and gain a deeper understanding of how science informs our world and makes it a better place.

The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

In The Book of Eels , Swedish journalist Patrik Svensson weaves a masterful narrative that is part memoir and part scientific detective story. The personal stories mostly revolve around the author and his father, who took him to fish for European eels along the stream near his boyhood home, joined him to fish illegally for the creatures on a secret outing and worked with him to set up a special trap to catch more of the elusive fish. In between tales of family adventure, Svensson traces notable figures’ efforts to understand and explain the eel, including Aristotle’s claim that fish were born of mud, Freud’s mission to find the animal’s testicles and Danish scientist Johannes Schmidt’s steamship travels across the Atlantic Ocean to search out the critter’s birthplace—the animals are born in the ocean, but live in freshwater throughout Europe. The story slips through unexpected and sometimes dark personal places, wraps itself around strange historical facts and ends with the mysterious fish revealing itself to the author in the most surprising way.

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

Girls and women fighting climate change often face insufficient funding and a lack of credit where credit’s due. To address this inequality, editors Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson put together a book of essays and poems to raise female voices. Johnson, a marine biologist and the founder of Ocean Collectiv , and Wilkinson, the editor in chief of Project Drawdown —a nonprofit working to slow the increase in greenhouse gases—compiled compelling pieces on climate change crafted by 60 women. The collection, All We Can Save , showcases a diverse range of experts, all working to tackle climate issues in powerful ways. Poet Mary Oliver, former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis take their turns amidst lesser-known voices, like teenage activist Xiye Bastida—who is a leader of the Fridays for Future climate strike. The book is not only an entertaining and varied read, it’s also a crucial catalyst for change—one that led to a new project that provides support and community for women climate leaders.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

It would be hard to find a more extreme example of the ravages mental health can have on a family than that of the Galvins, a Colorado clan with 12 children raised from the 1940s to the 1960s, six of whom suffer from schizophrenia. In Hidden Valley Road , journalist Robert Kolker shares the most intimate details of the family’s difficult trials—which include knock-down, drag-out physical fights, murder, sexual abuse, harmful secrets and episodes of psychosis. But Kolker’s book is more than just a chronicle of the struggles of a family impacted by mental health issues; the journalist also traces scientists’ efforts to understand schizophrenia. As he shares the family’s evolution over several decades, Kolker details the effort to treat schizophrenia, from institutionalization to antipsychotic drugs, and to understand the causes of the disease, from environmental influences to genetic factors. Eventually, his two main threads, the family and scientific pursuit, meet up as the Galvins become a key component of groundbreaking genetic research into the disease—and the story becomes even more riveting.

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl

Fieldwork for a wildlife biologist working in Russia’s Far East during winter can be harsh, lonely and full of experiences that make for an entertaining story. Case in point is Owls of the Eastern Ice , in which Jonathan Slaght chronicles his 20-month-long mission in Primorye to find and track the Blakiston’s fish owl, a bird with a wingspan of more than six feet. The raptors, of which fewer than 2,000 exist in the wild, lack the disk-shaped face that improves hearing and the silent flight characteristic of other owls because they hunt underwater prey. The birds are interesting in their own right, but much of the gold in this book results from trials overcome by the author. Slaght works to find out where the endangered birds breed and hunt, so their habitat can be protected from logging. Along the way, the author is stranded for weeks by inclement weather, learns to deal with malfunctioning equipment, suffers hangovers from drinking industrial ethanol and recounts wild stories—like the one about a hunter who squats in the wilderness to go to the bathroom and loses a testicle to a hidden owl. In the end, Slaght is able to compile information that helps in the creation of a conservation plan for the creature. But the successful finish isn’t the reason to read the book; it’s the wild journey that captivates in this dispatch.

Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear

Clean: The New Science of Skin

In his book Clean , author and physician James Hamblin explores the history behind the human obsession with cleanliness and the colossal industry driving our current desire to scrub every inch of our bodies. At the same time, Hamblin details his voyage into a showerless life, which was not without a very smelly, greasy adjustment period. His friends swear he doesn’t smell or look visibly filthy, but if their word doesn’t convince you, Hamblin trots out science to explain his lack of funk and why his showerless routine—okay, he does rinse off quickly after a work out, but he hasn’t been sudsy in years—may not be unhealthy after all. Trillions of microbes cover our skin, creating a flourishing microbiome of good bacteria, and every time we lather up, we kill those little helpers en masse . These massive die-offs create room for harmful bacteria to set up camp, which triggers our bodies’ immune response in the form of nasty-looking, undesirable inflammation or irritation. To get to the truth about cleanliness, Hamblin consults a cast of characters—including dermatologists, microbiologists, allergists, immunologists, aestheticians, Amish people, venture capitalists and even some scam artists. The deeply-researched read leaves us wondering, is the future of skincare headed toward bolstering a healthy microbiome instead of obliterating it?

The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars

While humans have had their heads tilted toward the heavens for ages, modern life can feel distant and disengaged with the rest of the universe. Synthetic light pollution obscures the average person’s view of the night sky, blocking millions and billions of years of history—looking at stars is, of course, looking back in time. Because stargazing is so deeply rooted in our past, journalist Jo Marchant argues it may just be what makes us human. In her latest book, The Human Cosmos , Marchant details the many ways our relationship with the stars has deeply impacted our existence and evolution. Marchant tackles archeoastronomy by sharing the story of the Hall of the Bulls in France, where 20,000-year-old, cattle-shaped cave paintings likely charted the skies. She explains how the starscape is woven into government, religion and science. And she covers topics with an eye toward the future, from launching ourselves and unpiloted spacecrafts into space to chase new knowledge. All in all, Marchant’s The Human Cosmos leaves readers ready for reflection, re-evaluation and rediscovery.

Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret

Hookworm, an intestinal parasite linked to badly managed sewage, is typically associated with developing countries. But in MacArthur grant-winning Catherine Coleman Flowers’ birthplace of Lowndes County, Alabama, one in three residents tested positive for a hookworm infection. Flowers has been investigating sanitation issues in her community for two decades, and it was because of her work that scientists tested for hookworm in the first place. In her book Waste , she pens a gripping, eye-opening story about the lack of access to basic sanitation in parts of the United States. Flowers, who has been called the “ Erin Brockovich of Sewage ,” puts a spotlight on long-standing issues in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest and on Native American reservations in the West. She thoughtfully weaves systemic issues of class, race and geographic prejudice into a compelling, and at times arresting, narrative. Like the issues Waste puts in focus, this book can’t be overlooked.

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

In her debut book, Why Fish Don’t Exist , NPR Radiolab co-host Lulu Miller recounts the tale of taxonomist and fish researcher David Starr Jordan. During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Jordan’s meticulously labeled fish collection in the Stanford Zoology building came crashing to the ground. Instead of throwing his hands in the air, Jordan picked up hundreds of specimens and slowly began re-assigning their labels. His reaction to total devastation piqued Miller’s interest, and she set off on a personal quest to untangle Jordan’s motives and discover why he seemed so unflappable in the face of difficulty. While telling the story of the ichthyologist, Miller weaves her own deeply felt experiences with love and loss—including her battle with depression and a suicide attempt—together with Jordan’s struggles to create order and purpose out of tragedy. In the end, Why Fish Don’t Exist is an engaging blend of personal essay and historical biography that pushes readers to rethink the lengths humans will go to to find meaning in the face of chaos.

The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

How did a handful of inventions help create the world as we know it? In The Alchemy of Us , Ainissa Ramirez examines eight inventions and the remarkable innovators behind the objects. The author, a material scientist and science writer, details how clocks, steel rails, copper telegraph wires, photographic film, carbon filaments for light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware and silicon chips changed modern society. Each chapter tells the history of the rise of an invention and its impact, from the way timepieces changed our sleep schedule to the way the railway helped commercialize Christmas—to give on a massive scale, Americans needed a way to move gifts around. Reading a book about material science might sound dry or overly technical, but Ramirez brings these innovations to life with expert storytelling and nuanced scrutiny. She masterfully highlights the creators responsible for the inventions, including women and people of color who are often overlooked in tales of innovation. More than just a series of stories about the benefits of inventions, The Alchemy of Us shows readers how the technologies that we shape, in turn, shape us.

Having trouble seeing our list of books? Turn off your ad blocker and you'll be all set. For more recommendations, check out The Best Books of 2020 .

By buying a product through these links, Smithsonian magazine may earn a commission. 100 percent of our proceeds go to supporting the Smithsonian Institution.

Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

A Note to our Readers Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission.

Rachael Lallensack | READ MORE

Rachael Lallensack is the former assistant web editor for science and innovation at Smithsonian .

Joe Spring | READ MORE

Joe Spring is the associate digital science editor for Smithsonian magazine.

Corryn Wetzel | | READ MORE

Corryn Wetzel is a freelance science journalist based in Brooklyn. Her work has also appeared in Audubon magazine, National Geographic and others.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• The Big Story
• Newsletters
• Steven Levy's Plaintext Column
• WIRED Classics from the Archive
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

12 Science Books You Should Read Right Now

The couch beckons , and the brain yearns for that perfect book: the lyrical, binge-able tome that also dispenses heaps of knowledge. The writers of these top titles from 2019 have produced just that. They've made it easy to set aside the remote , bow out of the attention economy , and season the soul with perfect prose. Grab a copy of one of these page-turners and start living the life of the erudite sofa spud.

Year in Review: What WIRED learned from tech, science, culture, and more in 2019

When novelist Dani Shapiro’s husband hits middle age and gets curious about his family history, he sends away for a DNA test . He asks if she wants one too. Looking up at her walls covered in the sepia-toned portraits of her Orthodox Jewish family, her interest is hardly piqued. But spousal solidarity prevails. She spits, sends, and promptly forgets about it. Until, weeks later, her results come back and blast apart her hitherto firmly held reality.

The first half of Inheritance reads like an emotional thriller-slash-detective story, as Shapiro uses the tools of modern genealogy—genetic data and Google—to peel back the layers on a long-buried family secret. While the details of her parents’ lifelong deception are particular to Shapiro, her experience is shared by thousands of others in the modern age of inexpensive DNA testing. These tests, often taken in a spirit of casual curiosity, can throw genetic buzzsaws at the branches of people’s family trees .

The emotional fallout of such unexpected discoveries fills the pages of the second half of Shapiro’s searching, tenderly written memoir. At WIRED, we tend to cover technical advances in genetic testing, and the privacy implications of rapidly expanding DNA databases . For anyone wishing to understand the personal side of these cultural shifts, Inheritance should be considered required reading. — Megan Molteni

Richard Feynman once called calculus “the language God speaks,” but I’m afraid to say I wouldn’t know anything about it because I never took a calc class. At some point in high school, I got the mistaken impression that calculus—and mathematics in general—was an entirely uncreative pursuit that mostly just involved shuffling numbers and letters around on the page. I only wish that I had had a copy of Infinite Powers by Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz as a corrective.

This is probably the only calculus book ever written that can truthfully be called a page-turner, which speaks to Strogatz’s strength as a writer and teacher. The book offers a high-level overview of fundamental concepts in calculus and goes into great detail about how they are used in modern life. Strogatz eschews complicated formulas—hardly a single one appears in these pages—in favor of simple graphs and illustrations. While the extreme simplification of remarkably heady mathematics might turn off calculus adepts, there’s something for everyone in the book, especially when he dives into the minds of some of history’s greatest thinkers. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in the intellectual history of science and mathematics, as well as those calculus dropouts like me who wonder what they’re missing out on. — Daniel Oberhaus

Reading Bottle of Lies turned out to be more expensive than I anticipated. Sure, there was the $14.99 I shelled out for the Kindle edition. But that's nothing compared to the price of vowing to never buy another generic drug. Pills containing incorrect dosages, unstable compounds, ground-up glass, and even insects? I'd rather keep my kidneys, thanks.

Eban builds Bottle of Lies around the extraordinary deceptions of the Indian drugmaker Ranbaxy, which for years manufactured generic versions of the cholesterol drug Lipitor, among other blockbuster pharmaceuticals. When the US Food and Drug Administration's inspectors showed up at its factories, executives trotted out a Potemkin Village of sparkling machinery, perfect protocol, and notebooks scrubbed of inconvenient data. The real pill-making took place at derelict shadow labs the investigators never got to see.

What's especially maddening, though, is not Ranbaxy's moral lapses so much as the structural flaws that kept it in business. The FDA is under constant pressure to provide Americans with cheap drugs. It knew about many of the lapses at Ranbaxy—and still allowed its products to flow into pharmacies and people's homes. The agency's dual mandates to keep drug costs low and make sure they don't harm people are in direct conflict , and too often the desire for low price tags wins out. Trust no one. — Sandra Upson

Californians are better acquainted than most with the realities of climate change. We’ve breathed in the wildfire smoke and heard city officials' pleas for fewer showers and flushes. But the local decisions that helped get us into this fix are mostly opaque. Mark Arax, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, is a writer of rare patience for exploring such matters. He’s covered California agriculture for decades, out in the fields and inside the coffee shops of Central Valley farm towns strung along Highway 99. That’s where, to this day, the water deals are struck, and where a drip of rumors gather into a lead a reporter can follow in the tule fog.

The Dreamt Land is Arax’s grand history of California water, beginning before Spanish arrival and following the trail of man-made decisions that exacerbate the present. It’s a story of how crooked court fights and under-the-table deals led to a set of byzantine laws, better suited to draining English swamps than managing a vast expanse of quasi-desert. The story ends, insidiously, in our current time of relative plenty, when the rains flow again and the water mining slows. Everyone can go back to pretending the land has been tamed as the fields and orchards once again expand. The Dreamt Land leaves us with the question: When the next dry spell comes, will we have gone too far? — Gregory Barber

In 2011, a gender equality initiative forced the small Swedish town of Karlskoga to re-evaluate its policies. Then the topic of snow removal came up. One official joked the gender warriors would finally have nothing to say. Snow clearing, sexist? Ha!

But because men and women tend to travel differently—men more likely to drive, women more inclined to walk or take public transit—the town’s plowing schedule was not, in fact, gender neutral. It prioritized cars by plowing main traffic arteries before sidewalks and bike paths, which exposed more women to injuries from slipping and falling.

The banal injustice of snow removal is a fitting start to journalist and social activist Caroline Criado Perez’s second book, Invisible Women. In it, she explores the often-invisible harms that come to women while navigating a world built by and for the male experience. Some of her insights will be familiar—smart phones too big for female hands , offices that are temperature-tuned to the male metabolism , ill-fitting space suits and body armor. But many are completely new, unexpected, and rage-inducing.

Invisible Women is not without hope. After Karlskoga amended its snow-clearing policy, hospital admissions (the majority of which were women) declined. A study of nearby towns found that the policy change saved about four million dollars in a single winter. Change is possible, but first must come data. — Megan Molteni

Fun fact: Because muscle contains more potassium-40 than other tissue, men tend to be more radioactive than women. Another fun/grisly fact: If you get blasted by radiation, different parts of your body will absorb different radioisotopes. Strontium-90 tends to accumulate in the bones; ruthenium in the intestines.

Such details scald the senses as you read Adam Higginbotham’s hyper-researched history of the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl 33 years ago. Nuclear meltdowns tend to be called ‘accidents,’ but Higginbotham shows the Chernobyl tragedy was anything but. In the preceding years, reactors across the Soviet Union failed one after another. The disasters released radioactive plumes and killed workers, as when one plant’s valve burst and superheated steam boiled 14 men alive. But Soviet authorities suppressed the news and responded with obfuscated design updates that nuclear engineers largely ignored.

By conflating nuclear power with national dominance, the Soviet leadership sealed Chernobyl’s fate well before its builders broke ground. Poor manufacturing practices mixed with impossible deadlines. A culture of secrecy kept known design flaws from getting fixed. Chernobyl was going to blow; the only question was when. — Sandra Upson

Jim Simons is arguably the world’s most unlikely billionaire. For most of his young adult life, Simons embraced his role as a math prodigy, uncovering entirely new areas of mathematics and applying his skills as a government code breaker. But Simons also liked money, so in the 1980s he left a promising mathematical career to pursue a goal everyone told him was impossible: He was going to beat Wall Street.

In The Man Who Solved the Market , veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman tells the story of how Simons became the wealthiest, most powerful investor you’ve never heard of. Simons launched Wall Street's “quant” revolution, the use of advanced algorithms to trade stocks. Today, he is known for helming the most successful investing firm in history. Along the way, he amassed a personal fortune of $23 billion, a significant portion of which he uses to fund research into the biggest questions in science.

Simons' influence is not limited to the sciences. His success also made Bob Mercer, whom he plucked from an obscure machine learning research group at IBM. Mercer is perhaps best known for his role as the biggest Republican donor in the 2016 elections and the man responsible for turning the far-right provocateur Steve Bannon into a White House advisor. In tracing the personal history of Jim Simons, Zuckerman shows how a renegade band of mathematicians and scientists invented quantitative finance and profoundly shaped the modern world—for better or worse. — Daniel Oberhaus

Now for some fizzier fare. Who wouldn’t want to toast a long space journey with a sip of champagne or a pint of IPA? As long as humans have grown grains and fruits, they have fermented them into various forms of booze. That's unlikely to change just because we're living on some other planet. Chris Carberry, CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Explore Mars, has compiled a history of astronauts' attempts to imbibe, Hollywood’s portrayals of outer space cantinas, and current research on how humans might grow the plants they'll need to destress off-planet. So far, success has been elusive. Lunar and Martian soils lack nutrients. Recent efforts to grow barley, wheat, and grapes on the International Space Station or with simulated lunar soils have produced mixed results, but space-based moonshiners haven't given up yet. If NASA scientists can figure out how to send people to Mars, it's likely they will also figure out how to make a bit of hooch to celebrate. — Eric Niiler

By WIRED Authors:

When I was an elite athlete in the 1990s and 2000s, recovery was a noun—a state of being you hoped to attain by putting your feet up and resting. Since then, athletic recovery has become a verb—something athletes do with as much vigor as their training, aided by highly marketed products like compression gear and foam rollers. As a journalist, I wondered about the science behind this stuff. Does any of it really work?

The result is Good to Go , my investigation into the science of recovery. The book begins with a study I carefully designed to answer a burning question: Is beer an ideal recovery drink? My experiment produces exactly the answer I wanted, but in the end I don’t believe it. This disconnect illustrates important lessons about the scientific process. Other chapters tell the story of how sports drink companies made hydration ridiculously and unnecessarily complicated, what the NBA’s pb&j's and Usain Bolt’s Olympic diet of chicken nuggets tell us about sports nutrition, and what makes Tom Brady’s infrared pajamas such an effective placebo. The most potent recovery-enhancers, I found, are free. — Christie Aschwanden

There's always a risk, when it comes to Explaining The Youths, that said Youths will turn around and decide your explanation makes the thing no longer cool anymore ( ahem, "ok boomer" ). When I decided to write a book about internet language, I was worried this would be people's response. But that's not what I've been told about Because Internet. Instead, people tell me it's helping them bridge generation gaps.

I hear from younger people that they're buying Because Internet for their parents, to help them stop sounding inadvertently passive-aggressive in texts, but they end up reading it themselves as well and finally understanding why their coworker uses so many dot dot dots. Older people tell me they're buying it for their half-grown kids, to give them something to talk about together, but that they're now feeling emboldened to experiment with a broader range of informal writing styles themselves. Internet people of all ages report they start reading it because they're curious about the origins of the internettish punctuation marks they use all the time, and it ends up leaving them feeling extremely Seen. — Gretchen McCulloch

So you want to talk to an alien , but don’t know where to begin? Have I got the book for you. Extraterrestrial Languages, is my deep dive into the scientific, artistic, and philosophical ideas that guided the creation of interstellar communication systems throughout history. Early concepts for contacting ET including lighting the world’s deserts on fire or blowing up all of our nuclear weapons on the far side of the moon.

Communication strategies have gained some nuance since then. Experts debate whether aliens might recognize a language based on mathematics. Or should we blast rock n’ roll records into the galaxy, and if so, which ones should we play? Such debates force us to grapple with the nature of the human mind, mathematics, science, and the universe itself. Even if we never make contact with ET, designing interstellar communication systems can teach us an awful lot about ourselves. — Daniel Oberhaus

When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read more about how this works .

Book covers in lead art: “Because Internet” courtesy of Riverhead Books. "Alcohol in Space" courtesy of Mcfarland Books. "The Man who Solved the Market" courtesy of Penguin Random House.

• The war vet, the dating site, and the phone call from hell
• Room to breathe: My quest to clean up my home's filthy air
• Why the “queen of shitty robots” renounced her crown
• Amazon, Google, Microsoft— who has the greenest cloud ?
• Everything you need to know about influencers
• 👁 Will AI as a field "hit the wall" soon ? Plus, the latest news on artificial intelligence
• 🏃🏽‍♀️ Want the best tools to get healthy? Check out our Gear team’s picks for the best fitness trackers , running gear (including shoes and socks ), and best headphones .

Advertisement

The best science books to read in 2021

From Bill Gates's How to Avoid a Climate Disaster to Chiara Marletto's revolutionary recasting of physics, The Science of Can and Can't , 2021 is a blockbuster year for popular science books

By Simon Ings and Liz Else

30 December 2020

Deepol By Plainpicture/Vasily Pindyurin

Saving the planet

FOR good reason, this year is billed as the year we must come together to save human civilisation.

Fortunately, the technology needed to achieve a zero-carbon economy is surprisingly straightforward. Less easy is getting some 8 billion cantankerous primates to agree on a single course of action.

Help is at hand from a wide array of books. The first up is from Mike Berners-Lee of the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University, UK. He finds himself already having to update his 2019 bestseller , There is No Planet B: A handbook for the make or break years.  Once again, he emphasises what we can do as individuals to address climate change, from eating less meat to preserving biodiversity in our own backyards.

Fair enough, although as Michael Mann argues in The New Climate War: The fight to take back our planet, we should be suspicious of attempts to push responsibility for change onto citizens and away from the industries that are damaging our planet the most.

Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert points out that many of our interventions in nature have been devastating and asks if it is too late for us to turn it around.

“AI research treats information as an extractive industry, taking us towards increased inequality”

There is a balance to be struck here, and Bill Gates’s How to Avoid a Climate Disaster finds it. There are fortunes to be made in the new economy, but only if the right incentives are in place – and these incentives will need political backing if they are to succeed.

We need to educate ourselves if we are to keep our governments, our employers and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.

Thinking big

The year 2021 also promises to be the year in which we begin to reframe our place in the world, treating it as a system to be explored, rather than as an object to be exploited.

There are a number of threads here, from University of Oxford theoretical physicist Chiara Marletto’s revolutionary recasting of physics, The Science of Can and Can’t , to neuroscientist Anil Seth’s new theory of consciousness, Being You: The inside story of your inner universe . Seth encourages us to view ourselves as less apart from the rest of nature. Marletto’s contributions to “constructor theory” reconcile what we think of as physical laws with the open-ended possibilities thrown up by biology and information theory. It is a paradigm that, for all its rigour, re-enchants the world and enriches our place in it.

Alas, a lot of recent thinking has been leading us in the opposite direction. In her Atlas of AI, Kate Crawford at Microsoft Research blows the whistle on a field that, for all its millennial promise, treats information as just another extractive industry, so that we slide ever further towards undemocratic governance and increased inequality.

For a positive vision of the intellect set free, turn to Italian theoretical physicist and bestselling author Carlo Rovelli. His latest book, Helgoland , begins with 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg’s visit to the small, eponymous, treeless island in the North Sea, and the days he spent constructing one of the most transformative concepts in physics: quantum theory. By Rovelli’s closing pages, we find ourselves tearing across a universe made, not of particles, but of the relations between them. Heady stuff indeed.

Everyday science

The more we understand the world, the more magical it becomes, and this is as good a reason as any to join chemist and YouTuber Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim and enjoy some Chemistry for Breakfast, a romp through everyday science, from the moment the alarm clock disrupts your exquisitely tuned biological clock to the physiological effects of that end-of-day tipple.

Several books this year explore the evolutionary underpinnings of such everyday moments. For example, we know how crucial cooking was to our evolution. Now, in Delicious, biologists Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez ask what that earliest food tasted like, and whether, even as fruits were evolving to become tastier and more fatty, their very tastiness was driving some giant mammals to extinction.

Those seeking a deeper dive into human physiology will learn how their lives are influenced by their brain chemicals in radio presenter Ginny Smith’s Overloaded. Then there is Ouch by sociologist Margee Kerr and journalist Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, a remarkably painless foray into a world of pain: why it hurts, why it doesn’t always have to and why we sometimes crave it.

Our social behaviours also come under the magnifying glass this year, never more closely than in forensic criminologist Jane Monckton Smith’s In Control , an analysis of domestic violence and murder. Smith has identified a timeline for how behaviour escalates until “crimes of passion” occur, and her work is already saving lives.

On a more cheerful, but no less profound, note, palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi’s The Handshake reintroduces us, after a year of social distancing, to that most ancient signal of sociability. The handshake is a gesture we share with chimps; no wonder doing without it has felt so alienating.

Looking for other worlds

If Earth’s humans proved too much last year, maybe it is time to look elsewhere. Starting with the off-planet, there is Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb, the Harvard University astrophysicist who caused a storm when he argued that the strange interstellar object – now named ‘Oumuamua – first seen in our inner solar system in 2017 was an artefact created by an alien civilisation. Here, he outlines his arguments, urging us to keep our minds open. Some scientists are sceptical; others, like physicist Sean Carroll, think it is vital to be open to “audacious possibilities”.

Another exciting option closer to home is to follow marine biologist Helen Scales into The Brilliant Abyss. The deep ocean is an extraordinary world in which luminescent creatures swim, vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere are trapped and strange bacteria that may hold promise for potent medicines are in abundance.

But it is also a looming battleground because of the huge mineral riches and the growing impact of pollutants and overfishing. Her book is both a revelation and a wake-up call.

The inside track

Four new books for 2021 from New Scientist consultants, staff and columnists put a bold spin on the future, past and present.

First is a thought experiment: how would you spend $1 trillion on science in a year? Would you eradicate malaria, end global poverty, settle on the moon, solve climate change? In How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, Rowan Hooper, New Scientist ‘s podcast editor, helps readers go on a spending spree for the global good. And remember, $1 trillion is less than the current valuation of Apple.

Equally challenging is The Disordered Cosmos by New Scientist columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Sharing a love of particle physics and dark matter, it comes with a strong political backdrop that calls on us to recognise that science, like most fields, is rife with racism, sexism and other dehumanising systems. It also encourages us to dream of a world predicated on the idea that we all have a fundamental right to experience and understand the wonders of the universe.

The stories behind Four Lost Cities by New Scientist columnist Annalee Newitz show the importance of the deep history of urban life for our near future. Newitz explores the rise and fall of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey, the Roman city Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity Angkor in Cambodia and Cahokia, near modern St Louis, Missouri.

Could mathematics be the forgotten ingredient in the building of human civilisations? The Art of More by New Scientist consultant Michael Brooks reveals how we learned to imagine the things that we now call numbers and invented arithmetic, giving birth to money, trade and the vast majority of civilisation.

At school, many of us wondered about the point of geometry, calculus and algebra. Brooks shows how the childhood question “What’s the point of this?” can be reframed: esoteric concepts such as imaginary numbers, cryptography and the semi-mystical digits of pi are revealed to be the essential building blocks of the 21st century.

Rethinking medicine

What does it mean to rebuild people through gene editing or other medical interventions? CRISPR People by Henry T. Greely, an ethics and law professor at Stanford University in California, dives in at the deep end with the story of non-identical twin girls who were born in 2018 in China with their DNA edited as embryos.

For Greely, the experiment by Chinese scientist He Jiankui that enabled this was reckless and illegal, using technologies that have no extra benefits over existing ones, and is something we should ponder carefully.

Few can have given more thought to the ethics around this field than Jennifer Doudna, who, with collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the 2020 Nobel prize in chemistry for discovering CRISPR-mediated gene-editing.

Doudna’s story is told in The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson. It is a gripping tale, showing how our new ability to hack evolution will soon start throwing us curveballs. Should we, for example, use it to make us less susceptible to viruses? This is the kind of stuff that might well keep Doudna up at night.

Ethical questions of a different sort face Leana Wen, emergency doctor and health commissioner for Baltimore, Maryland, who has been named one of Time ‘s 100 most influential people.

“Could mathematics be the forgotten ingredient in the building of human civilisations?”

In Public Health Saved Your Life Today , Wen gives an insider’s account of the crucial role of public health in everyday medicine, from opioid addiction to the covid-19 pandemic. Her book’s title comes from a phrase she uses a lot: “Public health saved your life today – you just don’t know it.”

Wen shows how public health weaves together advocacy, medicine and politics, pulling off the trick of creating programmes that treat gun violence as a contagious disease or pose racism as a health issue. Public health, she writes, means citizens don’t die too early, and postcodes don’t determine whether they live.

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox! We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

More from New Scientist

Explore the latest news, articles and features

The best science non-fiction books of 2024 so far

Subscriber-only

A powerful new book shows why it's so important to understand war

Our writers pick their favourite science fiction books of all time

Sci-fi author Martha Wells on what a machine intelligence might want

Popular articles.

Trending New Scientist articles

Join Discovery, the new community for book lovers

Trust book recommendations from real people, not robots 🤓

Blog – Posted on Friday, Mar 29

17 book review examples to help you write the perfect review.

It’s an exciting time to be a book reviewer. Once confined to print newspapers and journals, reviews now dot many corridors of the Internet — forever helping others discover their next great read. That said, every book reviewer will face a familiar panic: how can you do justice to a great book in just a thousand words?

As you know, the best way to learn how to do something is by immersing yourself in it. Luckily, the Internet (i.e. Goodreads and other review sites , in particular) has made book reviews more accessible than ever — which means that there are a lot of book reviews examples out there for you to view!

In this post, we compiled 17 prototypical book review examples in multiple genres to help you figure out how to write the perfect review . If you want to jump straight to the examples, you can skip the next section. Otherwise, let’s first check out what makes up a good review.

Are you interested in becoming a book reviewer? We recommend you check out Reedsy Discovery , where you can earn money for writing reviews — and are guaranteed people will read your reviews! To register as a book reviewer, sign up here.

Pro-tip : But wait! How are you sure if you should become a book reviewer in the first place? If you're on the fence, or curious about your match with a book reviewing career, take our quick quiz:

Should you become a book reviewer?

Find out the answer. Takes 30 seconds!

What must a book review contain?

Like all works of art, no two book reviews will be identical. But fear not: there are a few guidelines for any aspiring book reviewer to follow. Most book reviews, for instance, are less than 1,500 words long, with the sweet spot hitting somewhere around the 1,000-word mark. (However, this may vary depending on the platform on which you’re writing, as we’ll see later.)

In addition, all reviews share some universal elements, as shown in our book review templates . These include:

• A review will offer a concise plot summary of the book. 
• A book review will offer an evaluation of the work. 
• A book review will offer a recommendation for the audience. 

If these are the basic ingredients that make up a book review, it’s the tone and style with which the book reviewer writes that brings the extra panache. This will differ from platform to platform, of course. A book review on Goodreads, for instance, will be much more informal and personal than a book review on Kirkus Reviews, as it is catering to a different audience. However, at the end of the day, the goal of all book reviews is to give the audience the tools to determine whether or not they’d like to read the book themselves.

Keeping that in mind, let’s proceed to some book review examples to put all of this in action.

How much of a book nerd are you, really?

Find out here, once and for all. Takes 30 seconds!

Book review examples for fiction books

Since story is king in the world of fiction, it probably won’t come as any surprise to learn that a book review for a novel will concentrate on how well the story was told .

That said, book reviews in all genres follow the same basic formula that we discussed earlier. In these examples, you’ll be able to see how book reviewers on different platforms expertly intertwine the plot summary and their personal opinions of the book to produce a clear, informative, and concise review.

Note: Some of the book review examples run very long. If a book review is truncated in this post, we’ve indicated by including a […] at the end, but you can always read the entire review if you click on the link provided.

Examples of literary fiction book reviews

Kirkus Reviews reviews Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man :

An extremely powerful story of a young Southern Negro, from his late high school days through three years of college to his life in Harlem.

His early training prepared him for a life of humility before white men, but through injustices- large and small, he came to realize that he was an "invisible man". People saw in him only a reflection of their preconceived ideas of what he was, denied his individuality, and ultimately did not see him at all. This theme, which has implications far beyond the obvious racial parallel, is skillfully handled. The incidents of the story are wholly absorbing. The boy's dismissal from college because of an innocent mistake, his shocked reaction to the anonymity of the North and to Harlem, his nightmare experiences on a one-day job in a paint factory and in the hospital, his lightning success as the Harlem leader of a communistic organization known as the Brotherhood, his involvement in black versus white and black versus black clashes and his disillusion and understanding of his invisibility- all climax naturally in scenes of violence and riot, followed by a retreat which is both literal and figurative. Parts of this experience may have been told before, but never with such freshness, intensity and power.

This is Ellison's first novel, but he has complete control of his story and his style. Watch it.

Lyndsey reviews George Orwell’s 1984 on Goodreads:

YOU. ARE. THE. DEAD. Oh my God. I got the chills so many times toward the end of this book. It completely blew my mind. It managed to surpass my high expectations AND be nothing at all like I expected. Or in Newspeak "Double Plus Good." Let me preface this with an apology. If I sound stunningly inarticulate at times in this review, I can't help it. My mind is completely fried.

This book is like the dystopian Lord of the Rings, with its richly developed culture and economics, not to mention a fully developed language called Newspeak, or rather more of the anti-language, whose purpose is to limit speech and understanding instead of to enhance and expand it. The world-building is so fully fleshed out and spine-tinglingly terrifying that it's almost as if George travelled to such a place, escaped from it, and then just wrote it all down.

I read Fahrenheit 451 over ten years ago in my early teens. At the time, I remember really wanting to read 1984, although I never managed to get my hands on it. I'm almost glad I didn't. Though I would not have admitted it at the time, it would have gone over my head. Or at the very least, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it fully. […]

The New York Times reviews Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry :

Three-quarters of the way through Lisa Halliday’s debut novel, “Asymmetry,” a British foreign correspondent named Alistair is spending Christmas on a compound outside of Baghdad. His fellow revelers include cameramen, defense contractors, United Nations employees and aid workers. Someone’s mother has FedExed a HoneyBaked ham from Maine; people are smoking by the swimming pool. It is 2003, just days after Saddam Hussein’s capture, and though the mood is optimistic, Alistair is worrying aloud about the ethics of his chosen profession, wondering if reporting on violence doesn’t indirectly abet violence and questioning why he’d rather be in a combat zone than reading a picture book to his son. But every time he returns to London, he begins to “spin out.” He can’t go home. “You observe what people do with their freedom — what they don’t do — and it’s impossible not to judge them for it,” he says.

The line, embedded unceremoniously in the middle of a page-long paragraph, doubles, like so many others in “Asymmetry,” as literary criticism. Halliday’s novel is so strange and startlingly smart that its mere existence seems like commentary on the state of fiction. One finishes “Asymmetry” for the first or second (or like this reader, third) time and is left wondering what other writers are not doing with their freedom — and, like Alistair, judging them for it.

Despite its title, “Asymmetry” comprises two seemingly unrelated sections of equal length, appended by a slim and quietly shocking coda. Halliday’s prose is clean and lean, almost reportorial in the style of W. G. Sebald, and like the murmurings of a shy person at a cocktail party, often comic only in single clauses. It’s a first novel that reads like the work of an author who has published many books over many years. […]

Emily W. Thompson reviews Michael Doane's The Crossing on Reedsy Discovery :

In Doane’s debut novel, a young man embarks on a journey of self-discovery with surprising results.

An unnamed protagonist (The Narrator) is dealing with heartbreak. His love, determined to see the world, sets out for Portland, Oregon. But he’s a small-town boy who hasn’t traveled much. So, the Narrator mourns her loss and hides from life, throwing himself into rehabbing an old motorcycle. Until one day, he takes a leap; he packs his bike and a few belongings and heads out to find the Girl.

Following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac and William Least Heat-Moon, Doane offers a coming of age story about a man finding himself on the backroads of America. Doane’s a gifted writer with fluid prose and insightful observations, using The Narrator’s personal interactions to illuminate the diversity of the United States.

The Narrator initially sticks to the highways, trying to make it to the West Coast as quickly as possible. But a hitchhiker named Duke convinces him to get off the beaten path and enjoy the ride. “There’s not a place that’s like any other,” [39] Dukes contends, and The Narrator realizes he’s right. Suddenly, the trip is about the journey, not just the destination. The Narrator ditches his truck and traverses the deserts and mountains on his bike. He destroys his phone, cutting off ties with his past and living only in the moment.

As he crosses the country, The Narrator connects with several unique personalities whose experiences and views deeply impact his own. Duke, the complicated cowboy and drifter, who opens The Narrator’s eyes to a larger world. Zooey, the waitress in Colorado who opens his heart and reminds him that love can be found in this big world. And Rosie, The Narrator’s sweet landlady in Portland, who helps piece him back together both physically and emotionally.

This supporting cast of characters is excellent. Duke, in particular, is wonderfully nuanced and complicated. He’s a throwback to another time, a man without a cell phone who reads Sartre and sleeps under the stars. Yet he’s also a grifter with a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” attitude that harms those around him. It’s fascinating to watch The Narrator wrestle with Duke’s behavior, trying to determine which to model and which to discard.

Doane creates a relatable protagonist in The Narrator, whose personal growth doesn’t erase his faults. His willingness to hit the road with few resources is admirable, and he’s prescient enough to recognize the jealousy of those who cannot or will not take the leap. His encounters with new foods, places, and people broaden his horizons. Yet his immaturity and selfishness persist. He tells Rosie she’s been a good mother to him but chooses to ignore the continuing concern from his own parents as he effectively disappears from his old life.

Despite his flaws, it’s a pleasure to accompany The Narrator on his physical and emotional journey. The unexpected ending is a fitting denouement to an epic and memorable road trip.

The Book Smugglers review Anissa Gray’s The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls :

I am still dipping my toes into the literally fiction pool, finding what works for me and what doesn’t. Books like The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray are definitely my cup of tea.

Althea and Proctor Cochran had been pillars of their economically disadvantaged community for years – with their local restaurant/small market and their charity drives. Until they are found guilty of fraud for stealing and keeping most of the money they raised and sent to jail. Now disgraced, their entire family is suffering the consequences, specially their twin teenage daughters Baby Vi and Kim.  To complicate matters even more: Kim was actually the one to call the police on her parents after yet another fight with her mother. […]

Examples of children’s and YA fiction book reviews

The Book Hookup reviews Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give :

♥ Quick Thoughts and Rating: 5 stars! I can’t imagine how challenging it would be to tackle the voice of a movement like Black Lives Matter, but I do know that Thomas did it with a finesse only a talented author like herself possibly could. With an unapologetically realistic delivery packed with emotion, The Hate U Give is a crucially important portrayal of the difficulties minorities face in our country every single day. I have no doubt that this book will be met with resistance by some (possibly many) and slapped with a “controversial” label, but if you’ve ever wondered what it was like to walk in a POC’s shoes, then I feel like this is an unflinchingly honest place to start.

In Angie Thomas’s debut novel, Starr Carter bursts on to the YA scene with both heart-wrecking and heartwarming sincerity. This author is definitely one to watch.

♥ Review: The hype around this book has been unquestionable and, admittedly, that made me both eager to get my hands on it and terrified to read it. I mean, what if I was to be the one person that didn’t love it as much as others? (That seems silly now because of how truly mesmerizing THUG was in the most heartbreakingly realistic way.) However, with the relevancy of its summary in regards to the unjust predicaments POC currently face in the US, I knew this one was a must-read, so I was ready to set my fears aside and dive in. That said, I had an altogether more personal, ulterior motive for wanting to read this book. […]

The New York Times reviews Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood :

Alice Crewe (a last name she’s chosen for herself) is a fairy tale legacy: the granddaughter of Althea Proserpine, author of a collection of dark-as-night fairy tales called “Tales From the Hinterland.” The book has a cult following, and though Alice has never met her grandmother, she’s learned a little about her through internet research. She hasn’t read the stories, because her mother, Ella Proserpine, forbids it.

Alice and Ella have moved from place to place in an attempt to avoid the “bad luck” that seems to follow them. Weird things have happened. As a child, Alice was kidnapped by a man who took her on a road trip to find her grandmother; he was stopped by the police before they did so. When at 17 she sees that man again, unchanged despite the years, Alice panics. Then Ella goes missing, and Alice turns to Ellery Finch, a schoolmate who’s an Althea Proserpine superfan, for help in tracking down her mother. Not only has Finch read every fairy tale in the collection, but handily, he remembers them, sharing them with Alice as they journey to the mysterious Hazel Wood, the estate of her now-dead grandmother, where they hope to find Ella.

“The Hazel Wood” starts out strange and gets stranger, in the best way possible. (The fairy stories Finch relays, which Albert includes as their own chapters, are as creepy and evocative as you’d hope.) Albert seamlessly combines contemporary realism with fantasy, blurring the edges in a way that highlights that place where stories and real life convene, where magic contains truth and the world as it appears is false, where just about anything can happen, particularly in the pages of a very good book. It’s a captivating debut. […]

James reviews Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight, Moon on Goodreads:

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is one of the books that followers of my blog voted as a must-read for our Children's Book August 2018 Readathon. Come check it out and join the next few weeks!

This picture book was such a delight. I hadn't remembered reading it when I was a child, but it might have been read to me... either way, it was like a whole new experience! It's always so difficult to convince a child to fall asleep at night. I don't have kids, but I do have a 5-month-old puppy who whines for 5 minutes every night when he goes in his cage/crate (hopefully he'll be fully housebroken soon so he can roam around when he wants). I can only imagine! I babysat a lot as a teenager and I have tons of younger cousins, nieces, and nephews, so I've been through it before, too. This was a believable experience, and it really helps show kids how to relax and just let go when it's time to sleep.

The bunny's are adorable. The rhymes are exquisite. I found it pretty fun, but possibly a little dated given many of those things aren't normal routines anymore. But the lessons to take from it are still powerful. Loved it! I want to sample some more books by this fine author and her illustrators.

Publishers Weekly reviews Elizabeth Lilly’s Geraldine :

This funny, thoroughly accomplished debut opens with two words: “I’m moving.” They’re spoken by the title character while she swoons across her family’s ottoman, and because Geraldine is a giraffe, her full-on melancholy mode is quite a spectacle. But while Geraldine may be a drama queen (even her mother says so), it won’t take readers long to warm up to her. The move takes Geraldine from Giraffe City, where everyone is like her, to a new school, where everyone else is human. Suddenly, the former extrovert becomes “That Giraffe Girl,” and all she wants to do is hide, which is pretty much impossible. “Even my voice tries to hide,” she says, in the book’s most poignant moment. “It’s gotten quiet and whispery.” Then she meets Cassie, who, though human, is also an outlier (“I’m that girl who wears glasses and likes MATH and always organizes her food”), and things begin to look up.

Lilly’s watercolor-and-ink drawings are as vividly comic and emotionally astute as her writing; just when readers think there are no more ways for Geraldine to contort her long neck, this highly promising talent comes up with something new.

Examples of genre fiction book reviews

Karlyn P reviews Nora Roberts’ Dark Witch , a paranormal romance novel , on Goodreads:

4 stars. Great world-building, weak romance, but still worth the read.

I hesitate to describe this book as a 'romance' novel simply because the book spent little time actually exploring the romance between Iona and Boyle. Sure, there IS a romance in this novel. Sprinkled throughout the book are a few scenes where Iona and Boyle meet, chat, wink at each, flirt some more, sleep together, have a misunderstanding, make up, and then profess their undying love. Very formulaic stuff, and all woven around the more important parts of this book.

The meat of this book is far more focused on the story of the Dark witch and her magically-gifted descendants living in Ireland. Despite being weak on the romance, I really enjoyed it. I think the book is probably better for it, because the romance itself was pretty lackluster stuff.

I absolutely plan to stick with this series as I enjoyed the world building, loved the Ireland setting, and was intrigued by all of the secondary characters. However, If you read Nora Roberts strictly for the romance scenes, this one might disappoint. But if you enjoy a solid background story with some dark magic and prophesies, you might enjoy it as much as I did.

I listened to this one on audio, and felt the narration was excellent.

Emily May reviews R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy Wars , an epic fantasy novel , on Goodreads:

“But I warn you, little warrior. The price of power is pain.”

Holy hell, what did I just read??

➽ A fantasy military school

➽ A rich world based on modern Chinese history

➽ Shamans and gods

➽ Detailed characterization leading to unforgettable characters

➽ Adorable, opium-smoking mentors

That's a basic list, but this book is all of that and SO MUCH MORE. I know 100% that The Poppy War will be one of my best reads of 2018.

Isn't it just so great when you find one of those books that completely drags you in, makes you fall in love with the characters, and demands that you sit on the edge of your seat for every horrific, nail-biting moment of it? This is one of those books for me. And I must issue a serious content warning: this book explores some very dark themes. Proceed with caution (or not at all) if you are particularly sensitive to scenes of war, drug use and addiction, genocide, racism, sexism, ableism, self-harm, torture, and rape (off-page but extremely horrific).

Because, despite the fairly innocuous first 200 pages, the title speaks the truth: this is a book about war. All of its horrors and atrocities. It is not sugar-coated, and it is often graphic. The "poppy" aspect refers to opium, which is a big part of this book. It is a fantasy, but the book draws inspiration from the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanking.

Crime Fiction Lover reviews Jessica Barry’s Freefall , a crime novel:

In some crime novels, the wrongdoing hits you between the eyes from page one. With others it’s a more subtle process, and that’s OK too. So where does Freefall fit into the sliding scale?

In truth, it’s not clear. This is a novel with a thrilling concept at its core. A woman survives plane crash, then runs for her life. However, it is the subtleties at play that will draw you in like a spider beckoning to an unwitting fly.

Like the heroine in Sharon Bolton’s Dead Woman Walking, Allison is lucky to be alive. She was the only passenger in a private plane, belonging to her fiancé, Ben, who was piloting the expensive aircraft, when it came down in woodlands in the Colorado Rockies. Ally is also the only survivor, but rather than sitting back and waiting for rescue, she is soon pulling together items that may help her survive a little longer – first aid kit, energy bars, warm clothes, trainers – before fleeing the scene. If you’re hearing the faint sound of alarm bells ringing, get used to it. There’s much, much more to learn about Ally before this tale is over.

Kirkus Reviews reviews Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One , a science-fiction novel :

Video-game players embrace the quest of a lifetime in a virtual world; screenwriter Cline’s first novel is old wine in new bottles.

The real world, in 2045, is the usual dystopian horror story. So who can blame Wade, our narrator, if he spends most of his time in a virtual world? The 18-year-old, orphaned at 11, has no friends in his vertical trailer park in Oklahoma City, while the OASIS has captivating bells and whistles, and it’s free. Its creator, the legendary billionaire James Halliday, left a curious will. He had devised an elaborate online game, a hunt for a hidden Easter egg. The finder would inherit his estate. Old-fashioned riddles lead to three keys and three gates. Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, is the first gunter (egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, first of three.

Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of the 1980s, primarily the arcade games, so the novel is as much retro as futurist. Parzival’s great strength is that he has absorbed all Halliday’s obsessions; he knows by heart three essential movies, crossing the line from geek to freak. His most formidable competitors are the Sixers, contract gunters working for the evil conglomerate IOI, whose goal is to acquire the OASIS. Cline’s narrative is straightforward but loaded with exposition. It takes a while to reach a scene that crackles with excitement: the meeting between Parzival (now world famous as the lead contender) and Sorrento, the head of IOI. The latter tries to recruit Parzival; when he fails, he issues and executes a death threat. Wade’s trailer is demolished, his relatives killed; luckily Wade was not at home. Too bad this is the dramatic high point. Parzival threads his way between more ’80s games and movies to gain the other keys; it’s clever but not exciting. Even a romance with another avatar and the ultimate “epic throwdown” fail to stir the blood.

Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.

Book review examples for non-fiction books

Nonfiction books are generally written to inform readers about a certain topic. As such, the focus of a nonfiction book review will be on the clarity and effectiveness of this communication . In carrying this out, a book review may analyze the author’s source materials and assess the thesis in order to determine whether or not the book meets expectations.

Again, we’ve included abbreviated versions of long reviews here, so feel free to click on the link to read the entire piece!

The Washington Post reviews David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon :

The arc of David Grann’s career reminds one of a software whiz-kid or a latest-thing talk-show host — certainly not an investigative reporter, even if he is one of the best in the business. The newly released movie of his first book, “The Lost City of Z,” is generating all kinds of Oscar talk, and now comes the release of his second book, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” the film rights to which have already been sold for $5 million in what one industry journal called the “biggest and wildest book rights auction in memory.”

Grann deserves the attention. He’s canny about the stories he chases, he’s willing to go anywhere to chase them, and he’s a maestro in his ability to parcel out information at just the right clip: a hint here, a shading of meaning there, a smartly paced buildup of multiple possibilities followed by an inevitable reversal of readerly expectations or, in some cases, by a thrilling and dislocating pull of the entire narrative rug.

All of these strengths are on display in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Around the turn of the 20th century, oil was discovered underneath Osage lands in the Oklahoma Territory, lands that were soon to become part of the state of Oklahoma. Through foresight and legal maneuvering, the Osage found a way to permanently attach that oil to themselves and shield it from the prying hands of white interlopers; this mechanism was known as “headrights,” which forbade the outright sale of oil rights and granted each full member of the tribe — and, supposedly, no one else — a share in the proceeds from any lease arrangement. For a while, the fail-safes did their job, and the Osage got rich — diamond-ring and chauffeured-car and imported-French-fashion rich — following which quite a large group of white men started to work like devils to separate the Osage from their money. And soon enough, and predictably enough, this work involved murder. Here in Jazz Age America’s most isolated of locales, dozens or even hundreds of Osage in possession of great fortunes — and of the potential for even greater fortunes in the future — were dispatched by poison, by gunshot and by dynamite. […]

Stacked Books reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers :

I’ve heard a lot of great things about Malcolm Gladwell’s writing. Friends and co-workers tell me that his subjects are interesting and his writing style is easy to follow without talking down to the reader. I wasn’t disappointed with Outliers. In it, Gladwell tackles the subject of success – how people obtain it and what contributes to extraordinary success as opposed to everyday success.

The thesis – that our success depends much more on circumstances out of our control than any effort we put forth – isn’t exactly revolutionary. Most of us know it to be true. However, I don’t think I’m lying when I say that most of us also believe that we if we just try that much harder and develop our talent that much further, it will be enough to become wildly successful, despite bad or just mediocre beginnings. Not so, says Gladwell.

Most of the evidence Gladwell gives us is anecdotal, which is my favorite kind to read. I can’t really speak to how scientifically valid it is, but it sure makes for engrossing listening. For example, did you know that successful hockey players are almost all born in January, February, or March? Kids born during these months are older than the others kids when they start playing in the youth leagues, which means they’re already better at the game (because they’re bigger). Thus, they get more play time, which means their skill increases at a faster rate, and it compounds as time goes by. Within a few years, they’re much, much better than the kids born just a few months later in the year. Basically, these kids’ birthdates are a huge factor in their success as adults – and it’s nothing they can do anything about. If anyone could make hockey interesting to a Texan who only grudgingly admits the sport even exists, it’s Gladwell. […]

Quill and Quire reviews Rick Prashaw’s Soar, Adam, Soar :

Ten years ago, I read a book called Almost Perfect. The young-adult novel by Brian Katcher won some awards and was held up as a powerful, nuanced portrayal of a young trans person. But the reality did not live up to the book’s billing. Instead, it turned out to be a one-dimensional and highly fetishized portrait of a trans person’s life, one that was nevertheless repeatedly dubbed “realistic” and “affecting” by non-transgender readers possessing only a vague, mass-market understanding of trans experiences.

In the intervening decade, trans narratives have emerged further into the literary spotlight, but those authored by trans people ourselves – and by trans men in particular – have seemed to fall under the shadow of cisgender sensationalized imaginings. Two current Canadian releases – Soar, Adam, Soar and This One Looks Like a Boy – provide a pointed object lesson into why trans-authored work about transgender experiences remains critical.

To be fair, Soar, Adam, Soar isn’t just a story about a trans man. It’s also a story about epilepsy, the medical establishment, and coming of age as seen through a grieving father’s eyes. Adam, Prashaw’s trans son, died unexpectedly at age 22. Woven through the elder Prashaw’s narrative are excerpts from Adam’s social media posts, giving us glimpses into the young man’s interior life as he traverses his late teens and early 20s. […]

Book Geeks reviews Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love :

WRITING STYLE: 3.5/5

SUBJECT: 4/5

CANDIDNESS: 4.5/5

RELEVANCE: 3.5/5

ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3.5/5

“Eat Pray Love” is so popular that it is almost impossible to not read it. Having felt ashamed many times on my not having read this book, I quietly ordered the book (before I saw the movie) from amazon.in and sat down to read it. I don’t remember what I expected it to be – maybe more like a chick lit thing but it turned out quite different. The book is a real story and is a short journal from the time when its writer went travelling to three different countries in pursuit of three different things – Italy (Pleasure), India (Spirituality), Bali (Balance) and this is what corresponds to the book’s name – EAT (in Italy), PRAY (in India) and LOVE (in Bali, Indonesia). These are also the three Is – ITALY, INDIA, INDONESIA.

Though she had everything a middle-aged American woman can aspire for – MONEY, CAREER, FRIENDS, HUSBAND; Elizabeth was not happy in her life, she wasn’t happy in her marriage. Having suffered a terrible divorce and terrible breakup soon after, Elizabeth was shattered. She didn’t know where to go and what to do – all she knew was that she wanted to run away. So she set out on a weird adventure – she will go to three countries in a year and see if she can find out what she was looking for in life. This book is about that life changing journey that she takes for one whole year. […]

Emily May reviews Michelle Obama’s Becoming on Goodreads:

Look, I'm not a happy crier. I might cry at songs about leaving and missing someone; I might cry at books where things don't work out; I might cry at movies where someone dies. I've just never really understood why people get all choked up over happy, inspirational things. But Michelle Obama's kindness and empathy changed that. This book had me in tears for all the right reasons.

This is not really a book about politics, though political experiences obviously do come into it. It's a shame that some will dismiss this book because of a difference in political opinion, when it is really about a woman's life. About growing up poor and black on the South Side of Chicago; about getting married and struggling to maintain that marriage; about motherhood; about being thrown into an amazing and terrifying position.

I hate words like "inspirational" because they've become so overdone and cheesy, but I just have to say it-- Michelle Obama is an inspiration. I had the privilege of seeing her speak at The Forum in Inglewood, and she is one of the warmest, funniest, smartest, down-to-earth people I have ever seen in this world.

And yes, I know we present what we want the world to see, but I truly do think it's genuine. I think she is someone who really cares about people - especially kids - and wants to give them better lives and opportunities.

She's obviously intelligent, but she also doesn't gussy up her words. She talks straight, with an openness and honesty rarely seen. She's been one of the most powerful women in the world, she's been a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, she's had her own successful career, and yet she has remained throughout that same girl - Michelle Robinson - from a working class family in Chicago.

I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't benefit from reading this book.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better idea of how to write a book review. You might be wondering how to put all of this knowledge into action now! Many book reviewers start out by setting up a book blog. If you don’t have time to research the intricacies of HTML, check out Reedsy Discovery — where you can read indie books for free and review them without going through the hassle of creating a blog. To register as a book reviewer , go here .

And if you’d like to see even more book review examples, simply go to this directory of book review blogs and click on any one of them to see a wealth of good book reviews. Beyond that, it's up to you to pick up a book and pen — and start reviewing!

Continue reading

More posts from across the blog.

14 Mark Twain Books That Everyone Should Read

Controversial, brilliant, and ever witty, the man who would shape American literature was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in a small riverside town in Missouri in 1835. More than a century later, Mark Twain remains one of the best writers that America has ever prod...

The 15 Best John Steinbeck Books Everyone Should Read

John Steinbeck’s books possess that ever-elusive quality of timelessness. Ecologically conscious before the urgency of climate change was widely discussed, but tender in its understanding of humankind’s many shortcomings, this literary giant’s work feels breathtakingly current...

60+ Best Poetry Books of All Time

Poetry is an art form that predates written text. It fuses meaning, sound, and rhythm<...

Heard about Reedsy Discovery?

Trust real people, not robots, to give you book recommendations.

Or sign up with an

Or sign up with your social account

• Submit your book
• Reviewer directory

Want to be a book reviewer?

Review new books and start building your portfolio.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts

Book Reviews in 2020

The pandemic bookshelf grows

Outbreaks have long wrought fear, lies, intolerance, inequality and ruin — will we ever learn?

• Tilli Tansey

Women of the Nobel factory share their stories

From sequencing to stardom — alumnae of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology reflect on how they succeeded in science.

• Georgina Ferry

How borders make us ill, decolonizing museums, and the wolves of Yellowstone: Books in brief

Andrew Robinson and Sara Abdulla review five of the week’s best science picks.

• Andrew Robinson
• Sara Abdulla

Wood — the vein that runs through human history

Why do stone, bronze, iron, oil and data get all the attention?

• Josie Glausiusz

The demons and devils that haunt scientists’ imaginations

Strange beasts stalk a history of thought experiments.

• Ramin Skibba

Book-burning through the ages, the Arctic laid bare, and capitalism under scrutiny: Books in brief

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks.

When is sorrow sickness? A history of depression

A book traces the shifting lines between sadness and illness, but not who gets to draw them.

• China Mills

The science of sliminess, the secrets of bones, and mathematicians who took to the air: Books in brief

What NASA missions can teach us about teamwork

A sociologist embedded in the agency shows that what gets discovered depends on how scientists collaborate.

• Alexandra Witze

A deep-dive into ignorance, the man behind the Rubik’s Cube, and a controversial theory of life: Books in brief

Timely book tells the CRISPR story so far

A gene-editing primer maps the solid ground better than the quagmires. By Natalie Kofler

• Natalie Kofler

Racism is baked into patent systems

Intellectual-property laws imagine creatorship as white, a book argues. By Shobita Parthasarathy

• Shobita Parthasarathy

The discredited doctor hailed by the anti-vaccine movement

Riveting biography of Andrew Wakefield is a cautionary lesson in the legacy of hubris.

• Saad B. Omer

How precision medicine paved the way to the first cystic fibrosis drug

Heartbreak, sacrifice, genetics and venture philanthropy — this book has it all.

• Heidi Ledford

How to get more women and people of colour into graduate school — and keep them there

Case studies show that efforts to address equity in science are doomed if they don’t learn from past mistakes.

• Sibrina N. Collins

The code-breakers who led the rise of computing

World wars, cold wars, cyberwars — marking a century of state surveillance at GCHQ.

Democracy suffers when government statistics fail

The United States must change how it measures society, argues metrics maven Julia Lane.

• Beth Simone Noveck

Think international to end climate change, the wonder of flies, and the fourth wave of globalization: Books in brief

Vaccines — lessons from three centuries of protest

Immunization has always been a proxy for wider fears about social control, a history reminds us. By Julie Leask

• Julie Leask

The lifelong studies that hold clues to what today’s kids might have in store

Decades of data on the legacy of childhood experience for adult health and wealth should help policymakers plan for future well-being, shows a book by pioneers of cohort studies.

• Barbara Maughan

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

Best Science and Medicine Books of 2022

OCT. 4, 2022

by Diana Preston

An irresistible scientific biography and adventure story with a happy ending. Full review >

APRIL 19, 2022

by Andrew Scull

A magisterial tale of the always frustrating yet sometimes well-intentioned efforts to aid desperate people. Full review >

AUG. 2, 2022

by Steven W. Thrasher

Powerful and revelatory, this is an essential, paradigm-shifting book. Full review >

JUNE 7, 2022

by Lindsey Fitzharris

An excellent biography of a genuine miracle worker. Full review >

OCT. 25, 2022

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Another outstanding addition to the author’s oeuvre, which we hope will continue to grow for years to come. Full review >

by David Quammen

Unsettling global health news brilliantly delivered by an expert. Full review >

MARCH 1, 2022

by Meghan O'Rourke

Emotionally compelling and intellectually rich, particularly for those with a personal connection to the issue. Full review >

APRIL 5, 2022

by Frans de Waal

Engaging, enlightening, and deeply informative. Full review >

SEPT. 13, 2022

by Rachel Aviv

A moving, meticulously researched, elegantly constructed work of nonfiction. Full review >

GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

by Rhea Ewing ; illustrated by Rhea Ewing

A vital, richly textured resource for anyone seeking a better understanding of gender identity. Full review >

More Book Lists

Recent News & Features

• Book to Screen

• Seen & Heard

• 20 Books To Read Before Summer Ends
• 21 Books for a Spooky ‘Summerween’
• STEAM Books for Back to School
• 20 Best Books To Read in August
• Episode 384: Best August Books With Abi Daré
• Episode 383: Kyle Lukoff
• Episode 382: J. Courtney Sullivan
• Episode 381: Stacey D'Erasmo

The Magazine: Kirkus Reviews

Featuring 358 reviews of fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and YA books; also in this issue: interviews with Lev Grossman, Ellen Atlanta, Oliver Jeffers & Sam Winston, and Jen Wang; and more

The Kirkus Star

One of the most coveted designations in the book industry, the Kirkus Star marks books of exceptional merit.

The Kirkus Prize

The Kirkus Prize is among the richest literary awards in America, awarding $50,000 in three categories annually.

Great Books & News Curated For You

Be the first to read books news and see reviews, news and features in Kirkus Reviews . Get awesome content delivered to your inbox every week.

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.