# The best popular science books of all time

The books that explain science to everyone and appear on every list, from Darwin to Sagan, Hawking and Bryson.

- 42 votes · 18 items
- Jan 15, 2021 · medalloversionoriginal
- https://even.best/en/l/3106/the-best-popular-science-books-of-all-time

## Top 18

1. **A Short History of Nearly Everything** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Bill Bryson, 2003. All of science with humour.
2. **Cosmos** (3 · ▲5 ▼2) — Carl Sagan, 1980. The universe told with poetry; companion to the TV series.
3. **A Brief History of Time** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Stephen Hawking, 1988. Black holes and the Big Bang; the genre's best-seller.
4. **The Selfish Gene** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Richard Dawkins, 1976. Evolution from the gene's point of view.
5. **Guns, Germs, and Steel** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Jared Diamond, 1997. Why some societies came to dominate others; Pulitzer Prize.
6. **The Blind Watchmaker** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Richard Dawkins, 1986. Evolution without a designer.
7. **The Demon-Haunted World** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Carl Sagan, 1995. Science as a candle in the dark.
8. **The Elegant Universe** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Brian Greene, 1999. String theory explained.
9. **Thinking, Fast and Slow** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Daniel Kahneman, 2011. The two systems we think with.
10. **Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Yuval Noah Harari, 2011. The history of humankind in one book.
11. **Silent Spring** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Rachel Carson, 1962. The book that launched environmentalism.
12. **The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Oliver Sacks, 1985. Brain case studies told as stories.
13. **Gödel, Escher, Bach** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Douglas Hofstadter, 1979. Mathematics, art and music intertwined.
14. **The Gene: An Intimate History** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Siddhartha Mukherjee, 2016. The history of genetics.
15. **Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Richard Feynman, 1985. The adventures of a curious physicist.
16. **The Double Helix** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — James Watson, 1968. How the structure of DNA was discovered.
17. **The Dragons of Eden** (-1 · ▲1 ▼2) — Carl Sagan, 1977. The evolution of intelligence; Pulitzer Prize.
18. **On the Origin of Species** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Charles Darwin, 1859. Natural selection explained for everyone.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.