Fact - Big Science Read

Below you'll find our recommended factual Big Science Reads - if your favourite is amongst them, simply click the cover to place your vote for it or, if you know of a gem that we've missed, click the Vote button above and let us know!

David Attenborough: Life in Cold Blood; (BBC Books, 2007); David Attenborough traces the story of the evolution of reptiles and overturns the myth that these creatures are just primitive killers.

Piers Bizony: Atom; (Icon Books, 2006); The exciting story of the discovery of the atom - and of the men and women who revolutionised our knowledge of the universe and all it contains.

David Bodanis: Electric Universe; (Abacus, 2006); An enthralling history of the discovery of electricity - Bodanis weaves together stories of romance, divine inspiration and fraud.

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything; (Black Swan, 2004); Bryson's investigations deal with the origins of the universe; the discovery of the size and age of the earth, relativity and quantum theory; future threats to life and the planet; the origins of life and the evolution of man.

Deborah Cadbury: Space Race; (Harper Perennial, 2006); Cadbury's book tracks the progress of the space programmes in the US and in the USSR and is filled with fascinating background information, such as the Cold War political power struggles.

Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker; (Penguin, 2006); This book has been described as the most influential and inspiring work on evolution written in the last hundred years.

Richard Feynman: Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman; (Vintage, 2007); Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, Feynman's recorded conversations provide a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.

Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth; (Bloomsbury, 2006); Al Gore writes about the urgent need to solve the problems of climate change, presenting comprehensive facts and information on all aspects of global warming in a direct, thoughtful and compelling way.

Stephen Jay Gould: Wonderful Life; (Vintage, 2007); Gould's loving, detailed exposition of the labour it took to understand the Burgess Shale, the most precious and important of all fossil locations, remains one of the best explanations of scientific work around.

Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time; (Bantam, 1995); Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote this book to help non-scientists understand fundamental questions of physics and our existence.

Matt Ridley: Genome; (Fourth Estate, 2000); Picking one newly discovered gene from each of the 23 human chromosomes, and telling its story, this book recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine.

Oliver Sacks: Uncle Tungsten; (Picador, 2002); A beautifully written account of an English childhood - seasoned by a childish passion for science - told from an intimate and revelatory perspective.

Marcus du Sautoy: Finding Moonshine; (Fourth Estate, 2008); A popular mathematics book, written by an insider - the author is a top mathematician at Oxford. It explains the furthest reaches of the science, and is sprinkled with anecdotes, stories and personal reflections.

Neil Shubin: Your Inner Fish; (Allen Lane, 2008); This book looks at aspects of human anatomy and senses, tracing them back through evolution. The author combines flair and clarity with a precision that brings it all into a new focus.

Dava Sobel: Longitude; (Harper Perennial, 2005); This dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an English genius.