What are the three best popular-science books?

My three favourites are Longitude by Dava Sobel, The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe by Michael Lockwood and The Neptune File: Planet Detectives and the Discovery of Worlds Unseen by Tom Standage.

One problem is that physicists are, on the whole, bad philosophers of physics. This spills over into their popular-science books, so there are many books in which otherwise excellent explanations of physics are set in bad philosophical contexts (such as positivism, instrumentalism or various kinds of wackiness). That’s why none of my three choices are books by physicists or astronomers describing their own work. Another problem is that there are quite a lot of recent books that I believe to be good, but that I haven’t got round to reading yet (see below).

What science books are you currently reading?

The Enigma of Easter Island by Paul Bahn. This is a fascinating book that avoids political sermons and morality tales by sticking to the scientific evidence and theories about the amazing history of the island.

What else are you reading?

After several years of intending to do so, I have finally got round to reading the novels of Ian McEwan, and they are even better than I had been led to believe. In addition to being great novels, these are also philosophical works. I am particularly impressed with the subtlety of his investigations of the role that reason (both scientific and philosophical), and the lack of it, plays in informing his characters’ deeply personal decisions, and how they try to make sense of the world and themselves.

Which popular-science book have you never read, but feel you ought to have tackled, and why?

Martin Rees’ books such as Just Six Numbers. Rees is probably the finest all-round physics mind of the present day. I have no idea why I haven’t read his books yet; I keep meaning to.