Best Science Books

A nephrologist argues that obesity is caused by insulin resistance and chronic insulin elevation — not by calories in/calories out — and that intermittent fasting is the solution.

Environmental scientist Donella Meadows provides a primer on systems thinking — the art of seeing the world as interconnected structures of feedback, stocks, and flows — with applications from ecology to economics to policy.

Dr. Satchin Panda, the world's leading researcher on circadian rhythms, explains how aligning your eating, sleeping, and activity with your internal clock dramatically improves health outcomes.

Michael Pollan traces four meals from their origins to the table — industrial, industrial organic, local pastoral, and hunted-gathered — and asks what we should eat in a world of infinite choice.

A sweeping vision of humanity's future as Homo sapiens pursues the ancient goals of immortality, bliss, and divinity — and what we risk losing in the process.

Robert Lustig argues that chronic disease is driven by processed food and metabolic dysfunction — and that the current medical and food industry response actively worsens the problem.

The actual science and logistics of sending human beings into space — what zero gravity does to the body, how astronauts eat and use the toilet, the psychology of confinement, the history of space medicine research, and why Mars is significantly harder than the moon.

The science of the human digestive tract from mouth to the other end — saliva, stomach acid, intestinal bacteria, fermentation, gas, and the specific history of what researchers have learned by investigating each component of the alimentary canal.

Physicist Brian Greene explains superstring theory and the quest for a unified theory of everything — the attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity in a single mathematical framework.

Science journalist Annie Murphy Paul synthesizes research showing that human cognition extends beyond the brain into body, space, and relationships — with practical implications for how we learn and think.

Mary Roach investigates the science behind military research — the labs, researchers, and experimental programs working on problems of survival in combat. Chapters cover uniforms that resist bacteria, the acoustics of IED blasts, the psychology of diarrhea in the field, and the science of keeping soldiers alive in increasingly hostile conditions.