Best Science Books 2008: Library Journal Best Sci-Tech Books

This might be the last post for 2008 books, and it's one of the best annual lists out there. Every year, I use this LJ list to catch up on my popular science ordering for the year, to get the good stuff I missed. I don't order a huge amount of popular science for our collection, but I do like to get the best stuff. I like the fact that the books I get are check out quite a bit. There is a demand for popular materials among academic library users.

Here goes, some hightlights:

• Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food by Ronald, Pamela C. & Raoul W. Adamchak
  
  
• Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the World Will End... by Plait, Philip
  
  
• The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies by Hölldobler, Bert & Edward O. Wilson (text) & Margaret C. Nelson (illus.)
  
  
• Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by Palfrey, John & Urs Gasser
  
  
• Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff by Pearce, Fred
  
  
• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion–Year History of the Human Body by Shubin, Neil
  
  
• Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked a Nation on Prescription Drugs by Petersen, Melody
  
  
• The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation by Shapin, Steven
  
  
• One to Nine: The Inner Life of Numbers by Hodges, Andrew
  
  
• Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life by Zimmer, Carl
  
  
• Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures by Schutt, Bill (text) & Patricia Wynne (illus.)
  
  
• Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Gazzaniga, Michael
  
  
• The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking To Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics by Susskind, Leonard
  
  
• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Roach, Mary