{"id":9210,"date":"2010-12-10T16:46:02","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T16:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2010\/12\/10\/current-science-books-the-perf\/"},"modified":"2010-12-10T16:46:02","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T16:46:02","slug":"current-science-books-the-perf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/10\/current-science-books-the-perf\/","title":{"rendered":"Current Science Books: The perfect holiday gift!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everybody loves to give or to get a book as a present, right? They are small, interesting, there is a wide selection in every price range. As gift giver, it is a way you can impose your will on others, which is always true for gifts, but specially so with books. As a recipient, you can easily get rid of it by claiming that you loaned it to your cousin Leo who just moved to Borneo.<\/p>\n

Also, books are very easy to order on line. Well, you can order anything on line, but with books you know what you are getting.<\/p>\n

The following is a list of books that I happen to have on hand (or recently held in my hands) that have something to do withs science, are good, and are current. If you are the author of a recent science book and you don’t see yours listed here, that is probably because you or your publisher were too cheap to send me a review copy (shame on you). Some but not all are already reviewed on this blog (here<\/a>).
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\nThe first one on the list is by my friend and colleague Mark Borrello. I’ve just started reading it, and it’s quite good. It is extremely well written and very important, a scholarly work that is quite accessible to those with an interest in the subject: Evolutionary Restraints: The Contentious History of Group Selection<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

The next book, also written by a friend of mine (don’t worry, I only list good books … which means books written by friends that suck are probably books written by former friends, but whatever). This is NOT the type of book one sees on a list like this, as it is a textbook. This first year college or AP biology textbook is a completely new text, and thus has certain advantages over the usual tired old workhorses most people are accustom to. If you are interested in biology and stuff, having a good, current textbook hand is a good thing. I recommend, for this purpose, What Is Life?<\/a>\"\" by Jay Phelan. Maybe you can find a cheap used copy.<\/p>\n

One of the most important books to come out this year for readers of this blog is Genie Scott’s Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction, 2nd Edition<\/a>\"\". Well, maybe it came out last year, I can’t remember. In any event, there’s probably a new paperback edition. If you engage in the Evolution-Creation debate it is a must-have-on-your-shelf book.<\/p>\n

There is sort of an order to the rest of the books, having to do with greatness of the book, how recent it is, how relevant I think it might be to the average reader of this blog (as if any reader of this blog would be ‘average’!) and so on.<\/p>\n