Smithsonianmag - The Ten Best Science Books of 2021

From captivating memoirs by researchers to illuminating narratives by veteran science journalists, these works affected us the most 2021 year.

Under a White Sky:The Nature of the Future, by Elizabeth Kolbert
That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard
Suzanne Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life.

The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration, by Sarah Everts
Sweating may be one of our weirdest biological functions, but it’s also one of our most vital and least understood. In The Joy of Sweat, Sarah Everts delves into its role in the body—and in human history.

The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything
When Newton discovered the law of gravity, he unified the rules governing the heavens and the Earth. Since then, physicists have been placing new forces into ever-grander theories.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, & Dreams Deferred, by Chanda-Prescod Weinsten
From a star theoretical physicist, a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos—and a call for a more just practice of science.

Deep Time: A Journey Through 4.5 Billion Years of Our Planet, by Riley Black
Deep time is the timescale of the geological events that have shaped our planet. Whilst so immense as to challenge human understanding, its evidence is nonetheless visible all around us.

Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world—from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses—the harder they find it is to locate life’s edge.

Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life.