The Royal Society has…announced the longlist for this year’s Aventis Prizes for Science Books’ General Prize, which celebrates the very best in popular science writing for adults. The five-strong judging panel selected a longlist of thirteen books:
Topics range from a history of poisons to how war and conflict drive science.
Titles range from Lane’s “Power, Sex, Suicide” to Kiku’s “Parallel Universes” — with a little something for anyone’s special science interests.
Chair of this year’s General Prize Judging Panel, Nick Ross, added: “This stuff is so accessible it is sometimes hard to put down, and the science is so absorbing and surprising it can make fiction seem dull. Science writing used to be full of impenetrable jargon, but these books are a joy.”
The prizewinners will be announced in mid-May. You needn’t wait to start reading.
Thanks, Michael W
The amount of knowledge is staggering. There’s a Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Manhattan near Lincoln Center that is packed with four stories of books upon shelves and shelves. And that’s nothing. A drop in the bucket. Consider the Library of Congress, NYPL, private collections, archives, microfiche, museums, online, trade publications, etc. Humans have amassed mountains of knowledge, but yet, no one knows Nothing.
Try to know Nothing. Even geniuses would have a hard time with that.
Which is why the concept of zero is hailed as one of the greatest developments in human understanding 🙂