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Science book
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A science book is a work of nonfiction, usually written by a scientist, researcher, or professor like Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time), or sometimes by a non-scientist such as Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything). Usually these books are written for a wide audience not presumed to have any scientific education, as opposed to the very narrow audience that a scientific paper would have, and are therefore referred to as popular science. As such, they require considerable talent on the part of the author to sufficiently explain difficult topics to people who are totally new to the subject, and a good blend of storytelling and technical writing. In the UK, The Aventis Prizes for Science Books are considered to be the most prestigious awards for science writing. In the US, the National Book Awards briefly had a category for science writing in the 1960s, but now they just have the broad categories of fiction and nonfiction.
There are many disciplines that are well explained to lay people via science books. Just a few examples are Donald Norman on usability and cognitive psychology, Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, and Robert Ornstein on linguistics and cognitive science, Robert Ardrey on paleoanthropology, Desmond Morris on zoology and anthropology, and Carl Sagan on astronomy.
- Science Book Guide Website
- UCSC Science Writing Program, University of California Santa Cruz, "the only graduate science writing program in the nation that requires significant previous science training."