Publishers Weekly has just published its list of best books for 2007, including the following science or science-related titles.
How Doctors Think
Jerome Groopman (Houghton)
This could be the most important book on medicine you will ever read, analyzing why doctors misdiagnose—and how to help them get it right.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Naomi Klein (Holt/Metropolitan)
The economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—of the “Chicago School” and Milton Friedman are catastrophic, argues this vigorous polemic that demonstrates how free-market ideologues both welcome and provoke the collapse of other people’s economies.
The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor
William Langewiesche (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
World nuclearization “has become the human condition,” Langewiesche warns in this brief, tightly packed study that precisely defines an issue worthy of being at the forefront of our international policy.
Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming (Click for Science Shelf review)
Chris Mooney (Harcourt)
Having witnessed Katrina’s devastation of his mother’s New Orleans house, science writer Mooney explores “whether global warming will strengthen or otherwise change hurricanes in general.”
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
Richard Rhodes (Knopf)
This third volume in a history of nuclear weaponry, admirable for its research, might also be described as a chronicle of the unmaking of the arms race.
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
Maryanne Wolf (HarperCollins)
Child development professor Wolf maintains the tone of a curious, erudite friend as she synthesizes cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research—psychology and archeology, linguistics and education, history and neuroscience—in a pathbreaking look at the reading brain.
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