by Atul Gawande. Metropolitan/Holt. The surgeon and New Yorker writer considers how doctors fail patients at the end of life, and how they can do better. (1)
by Stephen W. Hawking. Bantam. The classic primer for nonscientists on the origins of the universe. (4)
by Randall Munroe. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Scientific, often humorous answers to hypothetical questions, drawn in part on the author’s website, . (3)
by Susan Cain. Crown. Introverts — one-third of the population — are undervalued in American society. (9)
by Charles Duhigg. Random House. An examination of the science behind habits, how we form them and break them. (6)
by Daniel Kahneman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The winner of a Nobel in economic science discusses how we make choices and when we cannot trust our intuitions. (10)
by Rebecca Skloot. Crown. A woman’s cancer cells were cultured without her permission in 1951. (5)
by Yuval Noah Harari. Harper. How Homo sapiens became Earth’s dominant species. (7)
by Cat Warren. Touchstone. Canine powers of detection and the hidden things dogs can sniff out: truffles, bedbugs, bombs, disease.
by Mitchell Moffit. Scribner. Irreverent answers to questions that often are not asked in classrooms.
by John Hargrove with Howard Chua-Eoan. Palgrave Macmillan. A former orca trainer for SeaWorld exposes the dark side of the multibillion-dollar marine park industry.
by Robert Whitaker. Broadway Books. Psychiatric drugs and the rise of mental illness in America.
by Bill Gifford. Grand Central. A review of the science on — and myths about — aging, and advice on how to live longer. (12)
by Marc Goodman. Doubleday. The world of cybercrime and corporate spying, with advice on protecting yourself. (8)
by Andrew Hodges. Princeton University. The mathematician who cracked the German Enigma code during World War II. (2)
by Julie Holland. Penguin Press. The consequences for women of mood-altering medications.
by Elizabeth Kolbert. Picador. The New Yorker writer examines human influences in the planet’s current spasm of plant and animal loss. (13)
by Michio Kaku. Doubleday. A theoretical physicist examines research suggesting that scientists will have soon a complete map of the brain. (17)
edited by John Brockman. HarperPerennial. Scientific theories that are blocking progress.
by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Scribner/Simon & Schuster. An oncologist’s history of cancer and its treatment.