Listmania!
Best Books of 2008
By an Amazon.com customer
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's SoulOnly a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul by Kenneth R. Miller
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $4.15
Ken Miller's superb polemic condemning Intelligent Design creationism and explaining why and how it poses a grave threat to America's soul.
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of LifeMicrocosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $4.10
Carl Zimmer's elegant, often poetic, examination of bacterium E. coli's importance to contemporary biology.
Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in AmericaGrand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America by Robert S. McElvaine
Buy new: $23.95 / Used from: $2.16
Evangelical Protestant Christian historian Robert McElvaine's harsh, but accurate, condemnation of American Fundamentalist Protestant "Christianity".
The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary EconomicsThe Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics by Michael Shermer
Buy new: $26.00 / Used from: $0.49
Noted skeptic Michael Shermer's elegant, quite persuasive, advocacy of biological evolution as a sound model for conservative/libertarian free market economics.
The Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-town AmericaThe Devil in Dover: An Insider's Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-town America by Lauri Lebo
Buy new: $18.21 / Used from: $3.67
Journalist - and Dover, PA resident - Lauri Lebo's heart-felt, riveting account of the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial that is the best published account of the trial itself. Her lyrical prose will remind readers of the best from Frank McCourt and Carl Zimmer, among others.
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human BodyYour Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin
Buy new: $16.32 / Used from: $4.95
Vertebrate paleobiologist and anatomist Neil Shubin's terse, but elegant, account of the evolution of human skeletal anatomy.
She Had No Enemies: A Memoir (Volume 1)She Had No Enemies: A Memoir (Volume 1) by Dennis Fleming
Buy new: $14.99 / Used from: $35.40
Painful, well-written memoir from the author about his youngest sister's murder, the search for her killer, and how these events ultimately transformed his life in a surprising, rather inspirational, way.