For the geek in your life.

It's down to the wire for last minute Christmas shopping. I have a few recommendations for you, if you're like me and have let things go to the last minute. In the beautiful coffee-table science book category we have:

Fantastic evo/devo photos. This is one I put on my own Christmas list, and hope to find under the tree on Tuesday:



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This is one that we have at home already. Beautiful, though a tiny bit dated (there are so many space probes putting out even better photos, but these photos are well worth having at home):



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A photo from this book has found its way into my Friday beautiful science series. Also on my Christmas list, and I'm sure the nerd in your life would enjoy it too.



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In the "neat scienceish category":

This book chronicles the life of a very high-functioning autistic synesthetic man. That is, he sees colors and textures when he thinks of numbers, allowing him to do some pretty fantastic mental math feats. While the book could have used pretty substantial editing (it's an autobiography, and like many books in the genre, he has a hard time seeing what will be interesting to readers about his life), it's still a really neat read. Cool to climb into the head of someone who thinks very differently from me (and yet on some levels, not so different).



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I've only just started reading Vaccine by Arthur Allen. It's very well written, and presents aspects of the history of vaccinology that I wasn't aware of. He also lays out the book as his own personal effort to educate himself on the good and bad of vaccines. Well written, and in the parts that I can evaluate, the accuracy is very good. I'd recommend this book to anyone, science geek or no.



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And finally, this book by Carl Zimmer isn't out yet, but if it's anything like his blogging and newspaper articles, this will be a fantastic book. This book is written about my favourite bacterium, Escherichia coli. Should be a fun read, but I won't say any more as I haven't seen it yet.




Good luck getting your last minute shopping in.