Royal Society Winton Prize 2013

The winner of the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize, arguably a summary of the best popular science books published in 2012 (and now worth £25,000 for the winner) has been announced:

Winner

The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll (Oneworld Publications)

Shortlist

Bird Sense by Tim Birkhead (Bloomsbury)
Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change that Shape Life by Enrico Coen (Princeton University Press)
Pieces of Light: The New Science of Memory by Charles Fernyhough (Profile Books)
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson (Granta)
Ocean of Life by Callum Roberts (Allen Lane)

Rest of the Longlist

The Spark of Life by Frances Ashcroft (Allen Lane)
The Story of Earth by Robert Hazen (Viking)
Life’s Ratchet by Peter Hoffmann (Basic Books)
Air: The Restless Shaper of the World by William Bryant Logan (WW Norton)
The Cosmic Tourist by Sir Patrick Moore, Brian May and Chris Lintott (Carlton Books)
The Life of a Leaf by Steven Vogel (The University of Chicago Press

and here are our favourites that didn’t make the long list, but certainly should have:

Gravity’s Engines – Caleb Scharf
Higgs – Jim Baggott
Ignorance – Stuart Firestein
The Moral Molecule – Paul Zak
The Righteous Mind – Jonathan Haidt
Turing, Pioneer of the Information Age – Jack Copeland
The Universe in Zero Words – Dana Mackenzie
The Universe Inside You – Brian Clegg

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