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Permalink Reply by Nelson on March 17, 2011 at 3:45pm

the informal bibliography i put together should give you some suggestions on each. my suggestions on evolution would be Coyne's Why Evolution Is True, Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth, and Jonathan Weiner's The Beak Of The Finch. for the big bang specifically i'd suggest Simon Singh's The Big Bang, Laurence Krauss' Atom: A Single Oxygen Molecule’s Journey From The Big Bang to Life on Earth… And Beyond, and Steven Weinberg's The First Three Minutes.

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on March 17, 2011 at 4:09pm

Asimov's Atom is also good, if a little dated at this point.

I haven't read Krauss' Atom, Nelson. Another book to add to my reading list. (Heading to the Nook store now...)

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on March 17, 2011 at 4:10pm

I concur, those are really good. Simon Singh's book on the Big Bang cannot be beaten.

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Permalink Reply by Ash on March 17, 2011 at 8:43pm

For a very solid overview of the workings of the universe you can't do much better than steven hawkings "A brief history of time" (or "a briefer history of time", one just a little more streamlined).  And for evolution my favorite is "a selfish gene" by Dawkins, but "The greatest show on Earth" was also very good (try finding it on audiobook, its nice to hear it in an authors own words with his own inflection and emphasis).

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on March 18, 2011 at 2:21am

Actually you can. Hawking's books are great, they are indeed much about the workings of this Universe and what's in it, some Relativistic ideas (Hartle-Hawking no boundary condition, laid out implicitly even in his new book The Grand Design) about time and the Big Bang that is not in line with current thinking about time at least in multiverse theories, chaotic inflation, thinking in quantum gravity theories (string theory, loop quantum gravity or perhaps other theories like causal dynamical triangulation theory .

If you want to avoid that (for the moment) and want to know why Big Bang theory and not some other model, how we know that it is true more extensively than getting just another balloon analogy smacked in the face after a Hubble eulogy, but a detailed, yet comprehensive narrative about the scientific history of Big Bang cosmology and also you want to know how it works, from beginning to end, the genesis of the elements and the science behind it, then I think Simon Singh's book "Big Bang" is the best I've seen so far. (And I've read quite a few.)

If then you are provided with a solid foundation of Big Bang cosmology and want to get up to date as quickly as possible, I'd recommend reading Brian Greene's stuff. His popular writings are just absolutely awesome.

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Permalink Reply by James on March 17, 2011 at 9:03pm

While I don't have any books that are exclusively on the Big Bang Theory, I can tell you that The Greatest Show on Earth is an excellent book on evolution.

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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on March 18, 2011 at 12:00am

Jerry Coyne's book "Why Evolution Is True" is good. 

 

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/

 

http://jerrycoyne.uchicago.edu/index.html

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Permalink Reply by Loop Johnny on March 18, 2011 at 4:20am

For evolution read online: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01

For big-bang and the rest read Stephen Hawkins book: A Brief History of Time ( ************* )

 

*edited by moderator. copyright infringement and the facilitating of infringement are not allowed.*

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Permalink Reply by rationalrevolution on March 18, 2011 at 7:23am

Mine isn't technically about the Big Bang Theory, its about the Greek Atomic Theory and materialize view of an infinite and evolving universe as it related to Greek ideas on evolution.

 

Understanding Evolution: History, Theory, Evidence, and Implications

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/understanding_evolution.htm

 

 

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