The impressive shortlist for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books 2009 made us wonder what popular science books still need to be written. We asked readers to send in their ideas and here are our five winners. Visit newscientist.com on 15 September when we reveal the winner of the Royal Society prize.
Gisli Bjorn Heimisson, Iceland, Rebuilding a Civilisation
A do-it-yourself guide to rebuilding civilisation after a global disaster. From making gunpowder to harnessing electricity, it鈥檚 everything we need to know to start again from scratch.
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C. Wright, Australia, The Book of Normal
Abnormalities are often corrected, medicated or feared, but science has yet to define normality. Is biological diversity a better model for thinking about human variation?
Lauren Farmer, Australia, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea: What鈥檚 really down there
We know more about deep space than we do about the deep ocean, more about the top of mount Everest than the bottom of the Mariana trench. Time to redress the balance.
Sarah Bossanyi, UK, Love Your Tapeworm
A book to help us appreciate the biology and ecological importance of mosquitoes, slugs, lice and, of course, tapeworms.
Kieren Lythgow, UK, Digital Kingdom
An exciting tour of bioinformatics, genomics, systems biology and synthetic biology, plus the potential technologies of our digital future, from biowarfare to palaeozoos.
Each winner receives a set of the Royal Society鈥檚 shortlisted books