There are many good popular books on physics topics and good biographies coming out these days. Below is the addition to My 2012 List of recent books which I have read. Check out other lists of books:  Goodreads.

More books:

Theoretical Minimum series:
     Classical Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum - Leonard Susskind
     Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum - Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman
     Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory: The Theoretical Minimum
       - Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman
Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum
        Reality - Anil Ananthaswamy
13.8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything - John Gribbin
What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics - Adam Becker
The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and
        the Beauty of the Cosmos - Mario Livio
The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized
        Time and Reality - Paul Halpern
The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi,
        Father of the Nuclear Age - David N. Schwartz
Ripples in Spacetime: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and the Future of Astronomy
        - Govert Schilling and Martin Rees
A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
        - Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
        - Dava Sobel
The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age - Gino Segre
        and Bettina Hoerlin
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed - Jim Al-Khalil
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space - Janna Levin
The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer - The Unlikely Partnership
        That Built the Atom Bomb - James Kunetka
The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition - Richard Rhodes
Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World - Amir Alexander
The Universe in the Rearview Mirror: How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality - Dave Goldberg

The list below was compiled in 2012 and updated 2016. - need to update

Quantum Mechanics

Dance of the Photons - Anton Zellinger - Great read on quantum entanglement
Einstein's Dice and Schrodinger's Cat - Paul Halpern
The Quantum Moment - Crease & Goldhaber

Cosmology

The Cosmic Cocktail - Katherine Freese (Search for dark matter)

Relativity

Black Hole Blues - Janna Levin - Book (April 2016) on the story of gravitational wave detection
The Science of Interstellar - Kip Thorne (The science behind the movie)
A Perfect Theory - Pedro Ferreira (History of General Relativity)
Black Hole - Marcia Bartusiak

Higgs

The Particle at the End of the Universe - Sean Carroll
Knocking on Heaven's Door - Lisa Randall
Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider - Amir Aczel

Biography

Traveling to Infinity - Jane Hawking (lead to the movie, Theory of Everything)
Half-Life The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy - Frank Close (Spy mystery)
Robert Oppenheimer - Ray Monk (good discussion of Oppenheimer's science)
Einstein and the Quantum - A Douglas Stone (concentrates on Einstein's contribution to QM)
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick
Alan Turing: The Enigma - Andrew Hodges (not physics, book behind the movie)
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius - Marc Seifer
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - Robert Kanigel (not physics)
Einstein and the Quantum Theory - article by Pais

Other

A Short Bright Flash - Theresa Levitt (History of Fresnel Lens)
Operation Paperclip - Annie Jacobsen (Program that brought German Scientists to US)
Farewell to Reality - Jim Baggot
Beyond Uncertainty - David Cassidy (Heisenberg)
Our Mathematical Universe - Max Tegmark
First War of Physics - Jim Baggot (History of Atomic Bomb)
Einstein's Cosmos - Michio Kaku
The Character of Physical Law - Feynman
Time Reborn - Lee Smolin
Physics on the Fringe - Margaret Wertheim
How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival - David Kaiser
Area 51: Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, Annie Jacobson
Collider, Paul Halpern
The Drunkard's Walk, Leonard Mlodinow
Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel, Michio Kaku
Physics for Future Presidents, Richard Muller

Popular Books

List of Popular Physics Books at Goodreads.

 

 

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