Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, established in 1980, is a category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Works are eligible during the year of their first US publication in English, though they may be written originally in languages other than English.

Recipients

Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology winners and finalists

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1989	Frans de Waal	Peacemaking Among Primates	Winner	[1]
	Francis Crick	What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery	Finalist	[2]
	F. Gonzalez-Crussi	The Five Senses
	David L. Hull	Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science
	Max F. Perutz	Is Science Necessary?: Essays on Science and Scientists
1990	Jane S. Smith	Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine	Winner	[3]
	Robert Scott Root-Bernstein	Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge	Finalist	[3]
	Christopher Manes	Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization
	John Alcock	Sonoran Desert Summer
	John McPhee	The Control of Nature
1991	Grigori Medvedev	The Truth About Chernobyl	Winner	[4]
	Dennis Overbye	Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Story of the Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe	Finalist	[4]
	William H. Calvin	The Ascent of Mind: Ice Age Climates and the Evolution of Intelligence
	Robert Kanigel	The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
	Sy Montgomery	Walking With the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas
1992	Jared Diamond	The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal	Winner	[5]
	Steven Levy	Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology	Finalist	[5]
	John Gribbin	Blinded By The Light: New Theories About the Sun and the Search for Dark Matter
	Daniel C. Dennett	Consciousness Explained
	Stanley Coren	The Left-Hander Syndrome: The Causes & Consequences of Left-Handedness
1993	Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger	Fuzzy Logic: The Discovery of a Revolutionary Computer Technology -- and How It Is Changing Our World	Winner	[6]
	Daniel Crevier	AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence	Finalist	[6]
	Gary Taubes	Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion
	James Gleick	Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
	Edward O. Wilson	The Diversity of Life
1994	Jonathan Weiner	The Beak of the Finch: A Story Of Evolution In Our Time	Winner	[7]
	Robert Pollack	Signs of Life: The Language and Meanings of DNA	Finalist	[7]
	Peter Ward	The End of Evolution
	Alan Cromer	Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science
	Robert M. Sapolsky	Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers
1995	Edward O. Wilson	Naturalist	Winner	[8]
	Oliver Sacks	An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales	Finalist	[8]
	Antonio R. Damasio	Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
	Ken Croswell	The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky Way
	Robert Wright	The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are -- The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
1996	Carl Sagan	The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark	Winner	[9]
	Amir D. Aczel	Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem	Finalist	[9]
	George Johnson	Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order
	James Howard Kunstler	Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century
	Charles E. Little	The Dying of the Trees
	Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan	The Forgotten Pollinators
	Hugh Aldersey-Williams	The Most Beautiful Molecule: The Discovery of the Buckyball
1997	Steven Pinker	How the Mind Works	Winner	[10]
	Richard Rhodes	Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague	Finalist	[10]
	David Deutsch	The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications
	Robert M. Sapolsky	The Trouble With Testosterone And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament
	David Harry Grinspoon	Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet
1998	Douglas Starr	Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce	Winner	[11]
	Simon Mawer	Mendel’s Dwarf	Finalist	[12]
	V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee	Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
	Pat Shipman	Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird Flight
	Daniel J. Kevles	The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character
1999	Dava Sobel	Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love	Winner	[11]
	Alison Jolly	Lucy’s Legacy: Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution	Finalist	[13]
	Bernd Heinrich	Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures With Wolf-Birds
	Simon Singh	The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
	Edward Hooper	The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS
2000	James Le Fanu, M.D.	The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine	Winner	[11]
	Karl Sabbagh	A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud	Finalist	[14]
	David Bodanis	E = mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation
	Dennis Overbye	Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance
	Matt Ridley	Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
2001	Richard Hamblyn	The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies	Winner	[11]
	David Hancocks	A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future	Finalist	[15]
	Sarah Flannery and David Flannery	In Code: A Mathematical Journey
	Bryan Sykes	The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
	Oliver Sacks	Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
2002	Brenda Maddox	Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA	Winner	[11]
	Deborah Blum	Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection	Finalist	[16]
	Judith Hooper	Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale
	Mark Kurlansky	Salt: A World History
	Richard Preston	The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story
2003	Philip J. Hilts	Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation	Winner	[17]
	Stephen S. Hall	Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension	Finalist	[17]
	David Baron	The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature
	Chandler Burr	The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses
	Paul Hoffman	Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight
2004	Charles Wohlforth	The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change	Winner	[18]
	Jonathan Weiner	His Brother’s Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine	Finalist	[18]
	Alan Tennant	On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon
	Lauren Slater	Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
	Ann Parson	The Proteus Effect: Stem Cells and Their Promise for Medicine
2005	Diana Preston	Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima	Winner	[19]
	Brad Matsen	Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss	Finalist	[20]
	Sean B. Carroll	Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo
	Mariana Gosnell	Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance
	Chris Mooney	The Republican War on Science
2006	Eric R. Kandel	In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind	Winner	[21][22]
	Edward O. Wilson	The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth	Finalist	[23]
	Ann Gibbons	The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors
	Joyce Chaplin	The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius
	Daniel J. Levitin	This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
2007	Douglas Hofstadter	I Am a Strange Loop	Winner	[24]
	James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould	Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence	Finalist	[24]
	Gino Segrè	Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics
	Daniel Lord Smail	On Deep History and the Brain
	Christine Kenneally	The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
2008	Leonard Susskind	The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics	Winner	[25][26]
	Carl Zimmer	Microcosm: E.Coli and the New Science of Life	Finalist	[27]
	Kenneth R. Miller	Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul
	Avery Gilbert	What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life
	Martin J. S. Rudwick	Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform
2009	Graham Farmelo	The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom	Winner	[28]
	Richard Wrangham	Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human	Finalist	[29]
	Bill Streever	Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places
	Carol Kaesuk Yoon	Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
	Marcia Bartusiak	The Day We Found the Universe
2010	Oren Harman	The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness	Winner	[30]
	Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway	Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming	Finalist	[31]
	Lauren Redniss	Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout
	Siddhartha Mukherjee	The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
	Rebecca Skloot	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
2011	Sylvia Nasar	Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius	Winner	[32]
	Joel Achenbach	A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher	Finalist	[33]
	Holly Tucker	Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution
	James Gleick	The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
	Mara Hvistendahl	Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
2012	Florence Williams	Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History	Winner	[34][35]
	Susan Cain	Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking	Finalist	[36]
	Nate Silver	The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t
	Jonathan Gottschall	The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
	George Dyson	Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
2013	Alan Weisman	Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?	Winner	[37]
	Virginia Morell	Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures	Finalist	[38]
	Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld	Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience
	Annalee Newitz	Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
	Matthew D. Lieberman	Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect
2014	Elizabeth Kolbert	The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History	Winner	[39][40]
	Michael Benson	Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time	Finalist	[41]
	Christian Rudder	Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking)
	Martin J. Blaser	MD, Missing Microbes, How the overuse of antibiotics is fueling our modern plagues
	Naomi Klein	This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
2015	Andrea Wulf	The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World	Winner	[42]
	Beth Shapiro	How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction	Finalist	[42]
	John Markoff	Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots
	Jonathan Waldman	Rust: The Longest War
	David J. Morris	The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
2016	Luke Dittrich	Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets	Winner	[43]
	Mary Roach	Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War	Finalist	[44]
	Ed Yong	I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
	Bruce Watson	Light: A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age
	Sonia Shah	Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
2017	Robert Sapolsky	Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst	Winner	[45]
	Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg	A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution	Finalist	[46]
	Max Tegmark	Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
	Cornelia Dean	Making Sense of Science: Separating Substance from Spin
	Matthew Walker	Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
2018	Beth Macy	Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America	Winner	[47]
	Eliza Griswold	Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America	Finalist	[48]
	Rose George	Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood
	Marcia Bjornerud	Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World
	Mona Hanna-Attisha	What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
2019	Maria Popova	Figuring	Winner	[49][50]
	Katherine Eban	Bottle of Lies: the Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom	Finalist	[51]
	Adam Higginbotham	Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
	Caroline Criado Perez	Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
	Angela Saini	Superior: The Return of Race Science
2020	Sara Seager	The Smallest Lights in the Universe	Winner	[52]
	Ainissa Ramirez	The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another	Finalist	[53]
	Brian Christian	The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values
	Lulu Miller	Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
	Patrik Svensson	The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
2021	Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein	The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred	Winner	[54]
	Katharine Hayhoe	Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World	Finalist	[55]
	Emma Marris	Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World
	Meghan O'Gieblyn	God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
	Scott Weidensaul	A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
2022	Sabrina Imbler	How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures	Winner	[56]
	Jessica Hernandez	Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science	Finalist	[56]
	Juli Berwald	Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs
	James Vincent	Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement From Cubits to Quantum Constants
	Ed Yong	An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
2023	Eugenia Cheng	Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths	Winner	[57]
	Jeff Goodell	The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet	Finalist	[58]
	Jaime Green	The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos
	Caspar Henderson	A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous
	Zach Weinersmith	A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?