Supplemental Reading

Easy

The Woman with a Worm in her Head (Pamela Nagami). A collection of infectious disease essays, including AIDS, chickenpox and flesh-eating bacteria.

Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton). Crichton interweaves details of genetic engineering, computer wizardry and current scientific controversy over dinosaurs to fashion a scary, creepy, mesmerizing thriller.

The Andromeda Strain(Michael Crichton) A returning space capsule releases an alien virus on the earth.

My Sisters Keeper (Jodi Picoult). Anna was genetically engineered to be a perfect match for her cancer-ridden older sister.

The Hot Zone (Richard Preston). The tale of an actual Ebola virus outbreak in a suburban Washington, D.C. laboratory.

Complications: A Surgeon's Note on an Imperfect Science (Atul Gawande). Edgy accounts of medical traumas and sobering analyses of doctors' anxieties and burnout.

The Demon in the Freezer (Richard Preston). A thriller that focuses on smallpox and the threat it plays as a bioterrorism agent.

Medium

Microbe Hunters (Paul de Kruif). In this classic bestseller, Paul de Kruif dramatizes the pioneering bacteriological work of such scientists as Leeuwenhoek, Spallanzani, Koch, Pasteur, Reed, and Ehrlich.

Silent Spring (Rachel Carson). The book focuses on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers, and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice that led to dangerous chemicals to the food source.

Journey to the Ants (Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson). Offer a fascinating glimpse into the world of ants as well as their own personal adventures in the study of these insects.

Through a Window: My Thirty Year with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (Jane Goodall). A saga of chimpanzee families with an engrossing account of animal behavior.

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA(James Watson). Describes the many minds involved in the ultimate understanding of what DNA looks like and how it multiplies.

The Lives of a Cell; Notes of a Biology Watcher(Lewis Thomas). A beautifully written collection of essays that bring one very close to a belief that in some way, all life is connected.

The World Without Us (Alan Weisman). If humans when extinct overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished?

The Journey of Man (Spencer Wells). Tracking human relatedness and migration by examining Y-chromosome similarities and differences among current humans.

A Feeling for the Organism; The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (Evelyn Fox Keller). An insightful and thought-provoking book about women in science and the role of dissent in the scientific community.

The Secret Life of Germs (Phillip Tierno). The story of bacteria, viruses, and prions and their myriad effects on human beings. From toxic shock syndrome to Lyme disease to diarrheal infections of the Third World.

Abraham Lincoln’s DNA (Philip R. Reilly). An enjoyable series of vignettes that explain the fundamental tools of the modern genetic detective in the course of fascinating historical tales.

When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish (Lisa Seachrist Chiu). A remarkable collection of stories about the discovery and elucidation of some rare or not so rare genetic disorders.

The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (Oliver Sacks) Clinical tales drawn from fascinating and unusual cases introduces real people who suffer from a variety of neurological syndromes which include symptoms such as amnesia, uncontrolled movements, and musical hallucinations.

A Day in the Life of Your Body (Jennifer Ackerman) Starting with a 5:30 a.m. wakeup call and working through to the wee hours, this book explains the complex details behind some of the body's most basic functions

Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks) Explores the effects of music on the human brain. Clinical studies from individuals afflicted by an inability to connect with any melody to Alzheimer's patients who find order and comfort through music.

Riddled with Life (Marlene Zuk). Stories of human parasites and how humans and our parasites have co-evolved.

The Wild Trees (Richard Preston). Includes the history of old-growth forests, canopy ecology, tells how gadgets and techniques to climb were invented and introduces recreational tree-climbing as a sport.

Survival of the Sickest (Sharon Moalem). Addresses a number of provocative questions, such as why debilitating hereditary diseases persist in humans and why we suffer from the consequences of aging.

Panic in Level 4 (Richard Preston). Essays that cover genome mapper Craig Venter; a gene that leads people to cannibalize themselves; and two Russian-Jewish émigré scientists who built a monster computer in their cramped apartment to puzzle out patterns in the value of pi.

The Immortal Cell (Michael D. West). A chronology of the emerging science of immortality and a personal journal of the path from creationist to scientist. It was West who announced that through somatic cell nuclear transfer they could create embryonic stem cells.

Gone Tomorrow (Heather Rogers). Americans produce the most waste of any people on Earth, but few of us ever think about where all that trash goes. Rogers endeavors to show the inner workings of the waste stream, from the garbage truck to the landfill, incinerator or parts unknown.

Parasite Rex (Carl Zimmer). From tapeworms to isopods to ichneumon wasps, "parasites are complex, highly adapted creatures that are at the heart of the story of life."

Hard

Guns, Germs and Steal (Jared Diamond) Through the lens of an evolutionary biologist, Diamond reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes the movements of peoples and ideas.

Head Cases (Michael Paul Mason). takes us into the dark side of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories, at once true and strange, from the world of brain injury.

The Ghost Map (Steven Johnson). On August 28, 1854, working-class Londoner Sarah Lewis tossed a bucket of soiled water into the cesspool of her squalid apartment building and triggered the deadliest outbreak of cholera in the city's history.

Origin of Species (Charles Darwin). One of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.

Plague Time (Paul Ewald). Argues that cancer, heart disease, and arthritis are not necessarily caused by a breakdown of the human body, but by the action of infectious agents and by the immune response to those agents.

The Seven Daughters of Eve (Bryan Sykes). Decoding mitochondrial DNA and using this knowledge to trace the path of human evolution. Sykes relates personal and historical anecdotes, offering familiar ground from which to consider the science.

The Family that Couldn't Sleep (T.D. Max). The case of an Italian family whose members succumb to a sleeping disorder that causes not only insomnia but certain death. The cause of this disease is determined to be prions—infectious agents derived from proteins.