PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Longlists
1. 
3. 
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
by:
Ben Goldfarb
4.28 avg rating — 4,973 ratings 
6. 
11. 
12. 
Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts
by:
Emily Anthes
3.73 avg rating — 1,027 ratings 
14. 
Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World
by:
Marcia Bjornerud
4.07 avg rating — 1,657 ratings 15. 
Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine Forever
by:
Bijal P. Trivedi
4.43 avg rating — 1,092 ratings 
17. 
Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior
by:
Leonard Mlodinow
4.06 avg rating — 13,788 ratings 18. 
High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society
by:
Carl L. Hart
4.13 avg rating — 3,002 ratings 
20. 
21. 
Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets
by:
Luke Dittrich
3.85 avg rating — 5,702 ratings 22. 
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine 4.31 avg rating — 21,418 ratings
23. 
Engineering Eden: The True Story of a Violent Death, a Trial, and the Fight over Controlling Nature 4.08 avg rating — 790 ratings
24. 
How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight
by:
Julian Guthrie
4.14 avg rating — 920 ratings 25. 
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars
by:
Dava Sobel
3.59 avg rating — 3,470 ratings 26. 
The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World's Most Coveted Fish
by:
Emily Voigt
3.92 avg rating — 2,080 ratings 27. 
The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self 3.78 avg rating — 1,556 ratings
28. 
Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled On by Hawking Became Loved
by:
Marcia Bartusiak
4.10 avg rating — 850 ratings 
30. 
The Boy Who Played with Fusion: Extreme Science, Extreme Parenting, and How to Make a Star
by:
Tom Clynes
4.14 avg rating — 600 ratings 31. 
The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults 3.77 avg rating — 5,909 ratings
32. 
34. 
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
by:
Steven Johnson
4.11 avg rating — 15,320 ratings 35. 
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery
by:
Sam Kean
4.26 avg rating — 13,462 ratings 
37. 
The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
by:
Craig Nelson
3.88 avg rating — 513 ratings 
40. 
Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle
by:
Andreas Wagner
3.82 avg rating — 718 ratings 41. 
The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
by:
Paul Bogard
4.04 avg rating — 2,479 ratings 42. 
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
by:
Sheri Fink
3.93 avg rating — 39,323 ratings 
44. 
Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America
by:
Jon Mooallem
4.05 avg rating — 2,616 ratings 
46. 
Weird Life: The Search for Life That Is Very, Very Different from Our Own
by:
David Toomey
3.70 avg rating — 501 ratings 47. 
What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs
by:
Cat Warren
3.98 avg rating — 1,839 ratings 48. 
Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live
by:
Marlene Zuk
3.68 avg rating — 1,539 ratings 
50. 
The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
by:
Sam Kean
4.01 avg rating — 10,630 ratings 51. 
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
by:
David Quammen
4.42 avg rating — 20,023 ratings 52. 
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
by:
Bill Wasik
3.72 avg rating — 11,392 ratings 53. 
55. 
American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World
by:
David Baron
3.75 avg rating — 1,626 ratings 56. 
No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America
by:
Ron Powers
3.87 avg rating — 4,179 ratings 57. 
The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization
by:
Vince Beiser
4.06 avg rating — 2,154 ratings 
59. 
Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds
by:
Lauren Slater
3.79 avg rating — 808 ratings 60. 
She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
by:
Carl Zimmer
4.16 avg rating — 7,098 ratings 61. 
What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics
by:
Adam Becker
4.28 avg rating — 3,610 ratings 62. 
The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
by:
Deborah Blum
3.93 avg rating — 4,796 ratings 63. 
65. 
The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think 4.23 avg rating — 3,953 ratings
67. 
The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers 4.13 avg rating — 1,377 ratings
68. 
The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
by:
Sonia Shah
3.88 avg rating — 1,639 ratings 69. 
Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl 4.19 avg rating — 6,057 ratings
70. 
A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You
by:
Sean B. Carroll
3.82 avg rating — 1,105 ratings 71. 
The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women
by:
Sharon Moalem
3.96 avg rating — 1,523 ratings 
73. 
Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live 4.01 avg rating — 2,789 ratings
74. 
75. 
Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves
by:
Frans de Waal
4.21 avg rating — 5,466 ratings 76. 
On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galapagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden 3.65 avg rating — 103 ratings
77. 
Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience 3.87 avg rating — 547 ratings
78. 
The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
by:
Dahr Jamail
4.20 avg rating — 917 ratings 79. 
The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
by:
Joseph E. LeDoux
3.86 avg rating — 658 ratings 80. 