Subject Knowledge: Great books for biology teachers

Reading great books is the only one short cut to improving subject knowledge. Here, I compile a selection that have helped me develop as a teacher and are accessibly-written. It isn’t a complete list of my favourites and I’m sure there are many great books I’m yet to read.

Great Books

Human ecophysiology & evolution

• On Fertile Ground: A Natural History of Human Reproduction
• A Story of Us: A New Look at Human Evolution
• I, Mammal: The Story of What Makes Us Mammals

Evolution

• Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction 
• Improbable Destinies: How predictable is evolution?
• Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution’s Greatest Puzzle
• The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
• How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origin, Lives, and Diversity 

Ecology

• Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction
• Spillover: the powerful, prescient book that predicted the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic
• Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
• Rebirding: Rewilding Britain and its Birds
• Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures
• Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly
• The Story of N: A Social History of the Nitrogen Cycle and the Challenge of Sustainability
• Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

Biochemistry / Molecular Biology

• The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
• Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life
• Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World
• Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death (good if you teach Krebs cycle 16-18)

Botany

• The Life of a Leaf
• The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth’s History
• The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World
• Woodlands
• Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly

Genetics & Inheritance

• Superior: The Return of Race Science
• She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

Systems Thinking

• Thinking in Systems 

Consciousness, cognition, intelligence

• Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
• Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
• Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence

Human Biology

• The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth
• The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science

Marine Biology & Fisheries

• The Unnatural History of the Sea

Teaching Biology

• Biology Made Real: Ways of Teaching that Inspire Meaning Making
• Difference Maker: Enacting Systems Theory in Biology Teaching
• Teaching Meaning: What Works When Telling Isn’t Enough

Deeper Texts

Systems theory and cybernetics

• Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene
• The Systems View of Life: A unifying vision
• The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future 
• Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene 
• Understanding Systems: Conversations on Epistemology and Ethics
• From Being to Doing: The Origins of the Biology of Cognition
• Evolution from a Thermodynamic Perspective: Implications for Species Conservation and Agricultural Sustainability
• Runaway: Gregory Bateson, the Double Bind, and the Rise of Ecological Consciousness