I just read a book by Adam Rutherford called Creation: The Origin of Life/The Future of Life and really enjoyed it. I think it’s really well written and easy to understand. Specifically, half of the book is about scientists trying to find out what the first living cells would have been like and the other half is about the technologies being used to change cells now. To explain this Adam Rutherford explains much of the history of cell biology including the discovery of the structure of DNA, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Mendel’s work on heredity in peas, as well as a whole lot more. I’d really recommend that.
I think making good recommendations can be really difficult, because book enjoyment is so personal. That said, a few non-scientists I know read “Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom” by Sean B. Carroll and liked it a lot for the breadth of information and the pictures, although the writing can be disjointed.
As for ageing, Steven Austad’s “Why We Age: What Science Is Discovering about the Body’s Journey Through Life” is pretty readable. If you have some biological background, although it’s now a bit out of date, Leonard Hayflick (a pioneer of ageing research) wrote a book called “How and why we age” – but it’s definitely more technical.
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Leila commented on :
I’ve always enjoyed Lewis Wolpert’s take on science, and developmental biology in particular, so I would recommend “How We Live and Why We Die”.