This is cool, and unexpected: the University of Chicago has an annual feature where they ask what their faculty what was the last good book they read. Guess what book faculty member (and Holy Haleakala, Chief Judge for the Seventh Circuit United States Court of Appeals) Frank Easterbrook chose?
The bookstores and blogs are full of junk science, much of it predicting doom. So I enjoyed reading Death from the Skies! by a real scientist (Philip Plait), who also runs the Bad Astronomy blog, that mixes science news with exposing scientific bunkum. Plait evaluates the doomsayers' predictions and assesses their likelihoods. He provides a convenient table of giant stars in the celestial neighborhood, just in case worries about supernovas and gamma ray bursts have kept you awake at night. A well-written book about science is always a good break from the law reports.
[I added the link, it's not in ...
