The Ten Best Science Books of 2023

In the past 12 months, record-breaking wildfires burned across Canada, and a tragic blaze swept through Maui. A piece of an asteroid landed on Earth after an epic space mission, and artificial intelligence advanced in leaps and bounds. In our oceans, a sub imploded on a fatal dive to the Titanic, and orcas gained our attention as they broke rudders off boats.

In between writing and editing articles about all of those stories, we read longer, more involved works of nonfiction. From these, we picked our ten favorites published between December of last year and this November. They range from a book about a group dedicated to rehabilitating injured turtles, to the story of a damaging wildfire that burned through a city in Canada, to a work on the amazing discoveries that have been made by scientists exploring the ocean’s depths. Check out these top science titles from the past year, selected by Smithsonian magazine’s editors and frequent contributors.