Someone recommend me some cool pop sci books along the lines of The Elegant Universe, Blind Watchmaker, Collapse, etc. etc.

THANKS LOVE FIFTY

Cosmic Jackpot was a rather fun read.

Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees

The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker

The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond

Evolution ~ Stephen Baxter

Some cool books:

Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea

Frozen Earth

Venus Revealed

Mapping Mars

Lonely Planets

The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker
The Mating Mind, Geoffrey Miller
The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

I read somewhere that that was full of factual errors. I read his Mother Tongue, which was generally good, but also somewhat misinformed.

Can't beat A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

The Cosmic Connection, by Carl Sagan.

It's old, (1976ish), but you can't beat the master ;)

The World Without Us - Alan Wiesman

^ This was very good. Some amazing facts in there.
I'm always partial to the science of the Discworld series, but you have to know a bit of the Discworld to really appreciate it.

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene

The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity (http://www.amazon.com/Five-Ages-Universe-Physics-Eternity/dp/0684865769/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202280598&sr=8-1) by Fred C. Adams & Greg Laughlin.

Origins of Existence: How Life Emerged in the Universe (http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Existence-Life-Emerged-Universe/dp/0743212622/ref=pd_sim_b_njs_title_1) by Fred Adams.

Dinosaur in a Haystack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_in_a_Haystack) by Stephen Jay Gould (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould) was good read, unfortunately my local libraries don't have too many of his books.

Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould

You know, Julian, many of his essays are online (http://www.stephenjaygould.org) now ;)

A few mathematical ones:

Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon Singh
The Music of the Primes - Marcus Du Sautoy
Chaos - James Gleick

An oldie but a goodie:

Paradigms Lost - John Casti

For anyone who has read Brian Greene, I Strongly recommend that you read Michio Kaku.

A nice starting point would be Hyperspace. Kaku is much better IMO at abstracting the harder mathematical points in allegory without completely fuzzing them over.

For example: To sum up the effects of Time-Dilation & Mass Contraction, he stated (I am paraphrasing of course) "We are blissfully unaware that we are becoming dimwitted Pancakes." Which wraps up the entire concept into something amusing and easily remembered. I'd actually be surprised if I am more than 2 or 3 words off from precisely how he wrote it, and my memory is horrific.

No doubt very outdated, but I enjoy Planet Earth as a bedtime story.:cool:
http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Earth-Companion-PBS-Television/dp/0553050966

Wow, so out of date, it can be had for $0.01.

Guns, Germs, and Steel. Jared Diamond.

I read somewhere that that was full of factual errors. I read his Mother Tongue, which was generally good, but also somewhat misinformed.

I don't know what or how many factual errors there might be, but it's still a really good book.