BOOK AWARDS
Royal Society Prize for Science Books
http://www.aventisprizes.com/home_welcome.htm
The Royal Society Prize for Science Books (formerly Aventis Prizes for Science Books) are an annual book prize, which celebrate the very best in popular science writing for adults and children; they have become become one of the UK’s most prestigious non-fiction literary prizes. The Prizes are owned by the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science, who manged the Prizes with the generous support of the Aventis Foundation.
There are two categories: The Junior Prize, which is given to the best book written for under-14s, and the General Prize, for the best book written for a more general readership. Each prize is worth £10,000 to the winning author and £1,000 to each of the shortlisted authors.
The General Prize is chosen by a panel of five judges who select approximately six shortlisted books and subsequently a winner. For the Junior Prize, initially a panel of five adult judges chooses the shortlist of six books. The task of picking the winner is then handed over to the people who should know best — young people aged up to fourteen.
Winner (announced May 2009)
The Age of Wonder: How The Romantic Generation Discovered The Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
ISBN: 9780007149520 Published by HarperCollins
Shortlist (announced April 2009)
| Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN |
| Bad Science | Ben Goldacre | Fourth Estate | 9780007240197 |
| Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer | Jo Marchant | William Heinemann | 9780434018352 |
| The Age of Wonder: How The Romantic Generation Discovered The Beauty and Terror of Science | Richard Holmes | HarperCollins | 9780007149520 |
| The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | Leonard Mlodinow | Penguin | 9780141026473 |
| What The Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life | Avery Gilbert | Crown Publishers | 9781400082346 |
| Your Inner Fish: The Amazing Discovery of our 375-million-year-old Ancestor | Neil Shubin | Penguin | 9780141027586 |
