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TRAWLING through the year’s science books is a good way to restore perspective. They tackle everything from imagining the new world that emerged after the dinosaurs were wiped out to understanding our own place in nature by exploring the woods, and from extending our senses to the value of emotions. Enjoy our selection: many of our picks were reviewed in these pages, but they are all terrific reads and will make great gifts.

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From dinosaurs to plants

It is just as well that the world is full of surprises because the human appetite for novelty is insatiable. Barely 10 years after naturalist and palaeontologist Richard Owen coined the word “dinosaur” to describe the giant fossil lizards, a pleasure garden was exhibiting them at scale – rendered in Victorian concrete.

Our hunger for the past is captured twice over in Mark Witton and Ellinor Michel’s (The Crowood Press), which introduces us to those magnificent beasts and their talented interpreters. Reflecting on the fragility of the models still gracing London’s Crystal Palace Park, 91av concluded that “a record this detailed – and so charming – is long overdue”.

All good things must come to an end, alas, and the spectacular disappearance of the dinosaurs – incinerated by an asteroid strike – is brilliantly depicted in the early, apocalyptic chapters of Riley Black’s (St Martin’s Press). Even more impressively, Black shows how a new world emerged from the wreckage. “It is,” wrote 91av, “as if she had set up camp in the very heart of the valley that best captures the catastrophe and its aftermath.”

This wasn’t Earth’s first extinction event, nor will it be its last. Oliver Milman’s anatomy of (Atlantic Books) warns of a catastrophic population decline among what he calls “the tiny empires that run the world”, in an account that fully captures their sheer extraordinariness.

Andreia Salvador, a curator at London’s Natural History Museum, performs much the same service for molluscs. The mind boggles to think how she whittled the museum’s collection of 8 million-plus specimens down to the 121 in (University of Chicago Press).

At least she had a drier time of it than Chris Thorogood, whose book (University of Chicago Press) promises to propel the reader through rainforests, swamps and mountains in pursuit of Earth’s vegetal wonders. What’s more, he supplements these death-defying adventures with his own wonderful illustrations and paintings.

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Wild at heart

Discoveries are thrilling, but understanding our own place in nature can turn out to be a source of even deeper satisfaction. After 25 years spent teaching children the ways of the countryside, Richard Irvine finds his approach to outdoor education is in demand. His (Head of Zeus) lets us all explore the wisdom of the woods.

Part of his idea, of course, is that the better we understand something, the more we will care for it. But care can also lead to understanding. Take the fascinating (William Collins), where wildlife surgeon Romain Pizzi explains what we can learn about animals of all sorts from the operating table.

In (MIT Press), natural history researcher Emmanuelle Pouydebat finds lessons of another kind as she peers through the keyhole of animal sexuality. In justifying her subtitle “There is nothing unnatural in nature”, she reminds us about the sheer breadth and diversity of animal behaviours, including our own.

Our complex cultural evolution puts us at a huge advantage to other species, which is why some of the largest and prettiest are fast-disappearing. In (Profile Books), Rebecca Nesbit argues that our conservation efforts should focus on food webs and biospheres, more than on individual animals and plants, no matter how cute. After all, in the future, surely we would prefer to be part of a living planet than visitors to a petting zoo?

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Under the hood

Environmentalist Vaclav Smil has spent a lifetime revealing truths about how our society is shaping the environment. In (Viking), he reminds us that construction, energy and food production are essential activities that we fail to understand at our peril. 91av relished this “grumpy, pugnacious account” that was “intellectually indispensable in the run up to this year’s COP27 climate conference”.

Why is Homo sapiens hard-wired to tinker and consume on such a scale? Clues are to be found in (Scribe). This charming book was assembled from notes Juan José Millás took as he followed archaeologist Juan Luis Arsuaga across ancient and modern Spanish landscapes, as well as from their conversations. 91av said it was about “curiosity and enquiry itself- and an exaltation of the fact humans can wonder at all”.

Elise Vernon Pearlstine’s (Yale University Press) explores that sense of wonder through smells. 91av was struck by the insights of this wildlife biologist who changed careers to become a perfumier specialising in scents that originate in nature.

And we don’t just enjoy the world, we give that enjoyment meaning. Evolutionary anthropologist Anna Machin’s (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) explores the science of our love relationships – with pets, football teams, religion and even smartphones.

Michelle Drouin’s (MIT Press) offers a survey of the same territory, after covid-19. The psychologist challenges the idea that technology can ever “stand in” for activities rooted in society and biology.

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Seen, unseen, unseeable

Of course, not every natural wonder is accessible to the senses. Two handsome volumes capture natural wonders far beyond Earth. The digitally restored images in Andy Saunders’s (Particular Books) bring NASA’s moon voyages to life as never before, while Piers Bizony’s (Quarto) offers readers a sumptuous visual introduction to the Red Planet.

Armchair space travel is a passive business, but Kimberly Arcand and Megan Watzke give their readers plenty to do in (MIT Press), their guide to 3D printing the cosmos.

Understanding reality has prompted ever stranger claims. In (Bloomsbury), physicist Suzie Sheehy describes 12 experiments that changed our world: from the detection of X-rays and the first subatomic particle to the 2012 confirmation of the Higgs boson. 91av said her book was “accessible”and “vividly described”.

The stranger the universe turns out to be, the wilder the explanations. In (Johns Hopkins University Press), physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern looks to steampunk to explain quantum thermodynamics, exploring questions such as can quantum physics revolutionise engines.

No round-up can do justice to all the scientific literature produced in a year, but subscriptions to 91av and its Essential Guides might. Make 2023 your year of intellectual adventure!

Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer