Books by Tim Minshall
“This book is amazing! I’ll never look at a tea kettle in the same way again, ever. Or toilet paper, for that matter. It’s an extraordinary book about how much we depend on systems we don’t see for the everyday things that we do. Minshall goes through quite a few different supply chains, showing how intricate some of these things are, and how easy it is to disrupt them. But he also talks about how we can solve some of these problems, by making things closer to home, or taking a more robust approach to manufacturing.” Read more...
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize
Sandra Knapp, Biologist
Interviews where books by Tim Minshall were recommended
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1
Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain
by Masud Husain -
2
Music as Medicine: How We Can Harness Its Therapeutic Power
by Daniel Levitin -
3
Your Life Is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters and How We Can Do It Better
by Tim Minshall -
4
The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City under Siege
by Simon Parkin -
5
Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction
by Sadiah Qureshi -
6
Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and our Future
by Neil Shubin
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize, recommended by Sandra Knapp
The Best Popular Science Books of 2025: The Royal Society Book Prize, recommended by Sandra Knapp
Every year, the judges for the Royal Society Book Prize search for the most informative and most readable new books on scientific subjects. In 2025, their shortlist of the best popular science books includes a history of extinction in the colonial world, and the heartrending story of the struggle to save the world’s first seed bank during the Siege of Leningrad. We spoke to the botanist Dr Sandra Knapp, chair of the judging panel.
