The machinery of life (2009)

The Machinery of Life, second edition, 2009 The book that shows the body's machinery at the scale where it actually happens. David Goodsell's paintings magnify a small piece of a living cell by about a million times, so proteins, membranes and DNA appear as crowded, recognizable shapes rather than textbook abstractions. The text is written for nonscientists, and the second edition is in full color, adding a cross-section of an E. coli cell and a chapter on life and death at the molecular, cellular and whole-organism levels. Pair it with The Way We Work to go from organs down to molecules.