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1. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, Broadway Books/Random House

2. The Best American Science Writing 2003 by Oliver Sacks, Ecco/HarperCollins

3. Li: Dynamic form in nature by David Wade, Walker Books

4. Sync: The emerging science of spontaneous order by Steven Strogatz, Hyperion

5. Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the next fifty years by Bruce Sterling, Random House

6. Isaac Newton by James Gleick, Pantheon

7. Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of time by Peter Galison, W. W. Norton

8. Our Final Hour: A Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ’s Warning: How terror, error, and environmental disaster threaten humankind’s future in this century – on Earth and beyond by Martin Rees, Basic Books

9. Scientific Method in Practice by Hugh G. Gauch Jr, Cambridge University Press

10. Six Degrees: The science of a connected age by Duncan J. Watts, W. W. Norton

Information supplied by Powell’s, Portland, Oregon (fax 001 503 228 4631), for bestselling books in popular science first published in hardback or paperback in the US within the past year.

Time doesn’t travel well, it seems. Astronomer Royal Martin Rees’s Our Final Century had merely to cross the Atlantic from Britain to the US to become Our Final Hour. Somewhere, 876,575 hours have gone missing. Certainly adds urgency to his message.