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THE shortlist for this year鈥檚 , which celebrates the best in popular science writing, is an impressive and diverse group that ranges from evolutionary biology and probability to olfaction and history. If you are looking for a holiday reading list, you cannot go wrong with this one. Deciding on a winner for the 拢10,000 prize, to be announced on 15 September, will be no easy task for the judges.

There is not one book on the list of six that I didn鈥檛 thoroughly enjoy. In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin firmly grounds us in our evolutionary past. With contagious passion he explains that the genetic recipe that builds our bodies is nothing more than a modified version of the same one that has been passed down from generation to generation, species to species, for millions upon millions of years.

Richard Holmes鈥檚 The Age of Wonder unites Enlightenment rationality with European Romanticism. Though the two are long thought to have been in ideological conflict, Holmes recreates a stirring moment in history when scientists, poets and artists all basked in a shared glow of wonder.

鈥榮 entertaining and accessible guide to probability, The Drunkard鈥檚 Walk, reveals just how much of our lives is driven by little more than chance.

For the quality of writing alone, Jo Marchant鈥檚 Decoding the Heavens shines. The beauty and ease of the prose, the gripping pace of the story and the colourful rendering of characters hook you in and bring ancient civilisations to life in an adventure story that changes the way we think about antiquity and technology today. I鈥檓 also proud to note that Marchant is a former editor at New Scientist.

For pure fascination factor, I鈥檇 give my vote to Avery Gilbert鈥檚 What the Nose Knows. He explores the quest to recreate the smell of marijuana, determines whether men鈥檚 or women鈥檚 farts are smellier (sadly, women鈥檚) and suggests that Freud suffered from hyposmia, an impaired sense of smell. Gilbert鈥檚 playful, fact-filled and often funny book is a fabulous tour through the smellscape.

However, if I had to pick one winner for the prize, it would have to be Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. First of all, it鈥檚 hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud whenever I began to read. More importantly, it proves that science can be endlessly useful and even cool, and performs an invaluable social service by teaching people how to spot nonsense dressed up as science. From homeopathy to the MMR vaccine scare, Goldacre unravels what he sees as a dangerous portrayal of science as 鈥済roundless, incomprehensible, didactic truth statements from scientists, who themselves are socially powerful, arbitrary, unelected authority figures鈥�.

Instead, he shows that science is perfectly comprehensible if you know how to perform some simple acts of reason, and that no authority, be it a scientist or a pharmaceutical company or the press, should be taken on its word.

Whether he is obtaining the same credentials for his dead cat as those boasted by a self-proclaimed 鈥渆xpert鈥�, undermining the popular view of antioxidants or pointing out the irony of 鈥渢aking homeopathy to a country that has been engaged in a water war鈥�, Goldacre鈥檚 wonderful irreverence is a much-needed antidote in this age of increasing scientific illiteracy. And unlike those books that tell you how stupid you are, this one tells you how to figure out how stupid everyone else is 鈥� a skill I can鈥檛 imagine anyone turning down.

鈥淯nlike books that tell you how stupid you are, it tells you how to figure out how stupid everyone else is鈥�

My only qualm is the title, though I realise it is taken from his column in London鈥檚 Guardian newspaper. The 鈥渂ad science鈥� here is usually not science at all 鈥� and that鈥檚 the point. In exposing it, Goldacre is showing us science, and science writing, at its best.