Of course it is unreasonable to put together a list of the 100 most important books of the century. On the other hand, it is a lot of fun for a scientific bibliophile like me to think and argue about what ought to be on such a list. I think that the Morrisons may have given a few of the good books a status of excellence they probably don't deserve, but I was also delighted to see that some of my favorites (Gamov's "One Two Three ... Infinity" and Monod's "Chance and Necessity") are included. On the other hand, I would have put in Eigen and Winkler's "The Laws of the Game" and Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, and Bach". The book list is accompanied by an article "Forced to Choose" (p. 545), in which a number of notable authors (including Roald Hoffman, John McPhee, E. O. Wilson, Berndt Heinrich, Kurt Vonnegut, and Carl Djerassi) express their opinions.