Favorite book or author

Do you have a favorite book or author of natural history?

I tried to come up with an author I prefered, since this one is well known, but I have to say Charles Darwin.  A close second: Stephen Jay Gould.  Third: Richard Dawkins.  Books: 1st: Origin of Species; 2nd: The Descent of Man; 3rd: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory; 4th: A brief history of time (if you are including a natural history of the universe); 5th The universe in a nutshell. I am not a scientist by profession, so I am limited to popularizers of science. (I enjoy Stephen Hawking.)

I love On the Origin of Species...but I don't think that I read any of Darwin's other books.  I like Dawkins and Gould both but have actually read only a small number of their respective books.  I also like Niles Eldridge (he wrote a book on Punctuated Equilibria) and David M. Raup, Extinction, Bad Genes or Bad Luck? .

My definition of natural history is rather loose, so yes I include cosmology and geology as well.  I liked A Brief History of Time but it is not one of my favorite intros to cosmology, I found it a little hard to understand in spots.  Cosmic Dawn, by Eric Chaisson is one of my favorite intros to the subject, although the portion on biology is rather dated.  I really have not read any books on cosmology since the discovery of dark energy so I guess I am a little behind.

I want to read Principles of Geology by Lyell but I havn't got to it yet.

Mind if I weigh in?  I like Dawkins a lot when he sticks to Evolution. Unweaving the Rainbow is my Fav.  But when he's preaching Atheism (even though I'm Atheist) or trashing Gould et-al for their writing techniques, be can become pretty tiresome.  Gould is fantastic.  I've read about half a dozen of his books and loved them all.  I also love phsyics (natural history of the universe as you call it) but I think A Brief History of Time is among my LEAST favorites.  I also don't like Michio Kaku's books.  Dyson is good, and Gibbons, and of course, the good ol' Carl Sagan.  I think the books that best straddle the two subjects, Evolution of Man and Evolution of the universe are probably Sagan's COSMOS and THE ASCENT OF MAN by Jacob Bronowski.   Well, there's my 2 cents worth.

Well, with my first post in this group, I'll chime in with a name not mentined yet: Sean B. Carroll.

He's written two books that I've immensely enjoyed; "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" and "The Making of the Fittest". The subject of these books is relatively new field of evolutionary developmental biology (or evo-devo). Truly fascinating stuff, and he's a very good popular science writer, I think.

Of course I also enjoy Dawkins; his "Ancestor's Tale" is tremendous, and "The Selfish Gene" was one of the first books that sparked my interest in the natural world.

Daniel Dennett is also a favorite of mine; "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" is a great, great book.

Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained" is the best treatment I've seen on the naturalistic origins of religion that I've had a pleasure to read - one of the rare books I've read more than once.