There is a genre of book I've started calling 'science for people who read novels' — not popular science in the sense of simplified explanations, but science writing that takes seriously the narrative and philosophical dimensions of scientific questions. Oliver Sacks is the classic example. Robert Sapolsky's writing on biology and behavior. Carl Zimmer's work on evolution.

What distinguishes this writing from both academic science and conventional popular science is its tolerance for ambiguity and its interest in what questions mean rather than just what the answers are. Sacks writes about neurological cases not to explain the brain but to raise questions about identity, consciousness, and what we assume is normal. The science is precise. The questions are philosophical.

I give Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat to anyone who thinks they're not interested in biology. The book is about what it means to be a person. The biology is the vehicle.