Science, Evolution, and Creationism and encourage every person involved in or concerned about science education in the United States to order a copy.
What Bugged the Dinosaurs: Insects, Disease, and Death in the Cretaceous by George Poinar, Jr., and Roberta Poinar, and I recommend it to you with enthusiasm.
One hundred million years ago, a female sand fly settled on a sauropod for what turned out to be her final blood meal. Something startled the dinosaur, and the insect's dining was interrupted. She escaped the thrashing beast only to become trapped in the sticky resinous sap of an araucarian tree.
Her "straining, desperate movements attracted the attention of a small predator patrolling the bark, who nipped open a minuscule hole in the end of her abdomen, deftly pulled out the reproductive system, and devoured the protein-rich eggs. Some of the gut contents of the entrapped insect spilled out onto the fresh resin as life ebbed away. She lay on one side in a drop of spilled blood, disemboweled, head and mouthparts clearly visible, wings outstretched.... An additional resin flow entombed the small female fly" in what we now call Burmese amber.
Of the many large and small dramas of Cretaceous life that Oregon State University Zoology Professor George Poinar, Jr., and retired research scientist Roberta Poinar vividly recount in What Bugged the Dinosaurs?, this one is the most significant. For when the Poinars studied that remarkably well-preserved ancient event in their laboratory, they discovered that the dinosaur blood was infected with a pathogenic microorganism.
Had the fly survived to bite another beast, it might well have passed the disease along, much as insect-borne diseases are spread from animal to animal today. That is not the only way insects bugged dinosaurs. They often competed for the same food or were irritating biters, stingers, and parasites.
Of course, they had their beneficial traits as well. They were pollinators of plants that fed herbivorous dinosaurs. They were food for carnivorous dinosaurs or the animals on which they fed. They were the "Sanitary Engineers of the Cretaceous," playing a major role in the recycling the nutrients in dung and the vital chemicals in the bodies of dead animals and plants.
Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming by Mark Bowen.
The book covers a lot of important information, but I take the author to task for less than stellar story-telling and a less careful treatment of the science than I like. I still recommend buying it at Amazon.com, where you will find generally positive reader reviews.
Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future by Jeffrey Bennett. 
Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge edited by Damien Brodrick.
Did Man Create God? Is Your Spiritual Brain at Peace with Your Thinking Brain? by David E. Comings, M.D.
Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God by Amos Nur with Dawn Burgess.
The Void by Frank Close. This reminds me of three other books reviewed on The Science Shelf: Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea and Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and the End of the Universe, both by Charles Seife, and The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything by K. C. Cole
Serial Killers and Sadistic Murderers - Up Close and Personal by Jack Levin
Skeletons in the Closet: Stories from the County Morgue by Tobin T. Buhk and Stephen D. Cohle
Blood On The Table: The Greatest Cases of New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner by Colin Evans
Astrobiology, which has been published in classroom paperback edition for the very affordable price of $8.95. When I last checked, only the hardback edition was available on Amazon.com. Click the cover image if you want to learn more about it or order the hardcover edition.
Life on Earth--and Beyond: An Astrobiologist's Quest by Pamela S. Turner. It follows astrobiologist Chris McKay as he explores one extreme environment after the other on Earth for life, anticipating an eventual human or robot exploration in similar locations on Mars.
