There's plenty of popular science books that are written by respected scientists - Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Stephen Hawking - as well as books that are e

There's plenty of popular science books that are written by respected scientists - Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Stephen Hawking - as well as books that are effective summaries of accepted information by laypeople, such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (which interweaves the history with first-person narrative of the author's interactions with Lacks's living relatives) or The Big Bang by Simon Singh. There's also lots of blogs written by laypeople or former researchers who carefully distill and contextualize individual scientific papers, such as many of the folks at Discover Magazine blogs (Phil Plait, Ed Yong). Moreover, there's a larger problem of lay journalists, public, and many university PR people treating every bit of research as a groundbreaking answer to a huge question, when the reality is that each paper is merely a bit of dialog in a massive conversation about the nature of our universe. This leads the public to become rightfully distrusting of the massive overstatements, and therefore tragically disinterested in the nuanced conversation behind it all. So perhaps the single best thing to do is become part of the conversation! Follow authors and bloggers on social media, talk to your friends in science, furrow your brow at bombastic university press releases and seek the nuance. This will lead you to the best books, articles, and science communicators out there.