This year's Best American Science and Nature Writing is another "ecclectic, provocative collection" (Entertainment Weekly), full of writing that makes us feel, as Natalie Angier says, that we "have learned something and fallen in love all at once." Read on for the year's best writing on nature and science, work that originally appeared in Scientific American and Outside, The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine, Smithsonian and the New York Times, and many others. Here is Malcolm Gladwell on the subversive nonscience involved in standardized testing, Gordon Grice on the recent incursion of mountain lions into our suburbs, and Blaine Harden on how a gritty, superheavy mud from the Congo called coltan helps power the new economy. Barbara Ehrenreich gives a stinging indictment of the cancer establishment's endorsement of pink ribbons over the medical realities of being a cancer patient, and Gary Greenberg teases out the confounding -- and ethically and emotionally fraught -- science behind what we call brain death. Burkhard Bilger wonders why westerners happily eat catfish and frog's legs but continue to balk at braised possum and fried mink, and Eric Schlosser uncovers the dark side of the science involved in making McDonald's French fries taste so good. In two especially timely pieces, Dennis Overbye explores the rise and fall of Islamic science, and Anne Matthews, in an essay on the ecology of Manhattan, paints a haunting picture of still-warm bodies of songbirds littering the streets of Wall Street before dawn. These writers and many more give us the very best, very newest science and nature writing. As Natalie Angier writes, "The universe is expanding. May our minds follow suit."
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Great examples with not so great examples:
As a newcomer into the scientific writing world I decided to read as many articles as I could in order to understand how a scientist writes. As with most entities in the world there are two sides. Among the heavy science journals I found the collection of The Best American Science (and Nature) Writing of. . . whenever. These books gave a profound identity to the literary science writer. Such talent is important in these days so as not to cause separation; as if those who can stay awake through an entire... more info
Good writing, but very little science:
The writing in this collection is uniformly good, but there's precious little science. Most of the articles are dominated by a kind of gossipy tone about the people involved without ever actually touching on the science. For example, one of the longest pieces in the book is a review of the Intelligent Design debate from the New York Review of Books. It talks a lot about the politics and supposed motivations of the players, with a long discourse on Stephen J. Gould's atheistic approach to theology- but not... more info
A real pleasure:
This is a truly wonderful anthology. Thought-provoking, humorous, almost every chapter taught me something new and fascinating.
Excellent Collection:
This series is awesome! An anthology such as this allows the reader to get a taste of some wonderful articles without the possibly harrowing search for the diamond in the rough. All articles are well written and the subject matter is diverse. A true treat!
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