The Best American Science and Nature Writing

Bys: Richard Preston and Tim Folger

Book Overview

Science is about not knowing and wanting badly to know. Science is about flawed and complicated human beings trying to use whatever tools they've got, along with their minds, to see something strange and new. In that sense, writing about science is just another way of writing about the human condition. -- from the introduction by Richard Preston

The twenty-eight pieces in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 span a wide range...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618722319
• ISBN13: 9780618722310
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

All the best together

Very good collection. I subscribe to many of the magazines these articles come from and I still love this series. Very often reading about science can be laborious. This is a great collection of wide-ranging topics that give you a taste of many different areas.

A smorgasbord of treats

Depending on your viewpoint, the volumes in this series are either treasure houses or minefields. The jewels are essays providing new topics and information to consider. That's also the danger. Most of these articles present the reader with a challenge - "Should I be concerned about this? Should I take some action?" It's almost wearying to turning the pages and be confronted with the need for a decision. Yet, those prompts are not artificial. Preston, author of "The Demon in the Freezer" and "The Wild Trees" demonstrates his editorial skills with this engaging collection. Covering such diverse topics as the human threats to the seas, the nature of violence and looking for the oldest light, this series of over two dozen articles - with more than four dozen hovering in the wings - conveys how deeply science is penetrating Nature's mysteries. The editor's own writing skills provide a fine standard for assessment and there is nothing either dull or arcane to make the reader stumble. Interests vary, and Preston's choices will meet everybody's requirements. More to the point the subjects chosen and the information provided will stir interest in new areas readers might wish to pursue further. Each reader - and reviewer - will have particular articles to favour as they wend their way through the anthology. To this reviewer, "Plastic Ocean" by Susan Casey is a foremost choice. Not only is it a fine piece of writing, but the subject - how our plastic products are being gathered into a great oceanic dump, known as the Pacific Garbage Patch - is one of universal concern. Casey interviews yachting captain Charles Moore to understand the immensity of the problem. Lest the reader consider the ocean a fit place to use as a dump, Casey demonstrates how tiny pieces of polymers are entering the oceanic food chain to appear on our supper tables. In an essay on medical issues, Michael Rosenwald follows researcher Robert Webster as the latter flits from one continent to another in his quest to identify and seek controls on avian influenza. "Bird flu" is but one of many new viruses that were once considered species-specific, but are "learning" to cross over to others, particularly humans. Humans will also be interested in Patricia Gadsby's "Cooking for Eggheads" about how to judge the best way to cook an egg, and why the techniques are important. In a piece rather distant from your kitchen, Michael Lemonick travels to Hawaii's volcanic peak Mauna Kea and the Keck Telescope to watch Richard Ellis pace in frustration at the possible loss of an observing night. Ellis is looking for the oldest light in the universe - light emitted when the universe endured an immense inflation event immediately after the Big Bang. Each of the volumes in this series contains a title that chains the eye and rivets attention. In this case the commanding lead is William Langewiesche's "How To Get A Nuclear Bomb". Dwelling on the author's analysis of that question wil

Superb selections

Great stuff on science and nature contained in twenty-eight selections, of which I liked most: Plastic Ocean, Notes on the Space We Take, Health Secrets From the Morgue, and the Introduction (by Robert Preston) and least: The Rabbit on Mars, The Final Frontier, and How to Get a Nuclear Bomb. Without necessarily agreeing with all of them, I found the following facts, statements, and/or opinions especially interesting (Pp 12, 47, 57, 96, 100-101, 120, 173, 261, 278 respectively): "...by weight, [the North Pacific subtropical gyre] contains six times as much plastic as it does plankton;" "...a 65-degree egg cooked for an hour should be quite safe.)" and soft boiling eggs at this temperature "...is becoming the rage with chefs in France;" "A twiffler...is a plate of intermediate in size between a dinner plate and a bread plate;" "...perhaps the thing that should worry you the least [should you wish to get a nuclear bomb] is the American government's war on terror;" "Given the pervasive presence of homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom, same-sex partnering must be an adaptive trait that's been carefully preserved by natural selection;" "A globule of yellow-streaked fat oozed through the gaping wound [of a gryllacridid]. It then curled its head down toward the leaking viscera and proceeded to consume its own entrails;" "The duck is the Trojan horse..." [of the bird flu virus], "...a car driven 10,000 miles a year with a fuel efficiency of 30 miles per gallon (mpg) emits close to 1 ton of carbon annually;" "...what you eat or smoke today could affect the health and behavior of your great-grandchildren." Great writings on a large variety of science and nature related topics. Other similarly good reads: The Good Rain by Timothy Egan (PNW essays), Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (historical fiction on the bubonic plague epidemic), Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett (natural science-related short stories), The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester (Oxford English Dictionary) and The Best American Science Writing 2007.

Great essays, with science writing outshining nature writing

I always enjoy these collections of science and nature writing: The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Science Writing. I assume these two books compete for the best articles. That means neither one can be "the best", but there are so many nonfiction science and nature writers that each volume has plenty to choose from. This volume, with selections made by Richard Preston (The Hot Zone, The Demon in the Freezer), has a wide range of articles. The science essays clearly were the winners here (my favorites: Susan Casey's article on oceanic plastics, and Patricia Gadsby's on the chemistry of food... I've got to start experimenting with eggs). I was less enthused about Brian Doyle's essay on seeing a fisher, and Bill Sherwonit's bear story. What I really like about this series is that all the articles are short and enlightening. I always feel smarter having read them. So I thank the authors for taking these complex topics and, through the magic of science writing, putting them into a language that even I can understand... like the mutation in the FOX2P gene, and what that means for humanity. These are great books for trips, and for gifts.

Timely and Exciting

Our guest editor this year, Richard Preston, thinks the best essays are written by authors who have a personal obsession with the subject matter. It shows in this collection - there is not a single article that does not resonate from an author's passion. There are 28 essays from 20 different periodicals. "Smithsonian" is best represented with four articles. The articles are generally light on hard science, heavy on nature and ecology, and heavy on memoirs. I go out of my way to get this excellent yearly and am never disappointed in it, or in its competitor of a similar name, "Best of American Science Writing." I have asterisked my personal favorites among these brief summaries: Paul Bennett - Rome is a paradise for archeology, where an archeologist is present anytime a construction project involves excavation. Backhoe operators must stop immediately if something of interest is unearthed, making for constant work slowdowns. Recently a two foot marble head of Constantine was found blocking a sewer drain under the Roman Forum. Susan Casey - In the northern Pacific, air and water currents create doldrum areas twice the size of Texas where plastic accumulates. This area contains six times as much plastic as it does plankton and there are four more ocean sites like it around the world. Every bit of plastic ever made still exists, and each year we churn out another 60 billion tons of it. Richard Conniff - A memoir about Patricia Wright, the Jane Goodall of lemurs. An extinct lemur the size of a gorilla roamed Madagascar 350 years ago and the island still has 50 species left. Wright is responsible for preventing much deforestation in Madagascar and the creation of thousands of acres of national parks. Alison Hawthorne Deming - Mars is a planet "so bloody with iron, it was named after the Roman god of war." Spirit and Opportunity are still exploring it. Many astronomers and evolutionary biologists now believe it's a matter of "when," not "if," conditions favorable to life are found outside of earth. Brian Doyle - The author relates a personal encounter with a fisher - a member of the family that includes weasels, otters, mink, badgers, ferrets, martens, and wolverines - where there were supposed to be none. It "eats squirrels like candy, can kill a dog in less than a second, and scoops the belly-meat out of a porcupine like it was a breakfast melon." *Helen Fields - Respected Paleontologist Mary Schweitzer (also a Christian) has discovered blood vessels and structures that look like whole cells in Tyrannosaurus Rex bones. Any text on fossils will tell you soft tissue does not survive 68 million years. "Aha!" say the creationists. "We told you God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago." Schweitzer sees no conflict between her faith and good science and is not impressed. Creationists "twist your words and manipulate your data," she says. *Patricia Gadsby - The only essay chosen for both books, about the use of chemistr