The Best American Science and Nature Writing

Bys: Groopman, Jerome and Folger, Tim

Book Overview

"The articles . . . draw the reader more tightly into the web of the world. They forge links in unexpected ways. They connect us to nature and to each other, and those connections nourish the intellect and uplift the spirit."--Jerome Groopman, M.D., editor

This year's Best American Science and Nature Writing offers another rich assortment of "fascinating science and impressive journalism" (New Scientist) culled from an array of periodicals,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618834478
• ISBN13: 9780618834471
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

This series is a great introduction to writers from all fields of science and nature.

I have also discovered new favorite writers and magazines through these collections. There is nothing here too scientific for anyone to understand. I thank the editor(s) for previewing hundreds (if not thousands) of articles, and choosing the best and most interesting.

Thought-provoking accessible collection

It is always fun for a layman and a writer doing research or simply mining for ideas to read through these Best of anthologies. This one was not a disappointment. The writing was clear and dynamic, sometimes dramatic, right from the opening article, a neat little piece about hybrid animals by Jon Cohen, "Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animals." This one gave me an idea for a short story that I am already drafting. Also interesting Oliver Sachs' "A Bolt From the Blue," kept me turning the pages, as did several others. In fact, there were not many clunkers here.

interesting science

These articles, originally published in a variety of magazines are off my beaten path, and so I found them very interesting. Mostly written by freelance writers, investigating new turns of scientific discoveries, they are fresh from lesser known research. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to people who are trying to broaden their understanding of our geological, mental and physical realities.

A stellar collection

This anthology, edited by Jerome Groopman, is exactly what one would hope for - a wide-ranging collection of well-written, fascinating articles which will expand the reader's horizons and are fun to read. Groopman's anthology benefits from his having cast a very broad net, as well as from the depth of his intellectual curiosity. In his introduction, he outlines his criteria for inclusion: "the articles ... have novel and surprising arguments, protagonists who articulate their themes in clear, cogent voices, and vivid cinema. They are not verbose or tangential. They are filled with simple declarative sentences. ... I suspect none of the articles was easy to write. Each shows a depth of thought and reporting that takes time and considerable effort." These target criteria show that we are in good hands - the only remaining question is whether they are actually achieved for the pieces included in the anthology. The answer is a resounding yes - with very few exceptions (only Freeman Dyson's piece on biotechnology and Michael Specter's article on retroviruses seemed fuzzy to me) the writing is crisp and clear, and the subject material is interesting and thought-provoking. That is, in my estimation, Dr Groopman's batting average is 22 excellent pieces of 24 (and your view on the Dyson and Specter pieces may differ). Which far exceeds the norm for this kind of anthology. Here is a partial list of the articles included: Jon Cohen: "Zonkeys are pretty much my favorite animal" John Colapinto: "The Interpreter" (the linguistic anomaly represented by the Piraha language) Robin Marantz Henig: "Our silver-coated future" (safety assessment of nanotechnology) Michael Finkel: "Malaria: Stopping a Global Killer" Olivia Judson: "The Selfless Gene" Todd Pitock: "Science and Islam in Conflict" Ron Rosenbaum: "How to Trick an Online Scammer into Carving a Computer out of Wood" Ian Parker: "Swingers" (mating habits of bonobos) Jeffrey Toobin: "The CSI effect" (forensics: TV versus reality) Other articles cover topics as diverse as dark matter, "spooky action at a distance", khipu knots of the Incas, the coming robot army, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko by polonium-210, the Hendra virus, difficulties in the interpretation of epidemiological studies, wind energy, and the requisite Oliver Sacks case study (musicophilia). This is an excellent, thought-provoking collection. I highly recommend it.

Fantastic Collection of Scientific Articles

Not much hard science, but every essay is compelling reading - a good way to bring your scientific side up to date yearly. I have not missed one in the entire series and every year I end up thinking the new edition is the best ever. This year's editor, Jerome Groopman, made the final selections. John Cohen - You won't find hybrids in American zoos where purebreds are the rule but in alternate sites it's a different story. Whether by the natural method, artificial insemination, or by techniques that allow scientists to manipulate DNA, more are turning up more every year - zorses, wholphins, tigons, beefaloes, lepjags, zonkeys, camas, bonanzees, and pizzly bears. Some of them breed and appear more fit than either parent. I won't even mention the humanzees. John Colapinto - *among my favorites - The Piraha tribe of Brazil has a tonal and melodic language unrelated to any other. According to linguist Dan Everett, who has lived with them on and off for 25 years, the language also doesn't exhibit "recursion," a requirement of modern linguistic theory. Recursion is an "idea within an idea" - example: John's hat, which was red, one of several possible colors...and so on. Chomsky's dominant theory of linguistics says Everett just isn't looking hard enough but Chomsky's fellow linguists can't find the recursion either. The Piraha have no religion, live in the here and now, and are not the least bit interested in anything outside their culture. Christopher Conselice - A thorough discussion of dark energy, the substance that makes up the bulk of the universe. Get ready for some major tweaking in your understanding of cosmology. This is one of the hard science articles. Gareth Cook - Yes, the Incas did too know how to write. They just did it with bundles of knotted strings called khipu, but deciphering the language confounds computer and language specialists. We may need another Rosetta Stone. C. Josh Donlan - Why not restore the Pleistocene with current wild animals from around the world - large animals similar to many that went extinct in the not-too-distant past. Let's bring the excitement of the African safari to the US in vast and securely fenced ecological history parks. Freeman Dyson - *another of my favorites - As the 20th century was dominated by physics, the 21st will be dominated by biology. Future generations reared on biotech games and toys will not face resistance to the use of genetic manipulation. If followed down its most utopian path, biotechnology could make rural poverty disappear. Steve Featherston - The military battleground of the future will be loaded with unmanned weapons of all shapes, sizes, and capabilities. "Within our lifetime, robots will give us the ability to wage war without committing ourselves to the human cost." Michael Finkel - *another of my favorites, about malaria. It is written in prose reminiscent of great literature: "It begins with a bite, a painless bite. The mosquito comes in the nig