Synopses & Reviews
The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005 includes
Natalie Angier Jared Diamond Timothy Ferris Malcolm Gladwell Jerome Groopman Bill McKibben Sherwin B. Nuland Jeffrey M. O'Brien Oliver Sacks Michael J. Sandel William Speed Weed and others
Jonathan Weiner, guest editor, has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and many other honors. He lives in New York City and teaches science writing at the Columbia School of Journalism.
About the Author
Tim Folger has been an editor and reporter for Discover and Science Digest.Jonathan Weiner is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE BEAK OF THE FINCH: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, as well as TIME, LOVE, MEMORY: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior. The New York Times says, "Weiner has a poetic and philosophical turn of mind and he manages to see the almost spiritual implications of the search for the deepest truth about the nature of life." He is also a contributing editor to The Sciences and author of its "Field Notes" column.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword xi Introduction by Jonathan Weiner xv
Natalie Angier. My God Problem and Theirs 1 from The American Scholar
Connie Bruck. Hollywood Science 8 from The New Yorker
Frederick Crews. Out, Damned Blot! 29 from The New York Review of Books
Jared Diamond. Twilight at Easter 41 from The New York Review of Books
Jenny Everett. My Little Brother on Drugs 53 from Popular Science
Timothy Ferris. Stumbling into Space 64 from The New York Review of Books
Malcolm Gladwell. Getting Over It 77 from The New Yorker
Malcolm Gladwell. Personality Plus 87 from The New Yorker
Jerome Groopman. The Grief Industry 100 from The New Yorker
John Horgan. Keeping the Faith in My Doubt 111 from The New York Times
Jennifer Kahn. The Homeless Hacker v. The New York Times 115 from Wired Robert Kunzig. 20,000 Microbes Under the Sea 125 from Discover
William Langewiesche. A Two-Planet Species? 141 from The Atlantic Monthly
Bill McKibben. Crossing the Red Line 143 from The New York Review of Books
James McManus. Please Stand By While the Age of Miracles Is Briefly Suspended 157 from Esquire
Sherwin B. Nuland. Getting in Natures Way 174 from The New York Review of Books
Sherwin B. Nuland. The Man or the Moment? 186 from The American Scholar
Jeffrey M. OBrien. To Hell and Back 193 from Wired
Ian Parker. The X Prize 202 from The New Yorker
Oliver Sacks. In the River of Consciousness 216 from The New York Review of Books
Michael Specter. Miracle in a Bottle 228 from The New Yorker
Cliff Stoll. The Curious History of the First Pocket Calculator 250 from Scientific American
Ellen Ullman. Dining with Robots 261 from The American Scholar
William Speed Weed. 106 Science Claims and a Truckful of Baloney 271 from Popular Science
Carl Zimmer. Whose Life Would You Save? 282 from Discover
Contributors Notes 295 Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 2004 301