Synopses & Reviews
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."
Review
"Eloquent, accessible and often illuminating anthology" Publishers Weekly
"An elite grouping of very readable and informative articles on some of today's most challenging and colorful scientific issues." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
This year's edition promises to be another "eclectic, provocative collection" (Entertainment Weekly), edited by Natalie Angier, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the best-selling Woman: An Intimate Geography and The Canon, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin. Malcolm Gladwell, Joy Williams, Barbara Ehren-reich, Burkhard Bilger, and Dennis Overbye explore such topics as the rise and fall of Islamic science, disappearing cancers, and the meaning of mountain lions in the back yard.
Synopsis
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002, edited by Natalie Angier, is another "eclectic, provocative collection" (Entertainment Weekly). Malcolm Gladwell, Joy Williams, Barbara Ehrenreich, Burkhard Bilger, Dennis Overbye, and many more of the best and brightest writers on science and nature explore such topics as the rise and fall of Islamic science, disappearing cancers, and the meaning of mountain lions in the back yard.
About the Author
NATALIE ANGIER writes about biology for the New York Times, where she has won a Pulitzer Prize, the American Association for the Advancement of Science journalism award, and other honors. She is the author of The Beauty of the Beastly, Natural Obsessions, and Woman, named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, People, National Public Radio, Village Voice, and Publishers Weekly, among others. A New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist, Woman is “a text so necessary and abundant and true that all efforts of its kind, for decades before and after it, will be measured by it” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Angier lives with her husband and daughter outside of Washington, D.C.
TIM FOLGER is a contributing editor at Discover and writes about science for several magazines.
Table of Contents
Contents Foreword xi Introduction by Natalie Angier xv Roy F. Baumeister. Violent Pride 1 from Scientific American
Burkhard Bilger. Braised Shank of Free-Range Possum? 10 from Outside
K. C. Cole. Mind Over Matter 21 from The Los Angeles Times
Richard Conniff and Harry Marshall. In the Realm of Virtual Reality 24 from Smithsonian
Frederick C. Crews. Saving Us from Darwin 34 from The New York Review of Books
Barbara Ehrenreich. Welcome to Cancerland 58 from Harpers Magazine
H. Bruce Franklin. The Most Important Fish in the Sea 80 from Discover
Malcolm Gladwell. Examined Life 89 from The New Yorker
Gary Greenberg. As Good as Dead 101 from The New Yorker
Gordon Grice. Is That a Mountain Lion in Your Backyard? 114 from Discover
Blaine Harden. The Dirt in the New Machine 124 from The New York Times Magazine
Robert M. Hazen. Lifes Rocky Start 137 from Scienti?c American
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Mothers and Others 148 from Natural History
Garret Keizer. Sound and Fury 161 from Harpers Magazine
Verlyn Klinkenborg. The Pursuit of Innocence in the Golden State 179 from The New York Times
Robert Kunzig. Ripe for Controversy 181 from Discover
Anne Matthews. Wall Street Losses, Wall Street Gains 185 from Orion
Steve Mirsky. Dumb, Dumb, Duh Dumb 196 from Scienti?c American
Judith Newman. I Have Seen Cancers Disappear” 198 from Discover
Dennis Overbye. How Islam Won, and Lost, the Lead in Science 210 from The New York Times
Chet Raymo. A Little Reminder of Realitys Scale 218 from The Boston Globe
Eric Schlosser. Why McDonalds Fries Taste So Good 221 from The Atlantic Monthly
Daniel Smith. Shock and Disbelief 234 from The Atlantic Monthly
Peter Stark. The Sting of the Assassin 255 from Outside
Clive Thompson. The Know-It-All Machine 266 from Lingua Franca
Joy Williams. One Acre 281 from Harpers Magazine
Karen Wright. Very Dark Energy 292 from Discover
Contributors Notes 301 Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 2001 306