| Title | : | The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0544003438 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780544003439 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2013 |
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013 Reviews
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The Best American Science and Nature Writing of 2013.
This collection of twenty-seven articles was edited by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a scientist and author of the runaway bestseller “The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”. He did a great job of choosing which ones to include here.
There are six articles that I loved and they are still just as relevant some five years later.
1. False Idyll by J.B. McKinnon
In this short reflection of what humans have done to the planet McKinnon proposes more re-wilding. Many of the changes leading to the poverty of our environment are too subtle to notice in real time which means we are less inclined to do anything and think that the park down the road is some kind of substitute. Climate change is just one of the man made factors affecting the environment. “By the time of the Romantics, Britain was much as it is today—a deforested island, its fauna largely reduced to butterflies, birds, and hedgehogs.”
2. Talk to Me by Tim Zimmerman
A story about research and interaction with a pod of Spotted Atlantic Dolphins. Dolphins are one of the only species outside of apes to exhibit self-awareness. A strong scientific article that takes an adventurous turn when a group of bullying Bottlenose Dolphins show up.
3. Out of the Wild by David Quammen
One of the greatest nature writers of this generation, Quammen writes here about deadly illnesses when a woman dies of a rare disease after traveling to Africa. “The experts call such diseases zoonoses, meaning animal infections that spill into people. About 60 percent of human infectious diseases are zoonoses”. They’re protean and effectively RNA viruses which can be quite deadly. My second favorite article.
4. Recall of the Wild - Elizabeth Kolbert
An article about the Oostvaardersplassen, an large reserve in the heart of the Netherlands. An experiment in re-wilding and returning species (or in this case near species relatives) that once roamed the area. Many people in the country sre against the reserve because animals often starve to death by winter’s end. The govt agency that runs the public reserve has determined that many animals in other areas of the wild also don’t make it through the winter. The start of the controversy here is that neighbors who live near the reserve can see dead animals bunched up against the fence by the end of winter. “Can’t we feed the animals”, they say. Fascinating article that discusses pros and cons of animal reserves, the concept of re-wilding and re-introduction of animals.
5. Polar Express by Keith Gessen
An article that follows the life of a first mate as he commandeers a massive cargo ship through the Northwest passage. A new frontier of sorts. Really well written story on a topic that I didn’t think I would find interesting.
6. The Immortal Jellyfish - Nathaniel Rich
My favorite article. It is so fascinating to learn how certain species of jellyfish will revert back to polyps (babies) when injured or too old and start the cycle all over again. These animals have genetic makeups that are largely composed of stem cells. While it is true they can be killed it is also true that they are immortal in the sense that they can’t die of old age since they re-reconstitute as polyps. Since this transformation is so dramatic and to such a primitive state it seems that whatever the jellyfish had learned of his world probably gets erased but that is just conjecture.
4 stars. My favorite book in this series, although I’ve only read a couple. This annual was particularly strong because the guest editor, Mr. Mukherjee, has a good eye for science and is an excellent writer himself. -
Thanks regional library for buying this anthology. Several essays appreciated. The wildland project east of Amsterdam, the autism piece ...
Quote from "Polar Express"
"Around midmorning we reached the easternmost edge of Russia, which is also the easternmost edge of the Eurasian landmass: Cape Dezhnev. It is a sheer rock cliff, as dramatic and definitive as Cape St. Vincent in Portugal, the southwesternmost point of Eurasia. In 1728 Vitus Bering had come through the strait from the south, rounded this cape, and then, running into ice a few miles farther along, decided to turn back. At the time, because he didn't continue to St. Petersburg, some people didn't believe him that there was a Northeast Passage. But he was right."
"At its maximum extent, in mid-March, the ice covers the entire Arctic Ocean ... 15 million square kilometers, twice the land area of the continental United States. During its minimum extent, around mid-September, the ice cover traditionally shrinks to about half this size ... In September 2007, the ice shrank to 4.3 million square kilometers, the lowest extent in recorded history ... thickness ... decreasing from an average thickness of 12 feet in 1980 to half that two decades later ... the Arctic, an area that has been more affected by global warming than any other place on Earth."
" ... scientists agree that at some point in this century ... you'll be able to cross the North Pole in a canoe. But it won't be just you and your canoe, because the resource grabs have already begun." -
I'm a few years behind on this anthology and trying to catch up. 2013's is edited by Siddhartha Mukherjee, writer of the much praised Emperor of All Maladies (which I have not yet read).
I found the book to be pretty engaging. I wasn't drawn to all the essays, but I learned something from most of them. Essays ranging from 'rewilding' landscapes to jittering space time (?) to hydrogen-based fuel to zoonoses to supposed distinctions between human and other animals (and idiot scientists who think human arrogance is equivalent to intelligence) to Oliver Sacks curiously (i.e. taking lots of notes while also taking lots of drugs) tripping (and, among other things, talking to a spider that reminds him of Bertrand Russell). I learned that there are DNA and RNA viruses, which I didn't know, and still don't fully understand. ("An RNA virus is a virus that has RNA (ribonucleic acid) as its genetic material.")
Funny, when I tried to tell my neighbor about some of the essays he'd heard most of what I'd read on various podcasts and reminded me that I am, after all, 3 years behind. But, I like reading these anthologies in chronological order, in case essays in later anthologies build on essays in previous ones (it's not like all the problems of medical, universal and climatological science are going to be solved in the mean-time.)
I think what's great about this anthology, and what can also make it frustrating, is the fact that there is not much of an organizing force beyond 'science' and 'nature'. That said, it's great that each year a different editor brings it all together, with a different spin and varying voices.
It is sad to think that soon (in fact, in the 2014) there will no longer be the requisite Oliver Sacks essay. But still E.O. Wilson and Carl Zimmerman show up in 2014 (and they've been writing sciency stuff for a long time) as well as some new voices (I think) in this anthology, Rebecca Solnit, David Treuer (who I am pretty sure I went to college with...yep).
Questions of how technology is eroding social ties, as well as social and other skills, come up in 2013 and 2014 (which I've just started reading today) and I tend to agree that the kinds of ease technology can afford us aren't always improving our quality of life. There is something wonderful about socializing with people who aren't glued to their electronic devices (I much prefer it). I use social media reluctantly, though as a sick person, I must say, it improves my quality of life tremendously. But it does not in any way take the place of spending quality time with friends. I don't spend much time on facebook (I don't like it and rarely post, but it is nice sometimes to see what my friends are up to, and the various communities I consider myself a part of, and to see photos of birds on the local Bird Photography fb page.)
And learning skills by being in the actual world versus using automated and/or virtual navigation, driving, flying, socializing and other tools, does seem to me important. I think the problem with social networking is not the ways we use it to connect, but the ways we use it to disconnect and perform. It's not that we haven't been performing socially since the beginning of primate time. It's just that, we weren't given the tools until recently to do it 24 hours a day and to reach such wide audiences with a photograph of and/or commentary on every minute activity. I know enough from being behind a camera that it is hard to be in the moment in an authentic way when trying to capture the moment for social or artistic purposes. Well, maybe you don't agree with me, but I recommend reading the essays if you want a clearer argument. From 2013 STEPHEN MARCHE. 'Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?' and from 2014 'The Great Forgetting' (Nicholas Carr, no surprise there, but I do find myself agreeing with him.)
A few of the essays I'd read previously. The one about the "immortal" jellyfish (also I watched a video of immortal jellyfish karaoke).
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/mag... And The Wisdom of Psychopaths, which I am not so fond of. But a lot of these essays were new and refreshing and interesting. I was not disappointed with the writers I am familiar with (Sapolsky, Bass, Groopman, Lightman, Angier, Sacks...) and am grateful to have 'met' some new writers so I can keep an eye out for their work.
One thing that I notice and am grateful for is that in 2014 there are a lot more female writers. In Mukherjee's book about 20% of the articles are by female folks and in Blum's (2014) it's much closer to half and half. Not that I enjoy breaking things down along gender lines (I am not much for binaries in the first place.) Bu I still think it is important to advocate for female voices, in general, and certainly in things related to the sciences.
Below is a listing of the essays and their authors in the 2013 anthology.
J.B. MACKINNON. False Idyll
From Orion
BENJAMIN HALE. The Last Distinction?
From Harper's
TIM ZIMMERMANN. Talk to Me
From Outside
DAVID DEUTSCH and ARTUR EKERT. Beyond the Quantum Horizon
From Scientific American
MICHAEL MOYER. Is Space Digital?
From Scientific American
SYLVIA A. EARLE. The Sweet Spot in Time
From Virginia Quarterly Review
JOHN PAVLUS. Machines of the Infinite
From Scientific American
MICHELLE NIJHUIS. Which Species Will Live?
From Scientific American
RICK BASS. The Larch
From Orion
BRETT FORREST. Shattered Genius
From Playboy
JEROME GROOPMAN. The T-Cell Army
From The New Yorker
DAVID OWEN. The Artificial Leaf
From The New Yorker
MICHAEL SPECTER. The Deadliest Virus
From The New Yorker
ALAN LIGHTMAN. Our Place in the Universe
From Harper's Magazine
DAVID QUAMMEN. Out of the Wild
From Popular Science
OLIVER SACKS. Altered States
From The New Yorker
ELIZABETH KOLBERT. Recall of the Wild
From The New Yorker
KEITH GESSEN. Polar Express
From The New Yorker
STEVEN WEINBERG. The Crisis of Big Science
From The New York Review of Books
GARETH COOK. Autism Inc.
From The New York Times
NATALIE ANGIER. The Life of Pi and Other Infinities
From The New York Times
ROBERT SAPOLSKY. Super Humanity
From Scientific American
KATHERINE HARMON. The Patient Scientist
From Scientific American
NATHANIEL RICH. Forever and Ever
From The New York Times Magazine
STEPHEN MARCHE. Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
From The Atlantic
MARK BOWDEN. The Measured Man
From The Atlantic
KEVIN DUTTON. The Wisdom of Psychopaths
From Scientific American -
I dip in and out of this collection as the mood strikes.
Autism Inc. - In which the error of assuming that autistic people are not intelligent is rectified. "The concept of socially mandated dishonesty would mystify him, ..., so the other employees will just have to deal with it."
The Deadliest Virus - "Once you create a virus that could kill millions of people, what should you do with it? And how should you handle the knowledge that made it possible?"
False Idyll - Nature is wild people. Stop romanticizing it.
The Last Distinction? - In which humans spend an inordinate amount of time trying to prove or disprove that we are animals too.
Talk to Me - If you could communicate with a dolphin, what would you say?
Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? - In which my view that we have hundreds of ways to communicate and nothing to say is confirmed. -
Disappointing. The editor explains why he chose the essays he did for this collection, saying that he looked for articles that focused on the "science of science", or something of that nature. He compiled writings that he felt were more "technical", and you certainly get that sense when reading these.
Though I finished the entire collection, only one or two stood out enough that I can recall them these almost two weeks later. Most I had happily forgotten the moment I started the next.
The essay about the journalist searching for an illusive and reclusive mathematical genius was worth reading, but woefully short. There was finally a story I wanted to get into, and it was over before it began.
And, the essay about deadly virus was both thought provoking and heartbreaking.
Overall, however, this collection fell quite short of others I've read the past two years, and I would warn anyone for whom this might be their first experience with these "Best of" writings not to let this deter you from giving others a try. They are well worth reading -- you just wouldn't know that from these. -
As usual, all these articles are fascinating! And this book seemed to have much more variety than the 2004 edition that I just finished reading. I enjoyed the animal and nature articles best, of course, but the human, physics and mathematics articles caught my interest as well.
A couple of stand outs... The Larch - oh my gosh, a beautiful tribute to a loved one! The Last Distinction - the abandonment of Nim the chimp is devastating. Recall of the Wild - about re-wilding places previously destroyed by human activities, my reaction is "cute" and "good try" but extinct is extinct, even for whole ecosystems. -
Evolution is unbelievably incredible. Extinction is unimaginably scary. Pandemics will happen again and we can’t do anything to prepare. Science has come a really long way in 10 years but policy has not. Oliver Sacks was a wild guy. What a time to be a scientist.
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The Best American Science and Nature Writing is at its best (1) a collection of very well well-written collection of popular science essays and (2) a compendium of the latest scientific research in a palatable form. Some years it is better than others. This year, 2013, the collection was okay: a little of (1) and (2). Here are some of what I thought were strong essays, though:
"The Measured Man" by Mark Bowden is about a man with Crohn's disease who is also a scientist who makes computer models of his body in order to understand himself and his disease better. He does this for a large portion of his day, taking his own stool samples, monitoring how many steps he walks and his heart intake, and he calculates every aspect of his food intake--the amount of protein, carbohydrates, sugar, sodium, etc. And he hopes the future will allow people to monitor themselves in the same he monitors himself.
There are other pieces I know I'm leaving out, but those are three that were good that I can recall.
Nathaniel Rich's "Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?" is about a very small jellyfish, a protozoan, which is no binger than a pinky fingernail, that can live forever. And there's a Japanese scientist named Shin Kubota who wants to find a way to harness the study these jellyfish to better understand how to aid in human health. This essay, though, becomes more a piece about Kubota than anything else, but nevertheless fascinating.
Gareth Cook's "Autism Inc." is about how some of the people who are on the autism spectrum are being hired by a company in Sweden to put their skills to use to work as contractors for other big companies who need their natural abilities and concentration to do important work. For instance, one company needed a computer programmer to program lines and lines of boring code, and they couldn't have anyone taking shortcuts in programming because they didn't want to have their products crash. The essay notes that only about 20 percent of the people on the autism spectrum would actually be eligible to hold down a job because some of their lack of social or emotional control would not allow them to do this, or they are not highly gifted in the way that companies would need their work. Again, a fascinating story. -
My 13th year to read this collection. 27 articles range widely through science and nature. None are extremely difficult. The writers are the best at putting into clear sentences difficult thoughts, sometimes dismantling firmly held beliefs, to replace them with new explanations.
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Wonderful! The editor of the 2013 edition is the cancer physician and researcher who wrote the Pulitzer-winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, recently made into a 3-part documentary by Ken Burns, and his interests as shown in the essays he chose for this book include all aspects of human health but go far beyond it.
The authors of the selections in this collection present as many questions as answers on subjects ranging from cosmology to the nature of intelligence and communication. Anyone interested in the world around them will find a lot of this book fascinating, and will probably find at least a few pieces that stay on their minds long after they put the book down.
Deeply human and humane, and highly recommended. -
[Review in progress, author list will expand as I read their essays.]
Articles by:
Natalie Angier
Mark Bowden
Kevin Dutton
Katherine Harmon
J.B. MacKinnon
Stephen Marche
Nathaniel Rich
Robert Sapolsky
Excellent essays on a possibly immortal hydrozoan (Nathaniel Rich); a scientist who invented the treatment that let him live until 3 days before he won the Nobel (Katherine Harmon); science (really curiosity) as a natural human quality and therefore part of evolution (Robert Sapolsky); an eloquent description of why removing so many parts out of an ecosystem is bad (J.B. MacKinnon); and others. -
Mukherjee presents a collection of deftly written essays covering topics on physics, genetics, psychology, evolution, and more that celebrates the best science has to offer. There is so much to love in each piece's exploration of the theory and practice (the actual DOING) of science. I look forward to next year's collection and have a new, profound appreciation for the "tenderness" (see author's opening chapter) scientists exhibit for their work.
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Am now a huge fan of this series. Have only read 2008 and 2013 editions so far. Both are incredibly enlightening. And apparently this one was well below average for the seekers of scientific enlightenment!
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I've read about 3/4 of these essays and each one has taught me something I didn't know. From math/cellular biology/technology/medicine and psychology--these annual collections are a must-read for me.
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This book had a lot of interesting essays, but my favorite was the one on immortal jellyfish.
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The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013 edited by Siddhartha Mukherjee and Tim Folger
“The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013” is a solid but anthology that covers the best essays in various fields of science. Pulitzer Prize winning author and leading cancer physician Siddhartha Mukherjee makes the selection for the best work of 2013. His focus is on essays that describe how science happens. This 368-page includes twenty-seven essays that cover the spectrum of science from objects in nature as small as electrons to as large as galaxies.
Positives:
1. Well-written science essays.
2. The fascinating topic of how science works. A good range of topics covering a number of diverse fields.
3. Few outstanding essays. My favorites include: Shattered Genius, The Patient Scientist, and Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
4. The essays are independent from one another thus allowing readers to jump to topics of interest.
5. I always learn something new and useful.
6. Putting nature in perspective. “Are we to blame a global society’s accumulating insults against the biosphere on people who meditate in the desert or find divinity beneath the redwoods? No. But the way you see the world determines much about the world you are willing to live in, and the spiritual lens has failed us as a tool for seeing clearly.”
7. The grand theory of evolution serves as the scientific foundation for all essays on nature.
8. A look at dolphin cognition. “She began her fieldwork in 1985, which grew into the Wild Dolphin Project. Its motto captures Herzing’s research ethos perfectly: ‘In their world. On their terms.’”
9. An interesting look at the holographic principle. “One problem: although physicists mostly agree that the holographic principle is true—that information on nearby surfaces contains all the information about the world—they know not how the information is encoded, or how nature processes the 1’s and 0’s, or how the result of that processing gives rise to the world.”
10. Many interesting facts are shared. “As much as 70 percent of the air we breathe is produced by underwater life.”
11. My favorite essay, Shattered Genius by Brett Forrest is a fascinating story about the reclusive mathematical genius Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman. Great stuff.
12. There are a couple of good essays about cancer.
13. A solid essay on viruses. “To ignite a pandemic, even the most lethal virus would need to meet three conditions: it would have to be one that humans hadn’t confronted before, so that they lacked antibodies; it would have to kill them; and it would have to spread easily—through a cough, for instance, or a handshake.”
14. An interesting perspective at the greatest distances from Earth. “The most distant galaxy Illingworth has seen so far goes by the name UDFj-39546284 and was documented in early 2011. This galaxy is about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away from Earth, give or take.”
15. Very good explanations on the differences between RNA and DNA viruses. “And why are RNA genomes so small? Because their self-replication is so fraught with inaccuracies that if given more information to replicate, they would accumulate more errors and cease to function at all. It’s sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. RNA viruses are limited to small genomes because their mutation rates are so high, and their mutation rates are so high because they’re limited to small genomes.”
16. The concept of rewilding. “Like so much in Europe today, the term “rewilding” is an American import. It was coined in the 1990s and first proposed as a conservation strategy by two biologists, Michael Soulé, now a professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Reed Noss, a research professor at the University of Central Florida. According to Soulé and Noss, the problem with most conservation plans was that they aimed to protect what exists.”
17. A look at science and politics.
18. An interesting essay on autism, very practical. ”For years scientists underestimated the intelligence of autistic people, an error now being rectified. A team of Canadian scientists published a paper in 2007 showing that measures of intelligence vary wildly, depending on what test is used. When the researchers used the Wechsler scale, the historical standard in autism research, a third of children tested fell in the range of intellectual disability, and none had high intelligence, consistent with conventional wisdom.”
19. A look at immortality. “There’s a shocking amount of genetic similarity between jellyfish and human beings,” said Kevin J. Peterson, a molecular paleobiologist who contributed to that study, when I visited him at his Dartmouth office. From a genetic perspective, apart from the fact that we have two genome duplications, “we look like a damn jellyfish.”
20. Contributors’ Notes provided.
Negatives:
1. John Brockman’s The Edge series is superior science writing.
2. Overall quality of essays left something to be desired. There are better anthologies in The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.
3. Some essays are unnecessarily verbose such as The Polar Express.
4. Some essays needed to define key terms better. As an example, in Machines of the Infinite the concept of P versus NP merited a better definition.
5. Lack of visual supplementary material tht would have added value.
6. It requires an investment of your time.
In summary, I love science but I found this collection to be hit and miss. If I had the ability this would be a three-and-a-half effort out of a maximum of five stars. The writing is good and some essays standout like Shattered Genius by Brett Forrest and others unnecessarily verbose like The Polar Express by Keith Gessen. The good news is that if you’re short on time you can select the essays that pique your interest. Always worthwhile to read about science works but in this humble reviewer an average score is warranted.
Further suggestions: “The Best American Science and Nature Writing Series”, “The Edge Series” edited by John Brockman. -
These notes are just for my memory (earlier ones I read a while ago so I can’t remember as much about those):
False Idyll: Nature is wild and can be truly destructive. It is only recently that we feel protected from it on a daily basis. It is less romantic than we perceive it to be now.
The Last Distinction: Is language the last distinction between human and animals? Talks about several occasions where humans taught animals some language.
Talk to Me: About a woman who is trying to establish communication with dolphins.
Beyond the Quantum Horizon: What comes after quantum mechanics in physics?
Is Space Digital: About a scientist at UChicago conducting experiments to show that everything is digital – 0s or 1s—it’s all bits.
The Sweet Spot in Time: Sad account of how the oceans have gotten polluted. The “sweet spot” refers to the author’s point that we have the opportunity now to clean up and protect against future harm done.
Machines in the Infinite: about the “P versus NP” question regarding computers.
Which Species Will Live: About how committees decide which endangered species to protect from extinction.
The Larch: About the impressive survival of larch trees.
Shattered Genius: Article about a Russian mathematician who solved a difficult proof but didn’t publish it in a peer-reviewed journal and instead posted it publicly online. He says he has left mathematics and lives with his mother, very much removed from the rest of the world.
The T-Cell Army: Article about using the immune system in the fight against cancer.
The Artificial Leaf: About a scientist working on artificial photosynthesis.
The Deadliest Virus: Could bird flu become an epidemic? How might it mutate to travel more easily?
Our Place in the Universe: Very brief history of our knowledge about the universe – as it expands, we become more and more insignificant.
Out of the Wild: About a woman who went to Africa and got infected by the Marburg virus through bat droppings. Article centers on how animal viruses transfer to people.
Altered States: Oliver Sacks’ account of using mind-altering drugs.
Recall of the Wild: About an area in the Netherlands that has been “rewilded” with animals that are the “next best thing” to what would have lived there in prehistoric times. Bringing animals from all over Europe to live there in a conserved land area.
Polar Express: Fascinating account of a bulk carrier going from Murmansk, Russia (near Finland and within the Arctic Circle) to Northwestern China via the Northern sea route in July 2012. The water is most clear of ice in September, but due to time constraints, the trip had to be done in July. Interesting info regarding how to cut through the ice and the dangers involved with doing this trip.
The Crisis of Big Science: The author talks about how science continually needs bigger and bigger technology and resources (he mostly refers to physics and the CERN hadron collider), but government is less willing to provide them. Comment about how projects that provide jobs across states get the most support, even if they are the ones that end up costing the most money.
Autism, Inc.: Account of a father who founded an agency that places people with autism—particularly those who are high-functioning and like doing repetitive tasks in a consistent and detail-oriented manner—in jobs where those skills are needed.
The Life of Pi, and Other Infinities: Discussion of multiple infinities and how certain infinities are smaller or greater than others (I didn’t understand this). Touched on the idea that if the universe is infinite, somewhere out there are versions of my life occurring in every possible form.
Super Humanity: A Sapolsky piece, where he discusses how our hunter-gatherer ancestral past shaped who we are today. Although, he notes, we are able to stretch beyond those bounds and do things that don’t necessarily make sense given that evolution—hence, super humanity. One of those being science – we often research things that aren’t social in nature, things that are incredibly small or large and we simply can’t imagine, and things that stretch vary far back or forward in time.
The Patient Scientist: Brief account of the end of life for Ralph Steinman, a scientist who discovered dendritic cells and used that knowledge to research cancer treatments. The medical research community rallied around him when he received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and some of the treatments he used were based on his own research. He died three days before being notified he was to win the Nobel Prize.
Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality: Article about a Japanese scientist who studies very, very small jellyfish that have the ability to age backwards and regenerate. Focus on how knowledge of this jellyfish may change medicine.
Is Facebook making us lonely: As the title describes, this article discusses recent research questioning the value of social media in generating genuine social connections.
The Measured Man: About a computer scientist who measures every possible piece of information about himself. Thinks this is the future of medicine, as treatments become more and more individualized and we are able to access an incredible amount of data about ourselves.
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: Comments that psychopaths may share certain qualities with successful politicians and businessman – aren’t as emotional about hurting or lying to others. -
I am not one who has a scientific bent, but I am fascinated by science. I just can never get too deeply into it, because I don't understand high concepts of math, and because I don't have the patience for the scientific method. But I did enjoy many of the essays in the latest volume of The Best American Science and Nature Writing.
The volume was edited by Siddhartha Mukherjee, who wrote the excellent The Emperor of All Maladies. He notes in his introduction that science is under attack: "The failure to acknowledge or understand the discoveries of science was not unique to Galileo's time. We have our own Sizzis and Delle Colombes today: politicians who deny the existence of global warming, even as glaciers shrink in Greenland and ice disappears from the Arctic...and advocates of creationism, who would see pseudoscience taught in the nation's schools, 164 years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species."
There are all sorts of dire warnings in the this book. In Sylvia A. Earle's "The Sweet Spot in Time," she writes, "a full 90 percent of all large wild fish (and many small kinds as well) have disappeared from the world's oceans, the result of devastating industrial fishing." Earle is a pioneer among aquanauts (the first woman to have that profession). But she's also hopeful: "Fifty years into the future, it will be too late to do what is possible right now...Never again will there be a better time to take actions that can ensure an enduring place for ourselves within the living systems that sustain us."
For nightmare fodder, there are two articles on deadly diseases. Michael Specter, in "The Deadliest Virus," acquaints us with H5N1 (the "bird flu"): "it has since killed 346 of the 587 people it is known to have infected--nearly 60 percent...the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, which killed at least 50 million people, had a mortality rate of between 2 and 3 percent. Influenza normally kills far fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of those infected. This makes H5N1 one of the deadliest microbes known to medical science."
David Quammen, in "Out of the Wild," writes about zoonoses--"animal infections that spill into people. About 60 percent of human infectious diseases are zoonoses." I read both of these articles in one sitting, which made me not want to leave the house.
I preferred the articles that were about nature. One about quantum mechanics was way over my head, and there was another about math that I can't even summarize. I liked Rick Bass's essay on his favorite tree, "The Larch;" Tim Zimmerman's "Talk to Me," about attempts to communicate with animals; Brett Forrest's "Shattered Genius," about his hunting down the reclusive mathematics genius, Grigori Yakolevich Perelman; Oliver Sacks' memoir of his experience with drugs, "Altered States;" and Keith Gessen's "Polar Express," an account of a trip on a Russian cargo ship through the Arctic Ocean.
Additionally, there were several nuggets of information worth sharing. David Owen, in his article "The Artificial Leaf," points out that many scientists are Grateful Dead fans: "The hypothesis was that a love for the Dead reflects an iconoclastic outlook that's conducive to innovative thinking, and that Deadheads share what Nocera now thinks of as a Garcian conception of open-source collaboration."
In astronomy, we learn from Alan Lightman, in "Our Place in the Universe," that "The prize for exploring the greatest distance in space goes to a man named Garth Illingworth, who works in a ten-by-fifteen-foot office at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Illingworth studies galaxies so distant that their light has traveled through space for more than 13 billion years to get here." Elizabeth Kolbert, in "Recall of the Wild," introduces us to the auroch: "There are more than 1.5 billion cows in the world today, and all of them are believed to be descended from the aurochs--Bos primigenius--which once ranged across Europe, much of Asia, and parts of the Middle East...Julius Caesar described them as being just 'a little below the elephant in size.'"
In "The Wisdom of Psychopaths," Kevin Dutton makes the perhaps obvious but important statement that "Traits that are common among psychopathic serial killers--a grandiose sense of self-worth, persuasiveness, superficial charm, ruthlessness, lack of remorse, and manipulation of others--are also shared by politicians and world leaders."
My favorite article was Nathaniel Rich's "Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?" He starts with the fascinating fact that a type of jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, may be immortal. It is sometimes called the Benjamin Button jellyfish, because when it reaches the end of its life cycle, it reverts back to its earliest form of development, and starts all over again. That's enough to be interesting, but then he introduces us to Shin Kobuta, a marine biologist who specializes in hydrozoans, which include jellyfish. He's quite a character, something of a celebrity in Japan (he writes a jellyfish column for a newspaper), and a karaoke addict. He has even written songs about jellyfish, which can be found in the international database of karaoke machines.
All in all, this was an excellent collection, and that I was able to understand as much as I could is a testament to the lucid writing of the authors assembled. -
Once again, another fine edition in this series, which celebrates the best writing of the year while offering up-to-date science and nature. The 2013 edition seems to include more nature stories than previous volumes. Twenty-seven essays in the current edition. Eleven highlights:
4 stars
— Autism Inc, from The New York Times Magazine. About a new employment agency for autistic adults — 50,000 turn 18 every year. Apparent weakness (bluntness and obsession) can become marketable skills (directness, attention to detail). "If the market can forgive people's weaknesses, then they will rise to the level of their natural gifts." ... Gareth Cook, who wrote this article, serves as the editor of the Best American Infographics, an annual that debuted this month.
— Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? from The Atlantic. "Is Facebook part of the separation or part of the congregating?"
— The Measured Man, from The Atlantic. "Know thyself," taken to an extreme. A 63-year-old scientist measures every input and output of his body. A fascinating story about this guy who studies and knows his own ecosystem. This constant monitoring reflects his vision of a patient-centric, computer-assisted world of medical care. A scientist to the core, he is trying to save us.
— The Wisdom of Psychopaths, from Scientific American. Attributes found in psychopaths, some business people and some office holders: superficial charm, egocentricity, persuasiveness, lack of empathy, independence and focus. ... Reminds me of the book "Snakes in Suits," about that sociopath that everyone works for at some time. I did.
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
— Recall of the Wild, from The New Yorker. Rewilding, a new movement that envisions ecological history parks that would harbor such recently extinct animals as the aurochs, predecessor of the modern cow. Rewilding candidates include depopulated areas of the American Midwest.
— Which Species Will Live? from Scientific American. The Wildlife Conservation Society struggles with triage as a process for deciding which species become eligible for protection.
— The Artificial Leaf, from The New Yorker. Energy for the poorest people in the world through artificial photosynthesis. But does the inventor oversell it?
3 stars
— Shattered Genius, from Playboy. A Russian who solved an unsolvable math problem turned down a million-dollar prize. He solved the problem as a pure pursuit, unmotivated by material reward. The story brings to mind "Searching for Sugar Man," the story of a Detroit singer/songwriter famous in other countries but who lives modestly in his hometown.
http://www.sonyclassics.com/searching...
— Our Place in the Universe, by Alan Lightman, from Harper's Magazine. Our significance in the universe.
— The T-Cell Army, from The New Yorker. About advances in cancer treatment, the immune system and T-cells.
— Polar Express, from The New Yorker. A long article about the voyage of a large bulk carrier through the shrinking polar ice cap.
New words and newness
The articles in each edition always introduce new words to me. This year: rewilding, neurotypical, refugia, depauperate. Also, as a science and nature series, each book reflects its exciting currency when terms such as these appear year after year: new, emerging, evolving, just beginning to understand ...
"Most of the selected essays share a common thread: They describe how science happens." — Siddhartha Mukherjee, editor -
I love this yearly anthology and I missed the 2013 edition, so I picked it up because it featured so many of my favorite science writers - Alan Lightman (physics), Jerome Groopman (medicine), Oliver Sacks (neurology/psychology), Steven Weinberg (physics), Natalie Angier (science journalist), and David Deutsch (physics). Many magazines carry science articles - The New Yorker, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Harpers, National Geographic... - but I don't like to buy magazines. Instead I love this anthology in which a couple of excellent editors pick out great stories from a wide variety of fields in science. I always wind up reading articles I never would have read otherwise. Here is a short summary of my favorites in this edition.
1) Recall of the Wild, which was a terrific description of the Oostvaardersplassen – the “Serengeti behind the dikes” – a reserve for wild animals 15 feet below sea level, where biologists and ecologists are trying to re-create the wilderness before human settled in Europe, especially with the aurochs (the first cows)
2) Polar Express, which described an amazing ride on a huge ship with with 50,000 tons of iron ore that traveled through the Arctic ice (led by 2 nuclear-powered ice cutting ships) then down the Bering Strait to China.
3) Autism, Inc., which was about a company that seeks autistic people with special abilities that are needed in industry.
4) The Life of Pi, a discussion of different infinities.
5) Super Humanity, which explained how we have improved human life through science in an uphill battle against our own social/emotional natural predispositions.
6) The Patient Scientist, a discussion of how Ralph Steinman's studies of dendritic cells led to immunotherapy treatment for cancer, which he used to prolong his own life. He died 3 days after receiving the Nobel Prize.
7) Can a Jellyfish unlock the secrets of immortality, which focused more on the scientist – a karaoke singer – as the science: a particular small jellyfish grows younger when it is endangered until it is a single cell then it regenerates.
8) Is Facebook Making Us Lonely, which concluded that Facebook is just a tool that can cause and relieve loneliness but our society has mechanisms that make us more lonely than people were in the past.
9) The Measured Man, which describes the life of Larry Smarr, an incredible scientist who thinks we could productively use more data about his health and demonstrated it by showing how he used info to overcome his Crohn’s disease (intestinal inflammation).
10) Out of the Wild, which was about RNA and disease and explained why many diseases start in the tropics with bats, monkeys and spiders.
11) Altered States, an eye-opening piece about Oliver Sacks' experimentation with cannabis then LSD then amphetamines (to which he got addicted).
12) Which species will live, which is about triage (choosing which endangered species will survive)
13) The Larch, about larch trees, which are huge and live a long time
14) T-cell army, which is about the benefits and dangers of using T-cells to treat cancer – it works but it causes turmoil in the immune system and can kill the patient
15) Artificial Leaf, which was about the potential of artificial photosynthesis and a criticism about why it may never be commercially possible, and
16) Our Place in the Universe, which discussed the immensity of space. -
As always, a wonderful journey. Though technically I would title it The Best Science and Nature Essays 2013.
Once again gathered from trade publications as widely varied as the New Yorker, Outside, Playboy, Scientific American, Harper's, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and filtered by a highly qualified guest editor, in this case Siddartha Mukherjee, cancer physician and researcher and author of The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner for general nonfiction. His theme was "how science happens."
Is space digital? How do we measure the universe? How do you do triage for endangered species? What's the next pandemic? These are just some of the questions explored by the writers and scientists within these pages. Very fitting, since science and writing both very often start with questions. :)
I usually enjoy every essay and this year is no exception--even the very short ending essay about the social utility of psychopaths.
I'm sure it was reading this anthology year after year that led me to eventually subscribe to Science News, which presents a mostly distilled version of papers and abstracts across the sciences in articles unfortunately too short for inclusion in this anthology, though also for the lay reader.
Yes, buy it and read it! It will whet your appetite for science writing. -
This is an interesting collection of science writing. It's not so much about science as it is about scientists. In the forward, the guest editor Mukherjee talks about tenderness, the quality so many scientists hold for their research subjects or data (his example is Mendel tending his plants). And so there is little science but much scientist in the essays. I guess I was hoping for more science, but it was an interesting collection in any case.
Some of the essays seemed more relevant than others. One was entirely about all the different drugs a neurologist had abused -- ummm, not all that interesting in my book. Another was about a trip a journalist took with a Ukranian shipping crew through the Arctic, proving the northern passages are open now. While the journey was made possible by global warming, there was no science and no scientist in the piece.
Okay, so those missed. Others were quite engaging. The two essays at the end, "The Measured Man" and "The Wisdom of Psychopaths" were very good. I especially liked the questions in the measured man: if we measure everything about ourselves and are swimming in data, does that make our lives better?
In any case, a collection worth reading that gives a sense of the people who do science. -
I first read about the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012. I instantly enjoyed how it puts a wide collection of science/nature in one book. So I made it a yearly thing. What's better is that I can find it in the library for free (some of the articles in the book are from paid subscription science journals) Although the selection does not cover ALL the best writing, it gives me a chance to expose to a wide range of science/nature topics: biology, physics, medicine, environmental issues, mathematics, computer science, etc... Most importantly the writing is beautiful, unlike the dry academic writing. We really need more of these writing to make science more layman friendly, more accessible to the general public. It is also good to science, unlike certain news reports oversimplified, exaggerated or distorted the science finding.
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Good and bad. A lot of recent science and nature writing is more correctly described as "science history" and "science biography", and this anthology showcases both.
I was enlightened by J.B. McKinnon's criticism of the idolization of Nature, and Benjamin Hale's criticism of sign-language experiments on primates. And I am always enlightened by anything from David Deutsch, even when it is unfortunately only a few pages.
I like these "Best American" books because I can feel free to skip anything boring without missing the good stuff. And likewise, anyone who enjoys a tedious description of arctic shipping can read that, and perhaps skip the fascinating debate on the perils of experimenting with mutated pathogenic viruses. -
one of the things I usually like best about this series is the variety of articles they choose, and I felt like this edition wasn't as varied as they usually are. There were some real standouts though - authors I felt like I really must start following.
My hands-down favorite piece was "The Larch." It's hard to convey the beautiful lyrical writing in this piece and the amazing way the author makes connections between his beloved larch tree and so many other things. I never would have expected a paean to a specific tree would be so compelling - but this is one of those pieces I want to force into people's hands and say, read. read this. this is what science writing is meant to be. it is a wonder. -
Of the twenty-seven articles in this collection, there were about six or seven that were a struggle to finish (and most of those were about quantum physics and really just way over my head). All of the rest, however, were very interesting and informative, and if the subject matter was over my head they were written in a way that I could understand and appreciate. Most interesting to me were the articles on zoonotic diseases, endangered species, how Facebook is making us lonely, immortal jellyfish, and how we live in the sweet spot of time. I'm glad I read it, as it has piqued my interest in a variety of new topics that I didn't consider myself to really care about before.
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Here's the articles I enjoyed most: Shattered Genius (Playboy) about a reclusive mathematical genius who is a little crazy. The T-Cell Army (The New Yorker) about possible avenues of research and treatment for cancer. The Artificial Leaf (The New Yorker) about the future of sustainable solar energy. The Deadliest Virus (The New Yorker) about a particularly problematic strain of viruses which gives rise to all of our deadliest communicable diseases. Scary stuff! Our Place in the Universe (Harper's Magazine) all about the immensely infinitely inconceivably huge size of space, our universe, our solar system, and just how impossible it is to reach any of these points. Sounds very lonely.
