The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 by Rebecca Skloot

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 Reviews

• 
  Jim

  I read a lot of science articles, but they're a tiny percentage of those available & the idea of a good science editor picking the very best is just too good to pass up. I originally came across it because the 2013 edition was edited by
  Mary Roach, a favorite author. A friend gave me this edition - a great place to start. I've heard of Skloot's book
  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, but haven't read it yet. I've heard good things, though. This also contains a piece by
  Atul Gwande who I've enjoyed reading.
  
  - Foreword by Tim Folger - good intro.
  
  - Introduction by Rebecca Skloot - long & didn't add much to Folger's foreword.
  
  - Waiting for light by Jake Abrahamson - paints a great picture of the problem (lack of electric, especially light) in rural India & mentions several attempted solutions. The current one sounds interesting, but why should it work when so many others have failed? How does/could it apply other places? A science author must include the economic sustainability of the technology or it's just a pipe dream. This didn't, so it is a puff piece - whining. 1 star
  
  - In deep by Burkhard Bilger - is about caving. Wow! I've read some about it before, but never has the entirety been captured so well: the people, the challenges, types of caves, equipment, & more. This has it all including antibacterial underwear & the dangers of fungus. Wow! Fantastic. 5 stars
  
  - A question of corvids by Sheila Webster Boneham - is a wandering look at the crow family. Fun, almost poetic. 3 stars
  
  - The health effects of a world without darkness by Rebecca Boyle - doesn't have a lot of hard data, but there isn't a lot apparently. Artificial light has caused changes & some aren't good. I wasn't thrilled with the overtones that the changes, unless otherwise specified, were bad, though. 3 stars
  
  - Spotted hyena by Alison Hawthorne Deming - was very short & still managed to wander aimlessly. Still, it was interesting. 3 stars
  
  - Life, death, and grim routine fill the day at a Liberian ebola clinic by Sheri Fink - was exactly that. Nothing particularly shocking or new. 2 stars
  
  - No risky chances by Atul Gawande - is a bit from his book
  Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, a 5 star book. This piece is it in a nutshell. 5 stars
  
  - Linux for lettuce by Lisa M. Hamilton - covers the issues around patenting seeds. This is not a simple subject & there seems to be no good solution or compromise. The idea of using the
  Creative Commons (best known for computer Open Source code like Linux) licensing model to create a harbor for seed sharing outside the commercial sector is both. Excellent, if a bit too long. 4 stars
  
  - Down by the river by Rowan Jacobsen - is about the restoration of the native ecology along the Colorado river near Yuma. Wow!!! What a great success story. 5 stars
  
  - The empathy exams : a medical actor writes her own script by Leslie Jamison - had an interesting premise. I don't care for the style in which it was written. There were a few good points, but they were overshadowed by a lot of dreck. 2 stars
  
  - The deepest dig by Brooke Jarvis - very interesting piece about the deep ecosystem, how we're going to start mining it, & what it means to some of those nearby. I wanted more. 4 stars
  
  - Phineas Gage, neuroscience's most famous patient by Sam Kean - Interesting how one case can be so influential & yet have so few verifiable facts. There are several themes running through this. Well worth reading even though I wasn't particularly interested in the case itself. 4 stars
  
  - At risk by Jourdan Imani Keith - is about minorities in the wilderness. It's a good side of the story to read about, although her effort didn't impress me. It was short, though. 3 stars
  
  - Desegregating wilderness by Jourdan Imani Keith - didn't convince me. I understand her concerns (She's black, female, & originally from the city.) & feels white men are keeping the wilderness for themselves. I think she's right in wanting to integrate more wilderness into the cities, but I don't think any specific sex or race is to blame for not doing it. I'd love it if city people understood the wilderness & country life better. I'm disappointed that she's using her ideals to blame rather than solve in this piece. She does work hard to solve by taking kids out to camp & work in the woods in real life. I guess she does better than she writes, at least to me. 2 stars
  
  - Into the maelstrom by Eli Kintisch - was an interesting look at the scientific community grappling with one small aspect of climate change. It also shows how the popular story can change when politics gets involved. Well worth reading. 4 stars
  
  - The big kill by Elizabeth Kolbert - is about New Zealand's fight with mammals, their determination to exterminate them, & why. I thought our problems with invasive species were bad. Oy! Losing my ash trees, fighting with Japanese honeysuckle, garlic mustard, & multifloral rose are nothing compared to what they're dealing with. 5 stars
  
  - Digging through the world's oldest graveyard by Amy Maxmen - is an interesting look at the trials of archaeology. It also pushes getting the locals involved. 4 stars
  
  - One of a kind by Seth Mnookin - the power of social networking meets the genome project to figure out unique diseases. Unfortunately, it's not a miracle cure & seems to take a lot of money & stature to work it. 3 stars
  
  - A pioneer as elusive as his particle by Dennis Overbye - is an interesting look at Higgs. 3 stars
  
  - Blood in the sand by Matthew Power - conservationism isn't for wimps. This discusses the murder of one guy who tried to save leatherback turtles in Costa Rica. The economic pressures are terrible, though. 4 stars
  
  - Chasing Bayla by Sarah Schweitzer - is about the plight of whales mainly focusing on one man rescuing them from rope. Awful! 4 stars
  
  - Partial recall by Michael Specter - memory is very slippery as are the ethics surrounding healing it. 4 stars
  
  - The city and the sea by Meera Subramanian - is NYC dealing with rising waters & storms, using nature to help stave off issues like hurricane Sandy while cleaning up the environment at the same time. 4 stars
  
  - Curious by Kim Todd - what is curiosity & why does it grip us so tightly sometimes? Not enough science. 3 stars
  
  - The aftershocks by David Wolman - is about Italian scientists being criminally prosecuted for not properly warning people about earthquakes and brings up several important points from misunderstandings (scientists to reporters to population) to expectations. We can't predict earthquakes, yet still the Italian courts convicted scientists of not warning people properly. Yeah, you really need to read this - the dangers of Sunday Supplement science & the general idiocy of our litigious society. 4 stars
  
  - From billions to none by Barry Yeoman - discusses the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, a fairly well documented case that helped kick off our society's interest in conservation. It was good, but a little too one-sided for me. It briefly mentions a town covered in excrement from the passage of one flock & how they stripped fields, but glosses over these facts while concentrating on how men destroyed them out of greed. 4 stars
  
  Overall, this was a very readable collection. I'm looking forward to getting others in the series eventually.
• 
  Biblio Files (takingadayoff)

  Anthology season is one of my favorite times of year. It's not just the Best American Series -- there are other collections such as The Best Food Writing, The Best American Magazine Writing, Best Business Writing. And there are anthologies that only last a few years and then disappear such as Best Music Writing, Best Medical Writing, and so on.
  
  I've enjoyed the Best American Series for decades, and my favorite is almost always the Best American Essays volume. But lately I've also been looking forward to the Best American Science and Nature Writing.
  
  This year's collection is guest edited by Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It's heavy on natural sciences and light on physical sciences -- no chemistry, physics, or math here. It touches on astronomy only in passing, in an article about how artificial light is affecting our ability to see the stars (among other things), and a profile of Peter Higgs of Boson fame.
  
  That leaves a lot of room for essays about wildlife, including a fascinating article about crows and other corvids, the spotted hyena, a whale, and more. There are also essays about exploration of deep caves, fossil hunting in Ethiopia, the extinction of passenger pigeons, and a particularly captivating story about open-source seeds as a response to the patenting of some varieties of plants.
  
  My favorites were Atul Gawande's thoughts on the doctor's role in end-of-life care, Michael Specter's essay on the mysteries of memory and forgetting, and Sam Kean's original take on an old topic -- that of Phineas Gage, the man who survived a steel rod through the brain in 1848 with no effects, minor effects, or major effects, depending on who's telling the story.
• 
  Jude Li-Berry

  In sharp contrast to the 2014 anthology, which gave sober and much needed critical attention to the pressing issues in the world today, with emphasis on the most pressing -- though perhaps most depressing as well -- issue of them all (climate change), Ms Skloot's edition is determinately light, uplifting, and fluffy, adjectives not quite becoming when it comes to scientific writing. Early in her Foreword, Ms Skloot puts her foot down squarely, by quoting from an email by a reader:
  
  'It seems to me that content (of the series) has become darker and less hopeful over this time... When I marvel at what telescopes have seen... I get giddy. I suppose I would just like to see a bit more wonder -- a bit more magic -- in the content and less doom and gloom.'
  
  It does seem Ms Skloot stands by her foot, or rather, squarely on it, the foot that has been boldly thrust forth thus. In this volume you will find magic, wonder, giddy-worthy account of third-world children awe-struck in electric light brought by modern technology and uppity entrepreneurship. Human ingenuity, in that universal form called Human Adaptive Optimism ('The Collapse of Western Civilization', Oreskes & Conway), once again triumphs, over dark and menacing Reality.
  
  On paper, that is.
• 
  Mish

  Overall I would give this collection a 5 star rating. There were only a couple of entries that didn't completely and utterly *GRAB* me and suck me in, but they were still really good once I gave them the brainpower they needed.
  
  But y'all, almost every entry in this collection was really good. It got me excited about science, centered sustainable solutions, and was pretty encouraging, actually, that those "on the ground" are trying to do the right thing. Or the brave thing, if you're a Cave diver.
  
  Anyway, I *Highly* recommend the 2015 collection here.
• 
  Shawn

  I don't consider myself to be a "science person", per se, but I've enjoyed reading this 'Best Of' series the past several years. Some collections are better than other, and within collections there are standout articles, and those easily forgotten. This grouping I found to have more of the "easily forgotten" than in years past. Though varied, the stories started to become indistinguishable from one another. I couldn't tell if this was because they were all similar, or because I'd lost interest in them for similar reasons. Oddly, the most powerful writing comes in two stories by the same author, Jourdan Imani Keith, and both are less than two pages long. She seemed to masterfully execute and understand what so many others in this collection did not -- the idea that less is more.
• 
  Dan Martin

  Okay, so as always, I love this annual collection. And there were some excellent essays in this year's group. 'The Empathy Exams' is at the top of my list for must reads, and as a result, I'll be picking up the self-titled book soon. However, this year's collection felt disjointed to me. It seems that in years past, there's a theme that arcs through the book. This year it was harder to detect, if at all.
  
  That said, this is by far my favorite collection to read every year, I'm forever surprised by the stories and find myself wanting to know more. So bravo the the editors for sifting through the thousands of essays that get whittled down to the two dozen or so that make the cut.
  
• 
  Peter Aronson

  Three and a half stars. Some good articles, but no physics or computer science or much hard science at all.
• 
  Andrew Jean-Pierre

  This book deserves the "liked it" rating because it doesn't confine you to reading from lowest to highest numbered page, contains diversity within its topics, and catches my attention with some but not all articles.
  The table of contents displays a multitude of chapters, each about a different story or experiment. Since none of the contents of one chapter affected my understanding of the other chapters, I could jump around to whatever title seemed the most interesting. Sometimes, I would also feel lazy and not want to read something too lengthy, so I would just locate the shortest chapters and read them first. This made it a little easier to sit down and read since I wouldn’t feel like I had to commit for as many pages.
  Furthermore, the different subjects of each chapter made it so I could gain little scraps of knowledge in many areas. This can be useful whenever I feel the need for supporting an argument or opinion that I might have. Having science to pull from would make me sound more credible.
  Moreover, some of the themes that surrounded the chapters were quite eye-opening. For example, in the chapter titled No Risky Chances, it talked about how a cheerful woman decided that she would rather be able to decide that she would die in a week and know that it would happen than undertake a risky surgery that had high chances of both succeeding and failing. I always thought that people would choose to take all the opportunities they had to live longer, but this account really hit hard because it clearly displayed that some people would rather know how their story ended. I always found death to be a scary thing but it may not be as scary if you get to decide when it happens.
  On the other hand, some chapters were just too long. For instance, The Empathy Exams talked about a medical actor who specialized in being a girl who had conversion disorder. It was engaging for the first ten pages, but after that, it seemed to get a little repetitive. I was just waiting for the chapter to end. I felt like it included too many extra details that weren’t needed on its slow approach towards the conclusion that it made about empathy. Also, I got confused because they went so far in-depth that I started to feel like the author was describing themselves at times when it was actually still part of the girl’s story. I only want to know so much about someone before I get bored with their lives.
  
  A tiny side rant that does not relate to the book a lot but I feel like including anyway:
  To be honest, I sort of feel bad for giving this book three stars because I feel like three stars correspond to average. When I am looking at restaurant ratings, I usually associate three stars with what Good reads labels as "it was OK." Instead, Good reads labels the two stars with "it was OK." Within the Good reads system, I feel as if the positive ratings have too many stars to express their meaning. It is unfair that you can just downright dislike a book with no hesitation because it is represented by only one star. Previously, I never noticed that when you hovered over the stars, it says a little snippet of what the star means. This kind of disconnection between the stars and the meaning behind them reminded me of when one of the book's science articles talked about how words like "low," "unlikely," and "improbable" can easily correlate to a variety of percentages of chance depending on each person's definition of the words. (I don't know how to end this rant) *end*
  
• 
  Jessica

  Every selection in this 2015 edition is wonderful. I don't think I could pick a favorite but there's so much of interest not only from a science perspective but from a historical and social impact perspective, too. Selections are weighted a little heavily from a couple publications but it's hard to find fault with that when the articles are, in fact, so good.
  
  Among the topics included in these 26 essays are: effects of light (or lack of) on populations, cave exploration, corvids, hyenas, turtles, whales, passenger pigeons, Ebola, plant patents, river restoration, medical decision making, rare diseases, empathy, curiosity, risk prediction, deep-sea mining, urban wilderness, polar jet streams and Jennifer Francis, New Zealand, hominoid fossils, Peter Higgs, and memory reconsolidation.
  
  It's a lot to take in but think of the good impression you'll make by being well-read. Science!
• 
  briz

  Unfortunately this was a meh collection. It ran heavy on eco and nature, lighter on hard science. The only physics essay (that I can recall) was a bio-essay on Higgs (of particle fame). Even that article felt thin. Nothing on computers or jiggery pokery Internettery, alas.
  
  At its best, this series has blown my mind and opened up my horizons. At its worst (and this 2015 edition was pretty bad), it's just OK. I mean, it's never been BAD. But the disappointment of non-inspiration can be acute. Oh well, obviously I'll read all the other editions I can get my hands on, and I recommend you do too. :)
• 
  Andrew Drozdov

  I love this edition of BASNW. Each story has so much to learn from, and two of my favorite are "One of a Kind" about CS Professor Matt Might and the ongoing struggle treating his child with a rare genetic disease, and "Partial Recall" about how memory evolves over time. Of course, the Routine in the Ebola Clinic is incredibly relevant in 2020, and The Empathy Exams draws an excellent distinction between being sympathic and voicing sympathy. I've recommended this one to anyone who would listen, and recently ordered the latest (2019) edition.
• 
  Joy Wilson

  Excellent science articles from across the board
  
  I really enjoyed reading this collections due to its wide range of excellent articles. As a science teacher I enjoy writing that enlightens and inspires and this collection certainly does both of those well. I will consider getting each yearly edition to have timely articles for my students and myself to read, discuss, and digest.
• 
  Jeffrey

  I am really a sucker for nature essays. I have read this series most years since 2000. The books are curated magazine articles from the prvious year (in this case 2014). I am not sure why I enjoy them more in book form than in the magazines. I think it is because I am more focused when presented as a book. In any case, I find these essays an excellent end of day meditation on the endlessly facinating and rapidly changing developments in Science and the equally important impact on us humans. These essays are alway a riot of ideas and opening each is like unwrapping christmas gifts. This book's topics included rural solar lighting in India (cool!), light pollution, end of life care, plant patents (boo!), medical actors (who knew?) Phineas Gage and lots more. It took a while to read this one, though.
• 
  Andy Kristensen

  This book was a rather pleasant surprise- when I first started reading it, I was under the impression that it would be full of dry, dense, and heavily-detailed essays about obscure scientific topics that had little in the way of interesting topics. Instead, many of the articles and essays in this collection are ten times better than the essays found in the annual “Best American Essays” collection. Definitely looking forward to reading the 2016 edition of this series.
• 
  Marta Lapczynski

  I love everything published under the umbrella of the Best American series, but this book in particular is without a doubt the most compelling one I’ve read yet. I’m more intimately familiar with the Best American Short Stories publications, but this 2015 edition is the one that convinced me I wanted to shift my focus from Short Stories to Science and Nature. Every single story is just riveting in every way.
• 
  Sylvia Snowe

  Ms. Skloot's interest in the ethics of medicine and science research is clearly reflected in this selection of diverse articles. I thoroughly most of them--I tend to skip articles on astrophysics because I have no interest, and the most dreary of climate change and the eradication of species gets to me. But even though I read these articles some eight years after their initial publication, time hasn't diminished their significance and scientific validity.
• 
  Chunyang Ding

  Absolutely wonderful anthology. I was glad to see many stories that explored curiosities and fascinations, instead of solely reporting on the very-important-but-often-depressing news of the ways humans are destroying the world. Of special note for me were The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison and Curious by Kim Todd.
• 
  Alex

  I was disappointed. The books from this series which I have read before had a much stronger focus on explaining scientific facts. This edition seemed to me much more focused on human interest stories, not really explaining complex scientific observations and theories. There were a number of articles in this book which mostly were concerned about the feelings of the author or the protagonists.
• 
  Jim

  The "Best American" series remains one of my "go to" series year after year. This year it was Travel and Science. But I usually dip into the different subjects depending on how I feel or what I am interested in reading, I've done Mystery, Non-Required Reading, and Essays in other years. No, you won't enjoy every article but you will, I hope, I think, enjoy many in this collection . I knowI did.
• 
  Karen

  I found this collection to be intelligent, thought provoking and with much insightful teaching. The subject matter is eclectic ranging from the push back of our oceans to memory to the justification of killing off species that are running rampant.....completely interesting!!!
  
• 
  Aaron

  I wish there was a little more variety in this collection. Based on this book alone, a reader could conclude that climate change is the only things scientists study and care about.
• 
  Edward Nugent

  Thought reading about science was dry and boring? Guess again.
• 
  Heidi

  So glad this was a book club selection. Some of the essays were depressing, some were uplifting.