| Title | : | The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2016 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0544748999 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780544748996 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 |
| Publication | : | First published October 4, 2016 |
The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2016 Reviews
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In these days of fake news and pseudoscience triumphant, it seems almost quaint to read actual science from real and accountable news sources, but it is still a worthy effort. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016 is a collection of the best articles and essays from American newspapers, magazines and journals.
There is always variety in these anthologies, but I thought the addition of “The Modern Moose” by Amy Leach was particularly brilliant. It’s a humorous piece with an imaginative whimsy that might disqualify it in many people’s eyes. I thought it was perfect. I also appreciated the inclusion of an essay by Oliver Sacks acknowledging that he would soon by dying and looking at the periodic table as a timeline of his life.
More typical articles focused on climate change. “The Siege of Miami” by Elizabeth Kolbert was so alarming I dreamed about the eventual disappearance of Miami underwater. Several I had read during the year, including the incredibly important “The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous” by Gabrielle Glaser in The Atlantic. I have shared that original article a dozen times or more in hopes that people will stop believing AA propaganda and look to science where there is real success. The New York Times article on nail salons is included, an article that had an immediate effect in prompting changed regulations in the city.
One article was very discomfiting. “Begin Cutting” by Gaurav Raj Telhan is an essay by a former medical student describing the students’ semester long relationship with a donated cadaver used to teach medical students about the human body. My parents and my sister’s bodies have gone to this program and I have done the paperwork for myself. It was good to see how helpful and necessary it is, but still…gross!
It is impossible to read every great article on science and nature, so there is no better option than at least reading the annual anthology of some of the best. Science is under siege. The far right attacks science in the service of fossil fuel and chemical industries, enabling further environmental degradation and destruction. The far left attacks science in the service of counterfactual conspiracists who fear vaccines and peer-reviewed medicine and advancements in agriculture, but in the service of alternative medicine industries that are every bit as financially invested in discrediting science as the Koch brothers.
This year, as in every year, there is a wide selection of timely and important articles. This year, as in every year, many of them focus on the increasing urgency of climate change. Sadly, this year, as in every year, more than half of Americans will continue to deny settled science because facing reality might demand they do something about it.
Amy Stewart edited the 2016 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016. I was familiar with her for her historical detective novel Girl Waits With Gun so I was a bit puzzled by the choice until I learned she wrote The Drunken Botanist, a book about the plants used to make alcohol, Wicked Plants, about plants that attack, poison, and kill people, and several other science books about bugs, flowers, and the like. Her selections were wide-ranging, original and diverse, making for an excellent annual review.
★★★★★
http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpres... -
I picked up this collection of essays with an interest in exploring current affairs pertaining to the scientific, the natural, the environmental, and so much more that was taking place in our world. After selecting one such essay, The Modern Moose by Amy Leach, to place on our discussion list for the sixth season of Literary Gladiators (which I will share upon its release), I decided to read the entire collection and got a lot out of the topics at hand. Despite the fact that many of them addressed the problem and discussed the process of finding the solution instead of naming the solution, this has definitely filled me in on so many familiar subjects, and those not so familiar, that have been brought up in the news in areas not necessarily associated with politics. Of course, this book does not shy away from politics and a few articles make left-leaning statements, but for the most part (and I mean 80% so), this book concentrates on the issue that it is addressing in its essay.
The strongest essays in my mind in this book included:
Tracking Ivory by Bryan Christy- This essay talks about Christy's efforts to create decoy ivory to plant within the illegally acquired ivory so that the illegal ivory could be tracked and the poachers caught and punished.
Rotten Ice by Gretel Ehrlich- A woman talks about her visits to Greenland and how their rising temperatures prove to be a great deal for the rest of the world and also its impact on climate change.
The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic by Amanda Gefter- An account about Walter Pitts and his forgotten, but nevertheless impactful research in neuroscience and its connections to our way of thinking.
A Very Naughty Little Girl by Rose George- An account about Janet Vaughan and how she spoke against and pioneered long lasting practices in medicine, primarily in the field of hematology.
Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers by Sarah Maslin Nir- This essay talks about the respiratory and other impactful diseases that have come with working in nail salons and breathing in the chemicals that can be found in polishes and other cosmetics. There has also been drastic outcomes in the health of their children.
My Periodic Table by Oliver Sacks- Sacks died in 2015, making this his last contribution to this series, but he wrote a very heartfelt piece about his love for physical science, but especially for the elements on the periodic table and how he has celebrated his birthdays with realms centered around his age (for instance, Thallium would surround his 81st birthday, while Lead make up the realm for his 82nd).
The Lost Girls by Apoorva Mandavilli- This one is out of order, but it was my favorite essay in the entire book. While information on the subject of the autistic spectrum interests me, the research that is being made and chronicled on autism, Asperger's, and other autistic spectrum conditions in females is quite mindblowing. This essay talks about different female Autists from different backgrounds and the studies that are being mind and how it is much different than with male Autists.
Other topics in this collection include the second guessing of Alcoholics Anonymous (The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous by Gabrielle Glaser), addressing Ebola in Liberia (They Helped Erase Ebola in Liberia, Now Liberia is Erasing Them by Helene Cooper), an argument about sports bras (Why Are Sports Bras So Terrible? by Rose Eveleth), among other really fascinating topics of interest that I am sure will open up the minds of readers.
One must take in account that these are essays, so there is research that is applied to these works, but there is also a bit of subjection that can be applied by those that are writing them. Every writer takes a different approach. As I said above, though, this collection did the most to concentrate on the topics at hand and it made for a collection of annual writings that I will continue to purchase and check out as they are released. In fact, I would like to start a collection of this series and incorporate previous issues (this series goes back to 2000) to get a taste of science and nature writing at large and learn about the progression of events in this realm. I own the 2006 edition, so there are 15 more issues to include!
My star rating for this book may change based on how I see the others in this series and also how my mind processes these pieces, but for now, it is four stars out of five and a solid recommendation.
You can find our discussion of The Modern Moose by Amy Leach (which is subject to spoilers) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0no9X... -
The usual mixed bag of two dozen science and nature essays.
***** five stars
— Telescope Wars, by Kate Worth, which first published in Scientific American. Three big telescope projects with common goals around the world suffer because they cannot work together as a collective force, which would result in a better piece than any one of them could build alone. The competition began a hundred years ago when bitterness, personality conflicts and competing technologies collided, preventing corrobroation.
This, the best of the best, appeared last because the essays publish in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Rather than organizing that way, the two dozen essays could break into three or four sections, pulling related subjects together.
**** four stars
— The Siege of Miami, by Elizabeth Kolbert, published by The New Yorker. Climate change real and writ large as glaciers melt and the seas rise. Miami already feels the impact and will continue as a leading gauge.
— Bugged, by Rinku Patel, from Popular Science. Microbes make up sixty percent of the earth’s biomass. Another interesting discussion about biomes as that becomes a topic of serious and popular inquiry.
— Tracking Ivory, by Bryan Christy, first published in National Geographic. African elephants are under siege. For their tusks, marauding poachers slaughter thirty thousand elephants a year. To learn where these tusks go, National Geographic commissioned fake tusks, put them on the market, then used embedded GPS devices to tracked the movement through the black markets. Ingenious.
— Thirty Million Gallons Under the Sea, by Antonia Juhasz, from Harper’s Magazine. The author documents many impacts from the BP disaster. Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota found BP oil in the eggs of white pelicans that were in the gulf at the time of the spill.
— The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World With Logic, by Amanda Gefter, first published in Nautilus. Walter Pitts, a young autodidact, and Warren McCulloch, a scientist, laid the foundation for cybernetics and artificial intelligence. At the University of Chicago in the early forties, the two developed a model, the first argument of the brain as an information processor. “For the first time in history, we know how we know,” said McCulloch.
McCulloch invited Pitts, in his teens, to join his Hinsdale household, a bustling, free-spirited bohemia where literary types dropped by. (The story describes the suburb as “rural Hinsdale,” although it straddles Cook and duPage counties seventeen miles from Chicago Union Station. I take Metra to the 1899 Hinsdale station when meeting my sister.)
This year’s guest editor favored pieces with strong narrative. I, however, favor pieces with strong science writing, even if the narrative falls short. What strong science articles failed to make the cut this year because the guest editor felt that the narrative was not strong enough? Let’s return to publishing the best science and nature writing. -
Wonderfully curated collection of science writing by Amy Stewart, who chose pieces not just for the science but for the narrative as well. Wonderful reporting about ice in Greenland, the dubious evidence or lack thereof for bed-rest in pregnancy, why sports bras don't fit, the health hazards women working as manicurists face in the workplace, the issues surrounding the push to bring electricity to all of India, the disservice done to women and girls with autism by the research/medical community, and a 15,000 page mathematical proof (you read that right). And yes, I cried when I read Oliver Sacks's piece.
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Many of the articles chosen by the guest editor were incredibly depressing (ivory trade, melting glaciers, toxic waste, oil spills, politicians choosing wealth over our planet, etc.). However, since this selection reflects the reality of our world today, these same articles are essential reading for anyone hoping to be truly informed citizens of planet Earth. Additionally, these truly depressing “our planet is in trouble” articles are mixed in with thought provoking pieces on various topics including sports bras, the history of blood transfusions, the ways in which American gender norms impact girls with autism, and the failure of Alcoholics Anonymous. While other reviewers have suggested that these articles should have been broken up into several separate sections (on politics, climate change, space, etc.), I disagree. The current structure (largely organized by author’s last name) ensures that you cannot easily read only the articles on your preferred topics. Instead, you find those articles while reading the book cover-to-cover, and thus leave with a wealth of information on topics you never knew you’d find so fascinating.
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Year after year this Best American series continues to rock whether the essays are about climate change's effect on native Greenlanders, mathematical theorems, or squabbling astronomers. Can't recommend this 2016 edition highly enough.
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I get this every year for Christmas from Santa. It's my must-read
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Supurb mix of science and nature writing ranging from climate change and mathematics to reflective and prose. I loved the wide array of content and the accessibility of each piece.
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Great collection of journalistic writing about science and nature!
I loved the last one about the competition of astronomer teams to get the biggest telescope :) -
An excellent collection of essays, only one or two that I felt weren't worth including. There is a practical or social justice angle to many of them.
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These annual compilations are always valuable to me, both as a reader and a science writing teacher at Carnegie Mellon. In this year's publication, edited by the nonfiction writer/novelist Amy Stewart, there are several standout articles, but I'll just mention four favorites.
* The Siege of Miami, a New Yorker article by the brilliant Elizabeth Kolbert, gives a close-up view of the way rising sea levels are not only flooding Miami Beach, but are making it harder for rainwater to drain off South Florida's surface. Meanwhile, the governor of Florida banned employees from talking about climate change.
* A Very Naughty Little Girl, by Rose George, takes a look at the life of Dame Janet Maria Vaughan, an independent blueblood who played a major role in the creation of the blood transfusion industry and fought against misogynistic prejudice the whole way.
* Gabrielle Glazer's The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous was a controversial Atlantic article that argued that there is little scientific evidence that abstinence is necessary for people to stop abusing alcohol.
* Amanda Gefter's The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic tells a cautionary tale of a brilliant young researcher in the pioneering days of computing who ended up sick, broke and nearly forgotten.
Those four articles alone are worth the price of the purchase. -
"The Arctic is shouldering the wounds of the world, wounds that aren't healing. Long ago we exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet, with its seven billion humans all longing for some semblance of First World comforts. The burgeoning population is incompatible with the natural economy of biological and ecological systems."
A major disappointment! I liked and recommended here two earlier installments of the series,
The Best American Science Writing 2006 and
The Best American Science Writing 2005 , but the publisher decided to "improve" the series and added 'nature' to 'science' in the title. Alas, the title is quite misleading. Not much science remains in the book that supposedly features the best American essays in the field written in 2016. In fact, the book does not contain a single essay from the basic science area. Do the publishers really think that science is too hard for people to read about? More whining later, now about some good stuff.
The main theme of the collection is, of course, the destruction of our environment, the climate change, and the fate of the planet whose inhabitants happily ignore the crisis that may now be unavoidable. Rotten Ice is probably the most interesting essay in the set: we learn how the climate change affects Greenland and the lives of its people. Their livelihood depends on the thickness of ice. An essay about an environmental manager of a coalfield in India is pretty grim: we are told that"India's carbon output [...] is growing faster than any other country's."
On the other hand, a piece about Germany's successes in converting to energy from renewable sources is somewhat optimistic, despite the obvious obstacles and growing pains.
One of the environmental essays is sort of close to science: we learn about bark beetles that have killed billions of trees, but the author presents a hypothesis that the beetles and the trees have mutually adapted to the climate change. The passages about symbiosis between beetles and fungus sound actually like science. On the other hand, in an essay that begins very promisingly with the story of how individual wolves migrated from Oregon to Northern California where their offspring can now be found, the tone suddenly changes and we have to read about celebrities and their dogs. I really am unable to understand why writing about nature and science has to be polluted by names like Christina Aguillera or Renee Zellweger.
I was happy to find a piece about mathematics (even if math is obviously not a science): an essay about rewriting the so-called "enormous theorem" in the finite simple group theory. For a text about math it is relatively accessible. Some readers may be interested in an article ridiculing the "non-scientific gospel" of the 12-steps philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous and criticizing the abstinence-only approach. Others may be amused by a piece that calls prescribing bed rest for pregnant women a hoax. An article about burning the bodies of victims of Ebola pandemic in Liberia is interesting at the beginning before it degenerates into pornography of death.
The very first piece, Back to the Land is truly bad: it hits the reader with histrionic, pompous, stilted writing. The Modern Moose is unfortunately similar: the author tries to convey lyricism and ends up with silly and pretentious stuff. In contrast with these two failures we find a deeply moving piece by Oliver Sacks, who was close to death at the time of this writing. My Periodic Table illustrates the obvious truth that some people can write well while others - like the authors of the two previously mentioned pieces and also this reviewer - can't.
Two stars.
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This is one of the best science and nature anthologies ever but it was a difficult read, not for the vocabulary but for the content. Many of the articles tell a story of dire situations, which are eye-opening but also depressing when read one after another.
Gretel Ehrlich's article, Rotten Ice, describes the rapid melting of glaciers in the Greenland with dire consequences for world coastlines. Elizabeth Kolbert's article, The Siege of Miami, illustrates how rising coastlines and climate change is already devastating large parts of Miami Beach. Apoorva Mandavilli's article, The Lost Girls, explains how thousands of young girls suffer from autism but most physicians can't recognize the symptoms in their behavior. Sarah Maslin NBir's article, Perfect nails, Poisoned Workers explores the prevalence of respiratory and skin ailments among nail salon workers. Maddie Oatman's article, Attack of the Killer Beetles explores how insects that are devastating forests in the West are worse than the ash borer beetle in the Midwest. And to top them all Kathryn Schulz's article, The Really Big One, which won a Pulitzer Prize for science journalism, explains a fault line known as the Cascadian subduction zone is overdue for an enormous earthquake that is likely to devastate 140,000 square miles of land in Oregon and northern California, becoming the worst natural disaster in North America.
Not all of the articles were this dire. Some were just plain discouraging. Gabrielle Glaser's article, The False Gospel of Alcoholic Anonymous, is an in-depth analysis of the flaws with the Alcoholic Anonymous program with negative consequences for efforts to help people control alcohol use. Alexandra Kleeman's article, The Bed-Rest Hoax, illustrates how many people in the past and still many in the present, especially pregnant women, suffer from prescriptions to stay motionless in bed.
And some articles were truly inspiring. Rose George's article, A Very Naughty Little Girl, was a brief biography of Janet Vaughan, who became a physician in England in the 1920's and organized blood banks for people living in poverty in the 1930's and the very first blood bank in London during World War 2. Amanda Gefter's article, The Man Who Tried to redeem the World with Logic, was another great one - the story of Walter Pitts, who taught himself philosophy and mathematics at a PhD level but wrecked his mind and body by trying to create a mathematical model of how the brain uses logic.
Just about every article in this anthology tells a powerful story. A wide variety of physical and natural sciences are represented. I look forward to each new year's version of this anthology. -
I always look forward to reading this annual anthology, and the 2016 collection was great as usual.
My anecdote: Our family vacation this year was to Oregon, and I picked up this book in Portland's famous Powell's book store. Leaving Portland, my family headed down to southern Oregon, and then back up the coast. All along the coast, I saw tidal wave zone warnings--they caught my eye but I thought little of them. I loved the trip!
But then, I got home and read his book. Including the article about how Oregon and the rest of the Pacific Northwest is long overdue for a massive earthquake that is going to destroy the coast and pretty much kill everyone. And now I am never going to Oregon again. And also telling everyone that Oregon is going to be destroyed in a massive earthquake. Any. Day. Now.
In addition to the great article about how Oregon is about to be destroyed, there are lots of other interesting articles in the anthology. I particularly enjoyed one about the telescope wars (how three competing entities evolved to essentially be working on the same telescope for decades, but cannot seem to collaborate), the effects of the BP oil spill, and how bed rest may actually be a bad thing. Then, of course, was the article about the health hazards of working in nail salons, which made me feel terrible about my occasional pedicures--but apparently not bad enough to stop getting them.
Highly recommended, as always. -
Great essays, particularly the ones about the microbiome (probiotic wallpaint!), Janet Vaughn's pioneering work preserving donated blood for WWII, women on the autism spectrum, and the hazards of working in nail salons. However, I found the collection a bit of a bait-and-switch. These essays are much more about people, with very little scientific detail in them. I found myself yearning for some hypothesis testing rather than just quirky profiling. Sadly, the most scientific pieces were the most depressing, with half the essays about climate change and others about politics preventing good science.
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I simply love these anthologies each year of the best science and nature writing from all the best publications. 2016's collection proved to be as interesting as previous years. I was fascinated to read Rose Eveleth's article from "Racked" on "Why Are Sports Bras So Terrible." Gabrielle Glaser's expose on the 12-Step myth of AA in "The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous," from The Atlantic was as fascinating as Kathryn Schulz's article "The Really Big One" was terrifying (from The New Yorker).
If you enjoy learning the cutting-edge discoveries of our time, or to read about natural experiences you probably never will see, pick up any of these collections. -
Just as I hoped, a very good anthology of 2016's best science and nature writing. What I liked the most about it was the stuff I didn't expect to like. I thought I'd hate the piece on the health risks faced by nail salon employees but much to my surprise I loved it. Same also for the one on the difficulties in diagnosing autistic females.
Plus, there's a short but well-written article by the late Oliver Sacks.
Only article I didn't like was the one on the American moose. -
A lot of interesting articles, but still light on the hard sciences. and a bit light on actual science for that matter (all the articles are written at a pretty general level). This is really "Some Selected American Science and Nature Writing 2016", since there's too much good science published in America in a year for a single moderate length collection to even begin to publish the best, and best according to whom anyway?
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Great variety in this collection! The only one I dudn’t like at all was “What’s Left Behind”, about the toxic Berkley Pit in MT. The piece was just poorly done and I was surprised it would be included as it so much weaker than the other pieces.
I especislly liked the piece on particular challenges females with autism face vs males, and the piece on Janet Vaughan and her role in getting blood transfusions as a standard part of the medical field. -
As usual with compilations, a mixed bag, but Amy Stewart did a great job editing. My favorite piece was "Rotten Ice" and the most thought-provoking in an uncomfortable way was "The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous." In these days when scientific facts are ignored and nature is considered expendable -- support excellent writing in these areas!
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This book was the background info for a discussion group at my local Oster Lifelong Learning Institute. While many of the articles were well written, I have to question why the editor chose them. Some were sneakily misleading and it's questionable if they and few others deserve to be among The Best.
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I've been reading each year's release of this for a few years and it's grown into a great reading tradition. My favorite from this year's was "The Lost Girls" by Apoorva Mandavilli, but each piece contained enjoyable writing and was super informative and filled with fun facts. Already anxious for next year's!
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I've read one or two of these before, and so far I'm not disappointed. My favorite articles schooled me on: the illegal ivory trade, the fate of those who burned Ebola victim's bodies in Liberia, the melting of the Greenland ice, what doesn't work about AA, rising sea levels in Miami, Oliver Sach's Periodic Table birthdays, and the gigantic earthquake that will hit the Pacific Northwest.
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Excellent offering by this series...all of these are thought provoking and insightful. Some will make you angry. Some will make you sad and some will give you a new perspective on what you thought you knew or believed in. Well worth the read.
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I enjoy this series and have read several of the volumes over the years, but this is the first time that I have read and appreciated every single essay. Normally I end up skimming (or even skipping) at least 2 or 3 of the choices, but not with this one.
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Absolutely wonderful.
