The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 by Hope Jahren

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 Reviews

• 
  Reading Cat

  Meh. I liked Lab Girl, but her taste is, well, not mine. I expect a science expert to curate a collection that's a little more rigorous and hard to find than Buzzfeed news?
  
  The writing in many of the essays is very blah--Jahren herself is a much better writer than 90% of the articles she selects. Climate change is VASTLY overrepresented in the 'science', crowding out most other sciences and math. The essays about the lives of scientists tries to be progressive, but it's basically all about being a woman scientist, rather than a scientist...who is also a woman. I mean, no real surprise considering Jahren's own work and agenda, but...it got very samey.
  
  I normally love this series, but this was a thumbs down from me. I'll have to see who the editor is next year BEFORE I buy--I got much more fun from hunting down the Other Recommended list by series editor Tim Folger in the book's last pages. I wish he'd take the helm.
• 
  Melissa

  Excellent collection of essays selected by Hope Jahren, not only about the science but about the lives and events behind the scientists. Of particular importance are two essays about the sexual harassment that women suffer in the sciences (apparently it is hard to conduct one’s self in an appropriate professional manner ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, which is completely not hard at all, ugh why are men. Don’t bother @ing me). Highly recommend.
• 
  Josh Caporale

  I really enjoy reading these essays that are featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, as I did during 2016, and while I saw more standouts then, there were still some standouts in this collection that caught my attention and made me think.
  
  Some of the standouts included:
  
  "How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics" by Tom Philpott- In this essay, Philpott explores the detrimental impact of the meat industry and the use of antibiotics. There is some hope, though, as companies are making efforts to do away with using antibiotics in chicken that is being bred and made into food. It will take time for chicken to be completely antibiotic-free, though, and if the same efforts were made with pork and beef, it would take even more time.
  
  "The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone" by Becca Cudmore- Cudmore makes an effort to debunk the idea that city rats are burdens and carry a great deal of diseases in the general human population.
  
  "The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth" by Chris Jones- This essay is about Sara Seager and her research and discoveries in finding an Earthlike planet that can provide for and house living species. A great deal of detail is placed on Seager as well.
  
  "The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort of) Rattled the Scientific Community" by Jon Mooallem- In this essay, we learn about Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who put together a magazine that he saw as a second thought and was "a magazine about nothing," but a fascination with clouds led to further research that would make him a serious figure in the world of science.
  
  "The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene" by David Epstein- The most fascinating article in the 2017 collection of The Best American Science and Nature Writing was a piece about Jill Viles, who spent her life with muscular dystrophy and how she saw symptoms of hers and a particular gene of hers in an Olympic sprinter by the name of Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. While Lopes-Schliep seemed like a complete opposite, the results to Viles research turn out to be mindblowing. The same can be said about DIY research Viles engaged in which she learned about a heart condition her father happened to have, but know nothing about.
  
  This collection as explores the impact of sexual harassment in the field of science and nature, in particular the articles "He Fell in Love with His Grad Student- Then Fired Her for It" by Azeen Ghorayshi and "Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream" by Kathryn Joyce. Both of these essays show heinous accounts of sexual desire getting into the way of forward progress or the ability to examine what science and nature has to offer. Works on this topic are also examined in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018.
  
  I feel as if I get a great sense of everything going on when it comes to science and nature when reading these essays and the works in here provide a great sense of substance and backing to them, especially the works I highlighted as standouts. I would like to see some more standouts in the 2018 issue and perhaps the 2019 issue if I get to it this year, but if the editors are able to collect the best articles from a great deal of American publications throughout the year, there is certainly going to be someone that responds with wonder and is filled with contemporary knowledge.
  
• 
  Chunyang Ding

  What a fantastic collection.
  
  I've always felt it slightly odd to review these BASNW collections - after all, am I supposed to be critiquing the individual stories, or the editor's discretion of assembling and collating them? - but here, both stand out. Science communication is so much more than "just reporting the facts", but in understanding and interpreting them as well. It is naive to claim that science is purely divorced from society, when it can be so much more richly interpreted as a discipline that very much responds to the social environment. And here, Hope Jahren's collection of science and nature writing, shines brightest.
  
  These stories - written in the calendar year of 2016, the hottest year on record - are completely imbued with the personalities and impacts of the science being described. Climate is, of course, frequently referred to (the cover of the book features several wind turbines in silhouette), but not always exactly in the way that you would expect. In "The New Harpoon", there is the exploration of climate change on arctic communities, and how the elders of that community are seeking the best ways to preserve their own independence while resisting the loss of their heritage. "The Invisible Catastrophe", written almost as a murder/legal mystery, explores how a community grapples with an unseen, choking environmental catastrophe. "Dark Science", which I greatly appreciated for the way the author inserts himself in for a good amount of humor, touches on the concept of light pollution as yet another human-made environmental hazard, and a near and dear subject to my own heart.
  
  Yet the other stories in this book are still filled to the brim with the human connection. My favorite piece, "The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene" is written in a way that I would not have even originally considered as piece of scicomm. From its gripping introduction of the main subject, as receiving a packet of confounding genetic information in the main, to the small snippets of Jill's life that illuminate her personality, there is just so much of this article that I hope to strive towards in the future. What was incredible to me about this piece is how much genetic information it revealed throughout the process, yet how seamless this scientific knowledge was embedded in the overall narrative.
  
  Of course, there could only be one heroine in the story - Jill and her persistence in research and noticing details, especially where other experts were eager to dismiss. But the way that David Epstein gives space for this story to exist is fantastic. One of the most jaw-dropping parts of the story is when Jill discovers the Emergy-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy independently in her university's library. Her continued probing of this question leads her to bring home those papers to her house, where her father stumbles across them. In that fateful moment, she admits that she exhibits the three muscular symptoms common to those who suffer from this dystrophy, but her father drops the bombshell that he has been having the heart issues described of other patients.
  
  The pacing of that entire section, along with the detail, makes this particular article stand out. If you want a contrasting presentation of that exact scene, check out
  this write-up from the Des Moines Register. Although it is certainly targeted at a very different audience, the effect and tension in the writing is just so drastically different.
  
  In any case. I would very whole-heartedly recommend this collection to anyone who wants to be a science communicator, or just those who would be interested in reading more good stories. In no particular order of preference, here were my favorites in the collection.
  
  * The Art of Saving Relics
  * The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone
  * The New Harpoon
  * Dark Science
  * The Invisible Catastrophe
  * The Physics Pioneer Who Walked Away from It All
  * The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene
  * The Man Who Gave Himself Away
  * Unfriendly Climate
  * He Fell in Love with His Grad Student - Then Fired Her for It
• 
  Alexia

  I've read a fair number in this series, and I usually give them four stars since the collection tends to have about the same number of hits and misses.
  
  This was almost all hits. What a selection, I couldn't be more impressed.
• 
  Teri-K

  I picked this book because I'd read
  Lab Girl, by the editor, and really liked it. I was interested in seeing what type of science articles she'd choose, and I have to say she did a great job. This type of book is always a mixed bag and I consider myself happy if I like about half the articles. In this one I really liked almost all of them.
  
  I started by reading in section 3 - The "Real Life" of Scientists - and the articles were fantastic. There was plenty of science here, but also the human element, and I zipped through. Then I went to the first section Emergent Fields. I wasn't sure what I'd think of these, some of the topics sounded too esoteric for me, The Secrets of the Wave Pilots and The Billion-Year Wave, in particular. But they were fascinating. I put the middle section of the book last, because I knew Changing Land and Resources whould have some sad and depressing material in it. It did, and I also I felt a couple of the articles in this section were longer than they needed to be. Still, I enjoyed most of them, too.
  
  All in all, this is an excellent book to stretch your mind and expose yourself to things you don't know anything about, as well as catching up on research in fields you enjoy. I know it was published in 2017, but there's still a lot of interesting reading here for anyone interested in science and nature. Jahrens, as writer or editor, has a good grasp on how to make science interesting for lay people without dumbing it down too far. Recommended.
• 
  Rift Vegan

  I really enjoy this series, but this collection was a little bit meh. I didn't hate any of the articles, but out of the 24, I only had one "smiley face" and 2 "check marks". The Check Marks were for The Case for Leaving Rats Alone, nice because I like rats! and The DIY Scientist, The Olympian and the Mutated Gene, just an interesting story about two people who meet to talk about this gene that did opposite things to them!
  
  The smiley face was for Nicola Twilley’s The Billion-Year Wave about gravitational waves... I was just fascinated by the huge and super sensitive detector that got built to prove these waves exist, and then one hits right as they are setting it up? crazy!
• 
  Dipra Lahiri

  All excellent essays in their own right. However, they don't sit well together in one compilation. Too little of 'hard' science, more emphasis on the social aspects.
• 
  Sab Cornelius

  
  https://readerdemon.com/bestamericans... <--- I do book blogging on the side, so posted my full review here. [Site is currently A WIP]
• 
  Margaret Sankey

  I really enjoy good popular science writing, and this crop of selections from 2016 publications includes standouts like Sonia Smith's profile of Texas' premier communicator of climate change scholarship, who also offers training for scientists on how to get their research across to very hostile laypeople, and a piece on medical advocacy taken to extremes, as a young woman from Iowa's study of her and family's rare genetic mutation (which causes heart problems and muscle wasting), which in a famous Canadian track star caused superhuman musculature with less body fat, and how her pursuit of this saved herself, her father, the athlete and eventually convinced geneticists and doctors to quit being condescending and listen.
• 
  Dan Martin

  This was a very good anthology of science and nature writing, but the most powerful essays here are in the third part of this collection, titled "The 'Real Life' of Scientists". Here is where we get a unusually personal glimpse into the people behind the science, and every story is wonderful.
  
  Unfortunately, the first two parts of the book were very hit or miss for me. There were some standouts. "The Battle For Virunga", "The Secrets of The Wave Pilots", and "A Song of Ice" were particular standouts.
  
  I read this collection every year, and I'm always impressed and invigorated by the pieces selected. Honestly, this is one of my favorite books to dive into each year. And although this year the collection left me a little wanting, it's worth picking up for the third part alone.
• 
  Ethan

  When entering this book, I had expected hard, analytical, scientific journals containing data of specific experiments and conclusive evidence of a point. However, I was treated to a different way of having a field of science explained.
  Each essay was more like a non fiction story, told in the personal details of real people rather than the usual cold cut of experimental data a hard scientific journal may offer. For example, a scientific journal may only talk about what happened in the experiment, or extrapolate data into tangible terms relating to, you guessed it, the experiment. But this book offered more personal details of the scientists life, their successes and failures based on the topic, and their feelings on the topic. Rarely did I feel I was reading a "scientific journal". I felt more like I was reading a story that a company like national geographic had written up.
  The book did a good job of explaining topics that may be difficult to grasp, like, my personal favorite, the gravitational waves caused by the decaying orbits of two circling black holes. It had to explain general relativity to a supposedly unexposed audience. It did a good job, using the classic, "space-time is a blanket and objects bend it" allusion. There are other examples obviously, but I feel like the explanation of the theoretical fabric and make up of the universe is a powerful example.
  My most glaring issue with this book is the lack of data. I know, I know, I just spent the time praising it for its lack of stone cold formality, but at the same time, a lack of any hard data makes it feel like you're not reading a scientific journal entry, but an informative story. There's a good balance that needs to be achieved, hard data to satisfy those who could learn from it, and personality to keep the eyes of the reader open and heads up from their desks. This book comes agonizingly close to the balance, but falls just short.
  All in all it is worth a read if you are interested in the sciences. This is not quite an entry level book for science love, as it is talking about topics outside the normal frame of reference. A better way to spark scientific love is to read up on the technical details of the things you encounter everyday, to create a better appreciation for them, and to view them differently. Since this book is not fully about everyday objects, but not about the unfathomable virtues of existence, I personally consider it a mid tier science read.
  
  More entry level book: Michio Kaku's "Physics of the impossible"
  (especially for sci-fi lovers)
  
  More dense book: Ray Kurzeweil's "The singularity is near"
• 
  Pearse Anderson

  This book was a gift from Gaby Parlapiano! Thank you.
  
  Hope Jahren was a stellar voice for this year's volume. At a time when science seems ever more emotional, personal, and at risk of attack, Jahren gives us essays about scientists inner lives, their associations, uplifts, and struggles, and great power whether they are administrators or citizens. So, the third section of this book is great, yeah. The first two sections are also good, but I dunno, some of them made me question why they were chosen. This year's anthology had a ton of science, and if their was nature writing it was the type found in an Oxford or Scientific American anthology, not a Chelsea Green one. Y'know?
  
  Best pieces: The Art of Saving Relics; The Secrets of Wave Pilots; The Invisible Catastrophe; How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics; Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream. Quality quality quality quality quality.
  
  This book gave me some new appreciations for science, environmentalism, and oft-forgotten bureaucrats of those fields. Certainly taught me a lot more than some classes of ENVS 201. And even when I didn't enjoy pieces, I just jumped to the next one, or I thought about why. And that was interesting. There were a bunch of examples of pieces that did so many things well, but if they just had a touch more Nieman's, they might have become something else.
• 
  Matthew

  This edition of the Best American Nature and Science Writing was published just before the inauguration of Trump started to work back the major progress that Obama's administration had made in protecting and preserving the environment and halting the advance of climate change. It was curious to read these stories in the middle of 2020 when there is so much cynicism and feelings of betrayal from both me and many of my friends about where our natural world is heading.
  
  The major contributions for this edition revolved around the work of astrophysicists and women in science in general. Hope Jahren (editor) did a wonderful job getting the easily buried stories of women in science to the fore, and there is a much-needed bias of getting these scientific "Joans-of-Arc" to the forefront of our environmental attention.
  
  My favorite in the collection was Kathryn Joyce's "Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream," a damning account of how the National Park Service has slowly allowed a dark world of male-dominated harassment culture, victim-blaming, and toxic masculinity to perpetuate in the culture surrounding our natural treasures. A close second was Christopher Solomon's "The Devil is in the Details," another incredible exposé about how hard it is for wilderness advocates and industrialists to reach a spirit of compromise with how the land should be used.
  
  Overall, the 2017 edition was an incredible collection whose stories make me sad that it seems like the work that many of these scientists were doing has stagnated in terms of official policy changes.
• 
  Rita Ciresi

  The best science and nature writing leaves us in awe of the hidden rules of the universe. Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl, has chosen several that did just that. While every reader will find different favorites, mine were Michael Regnier's "The Man Who Gave Himself Away," David Epstein's "The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene," and Kim Tingley's "The Secrets of the Wave Pilots." Jon Mooallem's "The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort of) Rattled the Scientific Community" is a particularly delightful gem with a surprising ending.
  
  Several pieces are devoted to the role of women in science, but only one seems worthy of the title "Best of." Kathryn Joyce's "Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream" is a thorough investigative report of foul doings in our National Parks. The rest of this subset of essays, to me, read like summaries rather than lively and insightful explorations of this important subject matter.
  
  The emphasis here is on biological and environmental science with the recurring theme of climate change running through many of the works.
  
• 
  Jan Priddy

  I love this collection. Of all the Best-of series, my recent discovery of this series has given me the most pleasure. Climate change is probably the most common issue, but there are stories about conserving spacesuits, gas leaks, and the lives of scientists. I was alarmed to find a former nuclear energy plant up river from my home mentioned in passing as the most hazards site in the nation. There is great depth here. Some of the essays are right at the outer edge of my own scientific understanding—I do not have much of a science background—but the writing is compelling and clear and these essays have stayed with me. Several included passages I wanted my students to read, usually for both fascinating content and writing skill.
  
  This is a read-twice book. This is a book that should be assigned to high school students. Because of the information and impact I found here, I plan to go back through the series and read earlier collections.
• 
  Lisa

  This collection is always one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and I enjoyed so many of the articles compiled in this edition. Some highlights for me were articles discussing:
  
  -A fascinating look at a woman who self-diagnosed herself -- and an Olympian -- with a rare genetic disorder.
  
  -The dwindling art/science of Pacific islanders navigating seemingly by feel.
  
  -An investigation of the health impacts of a gas leak in California that the responsible company swears is perfectly safe.
  
  -A dive into the life of a brilliant physicist who walked away from her science career to become a business entrepreneur.
  
  There were a couple of misses, in my view, but overall a strong collection.
  
• 
  Stephen Dorneman

  It took me longer than usual to finish the 2017 edition of this essay series -- in part due to things going on in my own life, but in part due to the editor's overloading on climate change essays, and also the inclusion of two sexual harassment pieces that, while important pieces of journalism, didn't seem to me like they fit the normal parameters of the collection. Still, recommended.
• 
  Donna Luu

  Not quite as good as previous editions, which I attribute to the section on scientists, rather than science writing. Still, I'm always glad to read something by Elizabeth Kolbert and about Greenland.
• 
  Liz

  I thoroughly enjoyed the first section, Emergent Fields. The other sections, Climate Change, and The Real Life of Scientists, were hit or miss. I love collections that introduce to new authors and new fields.