The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021 by Ed Yong

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021 Reviews

• 
  Trudie

  * 4.5 *
  
  Excellent- but depressing.
  Coronavirus, climate change, the decline of Monarch butterflies and a bucketload of DTT dumped in the ocean … :(
• 
  Anna

  Really more 3.5.
  
  Like all anthologies, this is a mixed bag. The highs -- I'm looking at you, Brooke Jarvis and Susan Orlean and Latria Graham and Sarah Zhang -- are very, very high. Graham's essay, about being a Black woman in the outdoors, perhaps sticks with me the most.
  
  Of course there's a lot of Covid. There has to be, for a science-focused anthology that's a snapshot of 2020. But I wish there were better signaling on the pieces themselves about publication date. There's a Wired piece early on -- "They Say Coronavirus Isn't Airborne. . . " -- that was published in March 2020 that feels so dated here in 2022. I wish there were an editor's note or something that addresses how out-of-the-box this piece was at the time. (Yong hits at this in the foreword a bit, and it's in the endnotes, but why not move that closer to the piece?) Maybe we're still too close to it, and someone who comes at this in 2025 or 2030 will feel differently.
  
  All in all, a strong collection. Though maybe avoid if you're tapped out on the coronavirus.
• 
  Jan Priddy

  This was a good one. I was simultaneously trying to read Best American Essays 2021 and Best American Short Stories 2021, neither of which impressed me. This one is smart, well-researched, well-written, and not particularly optimistic. I suggest reading the next to last one last. It concerns elder and hospice care of the dying in modern China. Decades ago when I might still have qualified as "young," I took The Sociology of Aging at the local community college where I would later teach. We are a death-denying society, I was taught, and most all Americans when asked how they want to die will say: at home and surrounded by loved ones. Even in the early '80s, this was rarely what happened.
  
  It begins with stories of the pandemic I had mostly already read (but very strong essays), DDT off the coast of Los Angeles, destructive earthworms, Monarch butterflies, floods, spaceship-wrecked communities, and global warming. Fascinating stuff.
• 
  Chloe Kirk

  “Science is not a procession of facts and breakthroughs but an erratic stumble toward gradually diminished uncertainty; peer-reviewed publications are not gospel…and scientific endeavor is plagued by all-too-human failings like hubris.” - Ed Yong, excerpt from the Introduction of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021.
  
  I’ve had this book sitting on my bedside table for the better part of 4 months. It’s one of those books that is a brilliant read, but is also VERY heavy, which meant I could only read one article (“chapter”) at a time.
  
  The premise of the book is Ed Yong, a science writer himself, compiled what he thinks are some of the best science articles written for newspapers in 2021. The articles are broken into three themes. And surprise, surprise, COVID gets its own theme all to itself. Don’t worry though, the book includes much more than just COVID stories! But they are all quite serious.
  
  Wow do these pieces really make you think about your place in society and the moral and ethical dilemmas present in science. Ed Yong did a phenomenal job in how he portrayed the science (p.s. read the introduction, I keep coming back and rereading it because it is one of the best intros I’ve ever read).
  
  The take-home message of this book: Science is political, science is not simply facts laid out before you, science has limitations.
• 
  Chris

  I've read BASNW for years and always find the collection worthwhile, even if not every entry interests me. This year was different in character than its predecessors, due to the ongoing evolution of what we know about COVID-19. While I understand that it's out of character for the series, I felt like several entries would have benefited from a short note at the beginning of the chapter, giving an update to the article's claims and/or explaining why it merited inclusion even if its claims haven't entirely held up. As it is, the volume runs the risk of preserving in amber some questions about the pandemic that are either 1) still open, or 2) were resolved since the article first was published (What's the best way to measure transmission? What constitutes an aerosol? Where did the virus come from?), and as such, it might actually mislead people who pick up BASNW 2021 thinking that inclusion in it means that all the info in whatever article has stood the test of time and is still fundamentally "true" in all respects.
• 
  Ian Rose

  What a strange year to try to summarize in a collection. There are some real jewels in here - Bathsheba Demuth, Sarah Zhang, Brooke Jarvis and Sabrina Imbler's stick out to me - and Ed Yong's intro is one of the best I've read for this kind of book. Obviously a lot of it is and had to be about the pandemic, and the format choice of loading the pure pandemic pieces into the early part of the book probably makes good sense - it just didn't work for me. Also, because of how quickly things move, there are pieces in that section that are already dated less than a year later. That's not the fault of the writers, but a few felt like odd choices for a lasting record of the year. 100% worth reading.
• 
  Brandon Pytel

  I read this collection every year, and this one was especially prescient given 2020 was the year of the pandemic that we’re still all living through. This book very much relives the early days of the pandemic — what felt like years ago but was in reality only 18 months — through its section called “contagion.”
  
  “Contagion” featured stories that brought us back to the airborne virus debate, and the problems that stem from labeling a virus one way contradicts how it is actually spread, one woman’s experience with long COVID, and the tragedy that unfolded in one nursing home in Washington state early on in the pandemic.
  
  But the section had a couple standouts. “The Difference between Feeling Safe and Being Safe” dove into our social and political response to the pandemic, and how tough it is to confront others, especially friends, about pandemic safety: “There are many ways in which people are expected not to rock the boat in American social culture.” “I’m an ER Doctor in New York. None of Us Will Ever Be the Same” was a day-by-day first-person account of the hospital wings that dealt with COVID, and the human struggle of healthcare workers seeing so much death in he face of uncertainty and shortages. And “It’s not too late to save black lives,” where a broken healthcare system exposed the disparities between white and Black people, with lacks of testing, racism, and inefficient structures defined the failure of America’s response to the pandemic for many.
  
  In “Connections” we turn to the links between science and humanity at large, headlines by a fantastic essay, “Happiness Won’t Save You,” which examined a rising star, Philip Brickman, as he explored the nature of happiness, while unable to find it in his own life as family and work crumbled before him. The narrative quickly turns from happiness studies to suicide studies, and what causes people to jump.
  
  Finally, “Consequences” largely focused on climate change, including stories about invasive earthworms, a quickly going extinct catfish, and a great LA times story about toxic leaks of DDT that also gives a history of the now infamous chemical and its role in shaping American society and history of pollution. “What the coronavirus means for climate change” links the two issues of the pandemic and climate change, the interconnectedness and similar roots, with the larger conclusion of if we can change our structures and mindset to protect Earth.
  
  “Long May They Reign” gives us an in-depth view of the successes and failures of monarch butterfly populations amid a warming world, and the complicated strategies that people employ to try to save them — including interfering with nature to protect a species that has a very small chance of surviving in the wild. And “SpaceX Is Taking over a Tiny Texas Neighborhood” is a great story on the new Cape Canaveral, which can be in people’s backyard, both lifting up a community, giving them hope and interests, but also pushing them out.
  
  Science writing is not making accessible that which is in the ivory tower of academia, but rather an expansive endeavor that seeks to connect culture, social norms, and who gets to be a scientist: “good science writing… illuminates those connections between us and the rest of the world,” writes Ed Yong in the introduction. "And I believe it can lead us toward the kind of radical introspection that we so sorely need.”
• 
  Darrin

  As you can imagine, an anthology of science and nature writing, the majority of which was published in 2020, is to a large degree, about covid-19. I had a bit of trepidation after reading Jaime Green's Forward and Ed Yong's Introduction that this would not be something I would want to read right now.
  
  I was wrong.
  
  Much of what I took in about the virus in 2020, as we all went through it, was not very in-depth and, while I tried to pay attention to the science and the recommendations of public health officials, going beyond the headlines and reading articles and pieces such as are included here just never happened.
  
  Here are some in this volume that are still being mulled over in my head:
  
  Helen Ouyang's, I'm an ER Doctor in New York. None of Us Will Ever Be the Same.
  - 3 articles in and this was the most impactful story to me, even now. The title says it all.
  Katie Englehart's, What Happened in Room 10?
  - why nursing homes were hit so hard by the virus and why they were so unprepared to deal with it
  Brooke Jarvis', The Scramble to Pluck 24 Billion Cherries in Eight Weeks
  - migrant workers, already under-served by their employers and the system and having to deal with covid
  Latria Graham's, Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream
  - being black and a naturalist and what it means to want to be outdoors in America right now
  Jiayang Fan's, The Friendship and Love Hospital
  - how do you make the idea of palliative or hospice care acceptable to a culture that deems conversations about death as taboo?
  and finally,
  Sarah Zhang's The Last Children of Down Syndrome
  - the impact of prenatal Down Syndrome screening on pregnant women in Denmark
  
  Also, significant portion of the pieces in this book are about climate change and the continuing and unceasing environmental impact of humanity on our planet. It was surprising how much covid and climate change impacted each other.
  
  Every one of these stories was interesting and enlightening and this year's anthology is one of the best I have read.
• 
  Julie Sheila

  This is a collection of really well written articles about the last year. I didn’t finish it though, as I honestly just fatigued of reading about COVID and climate change. Not after these past two weeks. Give me salacious mysteries and books about murder; they’re more uplifting.
• 
  Laura McLain

  Read in late 2022, published in 2021, containing writings from 2020, so obviously covid is very present. Best article: “I’m an ER doctor in New York, none of us will ever be the same.”
• 
  Susan

  Well, I can’t say I actually enjoyed much of this anthology, but there is some very good writing in it. It’s just that so much of it is about Covid or climate change (or both) that it is terribly bleak. Read for Read Harder 2022.
• 
  Ryan Mac

  Lots of interesting articles, even if many were COVID related and from earlier in the pandemic. It was still interesting to read about what we were thinking and looking into back then. Plenty of other great non-COVID reads.
• 
  Pia

  I had to read this in chunks, because to be frank, it literally felt emotionally taxing to read so many essays about the pandemic. The vantage point from which many of these essays were written from was from a time when we didn't yet know how things were going to play out over the next year. It felt a little bit like reading reports about a car wreck, but before knowing its true aftermath, such as the number of fatalities, the effects on survivors, etc.
  
  I can't say that I loved all of these; many of them were just so bleak, I mean rightfully so, considering the topics, but without coming together in a way beyond "we're fucked." And I mean, we are, but that's what I expect to feel when I read news. News are always missing that last beat because we don't know how things will unfold from that initial event. When I read essays, I expect to be taken on a journey and then I long for an ending note that compels me to think. Not necessarily hopeful or uplifting, sometimes the end really is, "we're fucked," but there's a thought you're left with that makes you feel inclined to take the idea further. That's how the best essays function, I think.
  
  A lot of these essays take you through a maze of conundrums, depressing facts (I'm okay with that, some topics are inherently depressing and they deserve to be written about and discussed), and then dump you out in a cul-de-sac (frustrating feeling) and I guess that was hard to read when you're already depressed and feeling like you're already in a cul-de-sac because of the friggin pandemic.
  
  However, the ones worth tracking down if you don't read the book:
  "I'm an ER Doctor in New York. None of Us Will Ever be the Same" / Helen Ouyang
  "The Scramble to Pluck 24 Billion Cherries in Eight Weeks" / Brooke Jarvis
  "Out There No One Can Hear You Scream" / Latria Graham
  "This is How We Live Now" / Emily Raboteau
  "SpaceX is Taking Over a Tiny Texas Neighborhood" / Marina Koren
  "The Friendship and Love Hospital" / Jiayang Fan
  "The Last Children of Down syndrome" / Sarah Zhang
• 
  Fern F

  Having to edit the 2021 edition of "The Best American Science and Nature Writing," which selects the best articles/essays from 2020, must have been a difficult task. Ed Yong, who has done and continues to do some fantastic writing about the COVID-19 pandemic, did a great job with a thankless task; he acknowledges the pandemic (the first section, "Contagion" is entirely about the pandemic) and many of the articles/writing in the other two sections ("Connections", "Consequences") also mention the pandemic even through they're about other subjects, especially climate change.
  
  Like with any anthology, I didn't love every piece. This is particularly true for the "Contagion" section. While some of the articles/essays are exceptional (Helen Ouyang's piece about being an ER doctor in a NYC hospital, Katie Engelhart's piece about a nursing home in Washington State, and Brooke Jarvis' piece about fruit pickers and the pandemic all stand out), others are more explainers about the pandemic or SARS-CoV-2. I wish the editors of the Best series had included information about when these pieces were written (yes, you can find the publication date on the copyright page) to make it clearer what was the state of the pandemic when the piece was published. Some people interviewed in the pieces, for instance, haven't aged well (specifically Pierre Kory, who is a major advocate for ivermectin despite the evidence from RCTs that it provides little to no benefit for hospitalized patients).
  
  The strongest section is definitely "Consequences", where the articles/essays manage to be both extremely informing, have a story, and are wonderfully written. Sarah Zhang's piece for The Atlantic about the genetic testing and Down Syndrome, which is the very last article in the anthology, is definitely the standout piece IMO: nuanced and heart-breaking, you'll be thinking about this essay and about the ethical questions it raises for days.
• 
  Tracey

  "My body has been alight for months now period from within this illness, I have come to think that Siberia and I endure more than a coincidence in temperature. Our fevers are stoked by related patterns of economic production, patterns both relatively new and seemingly inevitable. And my corporeal fire says something about how a continental fire can go unseen, offering a lesson in the implications of duration: how as a condition lingers, its origins or significance grow harder to see. Long Covid and climate change are alike in this: live ill for long enough, and the absence of health threatens to become normal." This quote encapsulates the thematic thread of this year's collection of science and nature writing. I was relieved to see it didn't all come from the pandemic (odd how much of it already seems outdated), but some of the work on climate change is just as distressing. "Happiness won't save you" is a really honest look at depression but I would skip it if you're sensitive to the subject of death by suicide. The piece on cherry picking and migratory work is really kind of amazing (and again, distressing) and the "Cancel Earthworms" piece taught me that not all earthworms are good earthworms (& they can actually be very destructive lil m-fers). Great edition of this series.
• 
  Billie Pritchett

  A dark mirror reflecting the times. An incident in Wuhan led to the spread of a virus that until today has failed to be contained because of a combination of factors: people interacting in confined or poorly ventilated spaces, where a virus is more likely to get airborne or be spread through physical contact; people not wearing medically-approved masks that would prevent the spread; travel in highly-trafficked places; climates more conducive to spread; plus plain old bad luck. We learn in this volume ("
  What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change," The New York Times) that while quarantine has already shown marked improvements to the environment due to reduced human activity, it is likely that the renewed demand for fossil fuels and a return to normalcy will lead to more harm to the environment, where we will experience even more the deleterious effects of climate change. Is there anything we can do? Not if after this we continue with business as usual or transfer our faith to private tech to save us.
• 
  Michael Miller

  You don't have to be a scientist to read these annual anthologies, written for a broad but educated readership. This iteration of Best American Science and Nature Writing might be the best ever. Naturally, many of the essays concern the coronavirus and Covid-19, but from many different angles beyond epidemiology. As always, there are some weaknesses, but the overwhelming number of very good essays make this collection worth the read.
  
  My favorites:
  
  I'm an ER Doctor in New York. None of Us Will Ever Be the Same by Helen Ouyang. Documenting the surge of patients that overwhelmed one particular NY hospital.
  
  What Happened in Room 10 by Katie Engelhart. The story of the initial outbreak at a nursing home.
  
  Rabbit Fever by Susan Orlean. A non-pandemic story about rabbit viruses.
  
  Happiness Won't Save You by Jennifer Senior. Recounting the tragic story of a researcher into the psychology of happiness and his suicide.
  
  The Last Children of Down Syndrome by Sarah Zhang. A look at the moral complications of genetic testing for certain genetic conditions.
  
• 
  Ellen

  These are always pretty interesting. I think a lot of the covid articles would have done well to have some type of preface or postscript detailing what we actually know now; and it was also notable to me that 1/6 of the articles included were from The Atlantic…and the guest editor is an editor at The Atlantic…not that they aren’t publishing many good articles, but I would have liked it to see a more diverse group of publications. Much like my feeling when I open up BASS and find that fully half of the stories were first published in The New Yorker (though usually at least the series editor there doesn’t also happen to be an editor at TNY).
• 
  Sylvia Snowe

  A retrospective on the first year of the COVID pandemic, in science. A tough book to read, since the articles were generally pretty sad. Environmental destruction. Labor exploitation. Death in a nursing home--many deaths. Tracing the initial confusion about tracking the disease, worldwide. The story of the disappearing Down Syndrome people was compelling. But I had to skip about half the book. A bit heavy for me.
• 
  Meaghan

  2.25
  
  I wasn't aware when purchasing this book with "2021" in the title that all the writings were published in 2020. This made most of the articles feel out of date or irrelevant in light of events that have happened over the course of two years. Lots of the articles grouped together made for a depressing read and what I thought would have taken me a handful of weeks to finish took me 7 months. The whole experience was exhausting and stressful.
• 
  Ron

  I never miss a Best American Science and Nature book and for the most part they are always 5 star books. The only reason I didn't give this one 5 stars is that a 1/3 of the book was devoted to articles about the pandemic. Granted it was the top story for the past two years but I was hoping for more articles about other topics. But that's just me.
• 
  Lisa

  I always love this anthology, but this one was harder to read. The "2021" best science writing is compiled (largely and maybe exclusively) from 2020 articles--which means a lot of early-Covid-era articles. Many of those were emotionally hard to read; others seem soooo outdated from the vantage of Jan/Feb 2022.
• 
  Bruce Harbison

  A very captivating group of essays and I enjoyed reading every one of them. Quite a few are about COVID, but I wasn't surprised, and I learned a lot from the insightful descriptions from many points of view. Most of the essays have a sociologic bend, but all were worthwhile to read as I like that style of writing.
• 
  Laura

  This is an excellent collection of thought-provoking essays. Often hard to read simply because the essays so clearly lay out devastating issues, such as toxic waste in the deep ocean, COVID-19 in long-term care homes, and living with climate change. A very worthwhile read.
• 
  Kody Oliver

  Some interesting coronavirus reporting here I’m glad I read. The last third on climate change is a bit draining, despite being enlightening.
  Favorites: The Last Children of Down Syndrome - Zhang; This is How We Live Now - Raboteau; What Happened in Room 10? - Engelhart