Customer Reviews

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006

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Every year I eagerly anticipate the publication of another edition of this fine series - and its competitor, the "Best of American Science Writing." Series Editor Tim Folger painstakingly selected 100 articles from American periodicals early this year, all of which attest to the intrigue of science. Sometimes the scientific method is seen to be, as he puts it, "an intensely human endeavor, with nobility and self-sacrifice commingling with self-doubt, ambition, swollen egos, and sometimes outright fraud...Even though the intellectual brawls never stop, charlatans are invariably exposed...[yielding] an understanding of reality impossible to achieve by any other means."

This year's guest editor, physicist Brian Greene, selected the final 25 essays. He suggests that when science writing is done well, it lowers the historical barriers between science and the humanities: "Like master chefs, the best science writers pare away all but the most succulent material, trimming details essential to the researcher that would only be a distraction to the reader."

Natalie Angier: A lesson on the cultural and linguistic analysis of swearing - an underestimated form of anger management. Swearing is present in every culture - men consistently cursing more than women "unless said women are in a sorority."

Drake Bennett: The story of Alexander Shulgin, an American chemist who has spent his life legally synthesizing hundreds of psychedelic compounds. On the door of his lab is a sign that reads, "This is a research facility that is known to and authorized by the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, all San Francisco DEA Personnel, and the State and Federal EPA Authorities," with phone numbers. He posted the sign after the second raid (the agencies later apologized).

Larry Cahill: Within the past ten years, research has revealed an astonishing array of structural, chemical, and functional variations between the brains of males and females - many of them existing at birth. The assumption that researchers can study one sex and apply findings to both is no longer an option.

Michael Chorost: This article is one of my favorites. The author was born almost deaf and didn't learn to talk until he got hearing aids at age three and a half. At age 15 he somehow got hooked on the "Bolero," a famous orchestral piece known for its dynamic crescendos. From that time on, he judged each new hearing aid by listening to his favorite rendition of "Bolero." Then for unexplained reasons he became completely deaf at age 38. The story of how a cochlear implant brought back his hearing ranges through engineering, computer science, physics, ear physiology, and the continued use of "Bolero."

Daniel Dennett: Explains eloquently how no intelligent-design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation for evolution. "You haven't explained everything yet" is not a competing hypothesis.

Frans de Waal: Humans descended from group-living, highly social primates. Like them, we are highly motivated to fit in with those we live and work with. He calls "Behavioral economics" an evolutionary explanation for why we interact as we do - embracing the golden rule not accidentally, but as a result of our history as co-operative apes.

David Dobbs: Nothing reveals errors like an autopsy. The author quotes studies showing that when an autopsy was done, 25% - 40% of the time the cause of death was not correctly diagnosed. Unfortunately, forces stacking up against the autopsy - regulatory, economic, and cultural - overcome attempts to revive it.

Mark Dowie: Another of my favorites. A small group of leaders representing indigenous tribes from all over the world have a pneumonic for their biggest enemy - BINGO. This stands for Big International Nongovernmental Conservation Organizations. Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and others - are well-funded and have been paying poor governments to establish national parks as fast as they can. Indigenous people always live in these locations, are almost always left out of the negotiations, and are almost always robbed of their land and their culture. This lamentable outcome is frequently barely discernable behind a smoke screen of slick promotion.

John Hockenberry: A fascinating survey of US soldiers in Iraq whose hobby is blogging about the war. Nearly all of the contributing bloggers say the current system of limited restrictions can't possibly last. The policies are currently under Pentagon review.

John Horgan: Remember the dramatic 1963 photograph depicting Jose Delgado calmly standing in the path of a charging bull? With a hand-held transmitter, Delgado stopped the bull by stimulating electrodes in key areas of the bull's brain. This is the dynamic story of his field in the 60's and its rebirth in the 21st century.

Gordon Kane: Another favorite of mine, but qualified* - the physics-impaired reader may have trouble. This is a concise summary of the particles of the Standard Model and how the Higgs field gives them mass - complete with teasers about dark matter, string theory, and the "Theory of Everything."

That's a paragraph about each of the first 11 essays out of 25. To keep this review from being any longer, I'll do only one more - another favorite:

Paul Raffaele - Primitive tribes that barely know we exist live deep in the Amazon, not far removed from the stone age. Sydney Possuelo represents the Brazilian government in protecting these indigenous people and their land from the "whites" (anyone else), and has made first contact with seven different tribes. The author spends a dangerous week with Possuelo visiting the Korubo tribe, otherwise known as the headbashers. Possuelo's advise: "Be on your guard at all times when we're with them, because they're unpredictable and very violent."

The remaining 13 essays are just as invigorating as these. Some readers will say there's too much fluff - others will side-step the hard science, but any critical thinker from any field will find many articles they love. Top Notch, as usual.

This is a series I particularly look forward to every year for the thought-provoking glimpses it provides into the role science and technology play in our daily lives and future prospects, from the downside of increasing longevity and the dangers of decreasing autopsies to the evolutionary role of swearing and the scary consequences of indiscriminate antibiotics use.

John Hockenberry has a particularly fascinating piece on military blogs - how the immediacy of the technology affects our view of war and how little the brass knows about how to handle it. What makes this article so riveting is his ability to capture the diverse personalities and strong views of the bloggers and the technology's tantalizing implications for the future.

There are portraits of quirky people doing unusual things, like Kevin Krajick's profile of Arthur Aufderheide who dissects mummies and preserves their tissues for research that can tell us much about how they lived.

And Drake Bennett's visit with "Dr. Ecstasy," Alexander Shulgin, a man who has devoted his life to the study of hallucinogenics. The inventor of Ecstasy (among many other illegal substances), and a man of 4,000 psychedelic experiences, Shulgin was on the government payroll until he decided to publish a how-to book.

The eloquent Oliver Sacks remembers DNA's Francis Crick and Crick's influence on his own career, and John Horgan profiles neuroscientist and brain chip pioneer Jose Delgado whose impressive achievements have been intentionally forgotten.

Since Greene is a physicist ("The Elegant Universe") there are precise and elegant (that is, comprehensible) pieces on time travel (Dennis Overbye), gravity (Juan Maldacena) mass (Gordon Kane), and NASA's X-ray Observatory (Robert Kunzig). There are also articles on Earthquake prediction (Kevin Krajick), indigenous people displaced by conservationists (Mark Dowie), and animal deal making (Frans B.M. De Waal).

One of the book's most moving and fascinating articles is Michael Chorost's essay on his cochlear implant and his pursuit of music. Mostly deaf from birth, he became profoundly deaf as an adult. While the implant allowed him to hear speech, his enjoyment of Ravel's "Bolero," had gone. Working to regain this pleasure he initiates us into mysteries of deafness, the technology of cochlear implants and the nature of music.

Many pieces will spur readers to further reading, depending on their interests, and all are elegantly written and of wide appeal. If you read only one "Best of" book this year, make it this one.

-- Portsmouth Herald

I was struck by something Brian Greene says in the intro to this
enjoyable book: more or less, that it's generally acceptable for
people with degrees in the humanities not to know anything about science;
and that that's not good for us as a scientifically competitive country.

My three favorite articles: "Dr. Ecstasy", "His Brain, Her Brain",
and "Remembering Francis Crick", by Oliver Sacks. That last looks like a
sedate title, but this coverage of the correspondence between
Sacks and Crick, who discovered the double-helix of DNA, is not only a great adventure; but if you haven't read Oliver Sacks before, it is a good,
broad overview of what his writing is about. I've read some Sacks books, but this made me want to read all the rest.

As usual with this series, I learned a lot in the 2006 edition.

In "Dr. Ecstasy" I learned about Alexander Shulgin who, in a Frankensteinian laboratory in his home in CA, has single-handily created over 200 psychedelic compounds, including ecstasy. In "My Bionic Quest for Bolero" a deaf man describes his quest to restore his hearing with cutting edge "bionic" ear implants (this article became a book: Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World). In "Show Me the Science", the ever fascinating Daniel C. Dennett shakes his head at the anti-science movements and their techniques, notably the "intelligent design" crowd, but just as easily applicable to global warming deniers, Holocaust deniers and anyone with a political agenda that is at odds with science. In "Buried Answers" I learned about the business of autopsy and how important they are and how rarely they are performed these days.

"Conservation Refugees" is probably the most important article of the book. Mark Dowie introduces the concept and term "conservation refugee" and it since become more commonly used with this article a sort of genesis. Conservation refugees are (usually) native people who have been oppressed or expelled from their traditional lands after those lands have been put into conservation, usually by one of the big NGO's such as the World Wildlife Fund or Conservation International. The result is the growing recognition that "wild" lands can not be left barren of people, that humans play an integral part of nature.

"The Mummy Doctor" is a great human interest story of the worlds leading expert on the dissection of mummies. The graphic descriptions of organs like cardboard and smells are priceless. In "Out of Time" I went on a journey into the Amazon and lived with a small band of dangerous head-hunters with little contact with the outside world. In "Buried Suns" I learned about the underground nuclear testing in Nevada.

All in all a fine edition to an excellent series.

I read the best american series every year, in fact, with science and nature writing, I've been with since the beginning. And you can always count on BASNW to be good. It's always at the layman's level, so it can be understood and it is a great way for us nonacademics and nonscientist to keep up with the latest advances in science and technology. This year's edition is edited by physicist Brian Greene, which almost worried me, because I prefer life and earth science essays over the harder sciences and technology. But Greene is a popular science writer and he collects a great group of essays, few of which covered his area of expertise.

If you, like me, appreciate science writing, but don't have time to keep up with all the interesting news stories or articles - this is the series for you. Every year I look forward to best of Science and Nature, and best of Science writing. Every article I've read in these two series have been 1) exceedingly well written; 2) fascinating.

The editors do an incredible job of selecting the (as the title would suggest) Best articles each year. This series is not to be missed if you like keeping abreast of current scientific discoveries and thinking.

I am finding great joy in reading the "Best American Series". I have 3 years worth of science and nature writing, and one of the non-required reading series. Living deep in rural america, I do not have opportunity nor exposure to the publications that are chosen for the series. By reading the synopsis, I can be exposed to many points of view, and original voices. Cannot wait for the next year to come out.

This was given to me as a gift and I kept coming back to it. It includes so many different fields, authors and styles of writing that you can't get bored. Almost every essay is excellent, and if you get tired of one the next one will be amazing. One minute it's string theory and the next it's linguistics and the next biology. It's hard to keep up with all that's going on in the science community but this is a great way to hear some of the stories and learn about a broad range of great science. Thoughtful but hardly too technical.

I liked this collection so much that I bought the 2005 and 2004 collections. 2005 was not as interesting to me, a lot more focused on policy and less thrilling as a whole, though some gems in there. 2004 was somewhere between the quality of 2006 and 2005. A different guest editor each year... looking forward to the next one. Gave 2006 to a friend as a must-read. The most interesting work I've read in some time. Thanks Mr Green and the many authors.