Customer Reviews

The Best American Science Writing 2000

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The best essays were actually on the history of science. There were memoirs of very little scientific interest, some pop-observations of the field of science, some decent philosophy, some medical adventure stories. Not bad, but certainly not a general survey of good science writing spread over all the sciences, so not what I was hoping for at all. I would have to browse the 2001 edition before buying; certainly not an automatic purchase based on this edition.

Although I enjoyed most of the articles, this was not exactly what I was expecting. It appears as though many of the articles came out of popular non-scientific publications (many from the N.Y. Times) and were written for a mainstream audience. Too many of them were articles of the "I'm a scientist and here's my story . . ." genre. One story was about an author's "nervous breakdown" and his decision to pursue a career in music rather than chemistry. A few were about the practice of medicine or medical research. They were interesting articles but didn't contain as much scientific information as I expected - I didn't really learn that much. I don't want to sound overly negative. I did enjoy many of the selections. However, calling this "The Best" science writing of the year is a real stretch.

If you're reading this review, I assume you have a deep interest in science. If so, you're in for a treat. *The Best American Science Writing 2000*, Edited by Gleick and Cohen, is one of the best science books in my large bookshelf. The first article in the collection, a first-person account of a dangerous medical error and an introspection on the root causes and methods to prevent such errors in the future, is absolutely wonderful. The remaining articles cover a broad spectrum of science -- physics, biology, genetics, even scientific humor -- and scientists. This book is a treasure.

In general, the BEST collections are the best of the best. First, the essays or books have been chosen for publication and then a few are picked for the collection. These are well written and interesting, covering several areas of science. I especially liked Stephen S. Hall's "Journey to the Center of My Mind" where he describes his experience of an M.R.I. of his brain while being assigned specific mental tasks. Fascinating stuff. And I loved "Lord of the Flies," excerpted from Jonathan Weiner's terrific book, TIME, LOVE, MEMORY, on Seymour Benzer's mapping the genes of the fruit fly.

Each essay in this collection takes you into the world of a specific science and the scientists who are patient enough to stay with their explorations and articulate enough to describe them to others. Some of my favorite authors are in this collection: Stephen J. Gould, Susan McCarthy, and Oliver Sachs. A treat for the mind.

~~Joan Mazza, author of DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE; DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF; WHO'S CRAZY ANYWAY? and 3 books in The Guided Journal Series with Writer's Digest Books.

There were well written articles by generalists, and good pices by the people who do the research they write about. It's also hard not to enjoy Douglas Hofstadter, even if this was a somewhat weak piece of his.

Mixed in are pieces like Susan McCarthy (from Salon) that use poor argumentative style (numerous ad hominem attacks, the use of Capital Letter sarcasm), poorly researched and develop no thesis of her own. Just scattershot bon mots and drive-by name dropping.

some good with the bad. worth an afternoon, the articles are light on actual content. pop-science.

I liked many of the pieces in this collection and detested just a few. But overall I was very disappointed since I expected essays about SCIENCE, not essays about science history, about preferring music to science, about doctors making mistakes. I'm not saying those types of essays are not interesting reading, but I am saying they're definitely not about real science. Very few of the essays would actually enhance a university science course, for instance.

Furthermore, there would seem to be a weird bias present in the selection of the essays. A lot of them are from the New Yorker or the New York Times, hardly the places to go for good science (even though I do acknowledge that when it comes to newspapers the New York Times does better than most...which are terrible in general). There are some from the Sciences, Nature, but not many from places where real science essays are published. I suspect the net was not cast far in a search. How about Science News, Discover, Analog, Scientific American? I am also sure there were more overlooked great science essays in books that were not read (a few such are included and tend to be among the best in the collection). There is even a farcical "essay" from The Onion here!

Gleick explains/justifies this in his introduction claiming to take a "big tent" approach. After reading the volume I think he failed. The tent wasn't big enough to retain enough science to validate the title.

The essays I like in particular included Lord of the Flies by Jonathan Weiner, Antarctic Dreams by Francis Halzen, Interstellar Spaceflight by Timothy Ferris, Einstein's Clocks by Peter Galison, and A Desinger Universe by Steven Weinberg.

Two stood out in my mind as particular poor examples of science writing mainly because they embrace "anti-science" in order to be "witty." Natalie Angier's New York Times article "Furs for Evening, but Cloth Was the Stone Age Standby" examines the recent realization that 20-30k year old fertility figures are shown wearing complex textiles. She may just be reporting the shoddy methodology of some current archeological practices, but she proudly announces that the old assumption that men created these statuettes is wrong based on the detailed textile carving that requires detailed knowledge of such and the cross-cultural studies of the present population of earth that indicates women create cloth, not men. I think the announcement is quite premature and just as big of an assumption. It feels like one of those essays that projects present-day sensibilities on past times, a form of political correctness that has no place in science.

Worse is "Must Dog Eat Dog" by Susan McCarthy from salon.com. McCarthy attacks sociobiological thought but displays an astounding level of ignorance about the details of the theories involved. She attacks a straw man of her own invention in which men must be homeless, starving, lecherous slobs in order to validate sociobiology. She simply cannot have read some of the thinkers she attacks and have written the piece she did. She argues from a political motivation, not from a scientific one, and I was quite shocked to see this essay included. "Witty" it may be, but science it ain't!

This is an interesting collection, but be aware of what is actually included here. Good science is going on in the world today, and people are writing about it, just usually not in the New Yorker.

It was Great