The Best American Science Writing 2011 [Paperback]

Rebecca Skloot (Author), Floyd Skloot (Author), Jesse Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0062091247 | ISBN-13: 978-0062091246 | Edition: Original

Edited by Rebecca Skloot, award-winning science writer and New York Times bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and her father, Floyd Skloot, an award-winning poet and writer, and past contributor to the series, The Best American Science Writing 2011 collects into one volume the most crucial, thought-provoking, and engaging science writing of the year. Culled from a wide variety of publications, these selections of outstanding journalism cover the full spectrum of scientific inquiry, providing a comprehensive overview of the most compelling, relevant, and exciting developments in the world of science. Provocative and engaging, The Best American Science Writing 2011 reveals just how far science has brought us—and where it is headed next.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The list of impressive guest editors over the years—including Oliver Sacks, James Gleick, Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman—is joined this year by a father and daughter... Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) teams with her father Floyd, a past contributor to the series…Literate, nontechnical popular science.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“The perfect gateway to the wider world of modern science in all its variety and wonder. The writing is engaging and perfectly suited to readers of any interest level.... The Best American Science Writing 2011 provides a brilliantly brief glimpse into that fascinating world.” (San Francisco Book Review )

“By drawing from a wide variety of sources, mainstream (The New York Times, Playboy, Vanity Fair) and niche (Discover, Columbia Journalism Review, and science blogs), the [2011] anthology both provokes and inspires.” (Publishers Weekly )

About the Author

Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. Her debut book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, became an instant New York Times bestseller. It was chosen as a best book of 2010 by more than sixty major media outlets, and is being adapted into an HBO film by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball.

Floyd Skloot is a writer of creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction. He has received three Pushcart Prizes and a PEN USA Literary Award, among other honors. He is the author of seventeen books, and his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Beverly Hallberg.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; Original edition (September 27, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062091247
• ISBN-13: 978-0062091246
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Science & Math > Essays & Commentary
  • #44 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Collections & Readers

More About the Author

Floyd Skloot is a creative nonfiction writer, poet, and fiction writer whose work has received three Pushcart Prizes, a Pen USA Literary Award, two Pacific NW Book Awards, an Independent Publishers Book Award, and two Oregon Book Awards. His writing has appeared in such distinguished magazines as The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Poetry, American Scholar, Georgia Review, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, Hudson Review, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and Creative Nonfiction. His seventeen books include the memoirs In the Shadow of Memory (University of Nebraska Press, 2003), A World of Light (University of Nebraska Press, 2005), and The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life (University of Nebraska Press, 2008); the poetry collections Approximately Paradise (Tupelo Press, 2005), The End of Dreams (Louisiana State University Press, 2006), Selected Poems: 1970-2005 (Tupelo Press, 2008), and The Snow's Music (Louisiana State University Press, 2008); and the novels Summer Blue (Story Line Press, 1994) and Patient 002 (Rager Media, 2007).

His newest books include his first collection of short stories, Cream of Kohlrabi (Tupelo Press, 2011), and a forthcoming collection of poems, Close Reading (Tupelo Press, 2013).

He co-edited The Best American Science Writing 2011 (HarperCollins/Ecco Press) with his daughter, Rebecca Skloot.

He contributes book reviews to the New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Review, Sewanee Review, Notre Dame Review and other publications, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Floyd has taught at the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers Conference at Goucher College, the Paris Writers Workshop, and elsewhere.

He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Beverly Hallberg, a weaver and landscape painter, whose light-filled works cross between impressionistic and abstracted styles. Her paintings grace the covers of Floyd's books, Approximately Paradise, The End of Dreams, Selected Poems: 1970-2005, and The Snow's Music. See her work at www.beverlyhallberg.com.

Floyd's daughter, Rebecca Skloot, is the bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown Books, 2010), winner of the Heartland Prize and Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and named Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com. Visit her website at www.rebeccaskloot.com.

Skloot is represented by Andrew Blauner at Blauner Books Literary Agency. Contact him at: [e-mail].

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Little Fluffy But Good, October 28, 2011

By 

The Spinozanator "Spinozanator" (Harlingen, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Best American Science Writing 2011 (Paperback)

I look forward to reading and reviewing this fine series every year. Science journalists have a harder time finding places to publish these days, hard science is less available, and the articles are getting fluffier. That's not really OK with me but it is what it is - and it reflects the scientific literacy of most US readers and is thus inevitable. Among the gems in this year's selections are the following:

*One of my favorites - "What Broke My Father's Heart" by Butler: Good article about end of life issues - that can be less like a battle and more like a massacre. There's nothing like the profit motive to keep people from being allowed to die in peace.

*One of my favorites - "Hot Air" by Homans: The "dumbing down" of science has infected our local TV weathermen. They enjoy a large respect factor from the public, sometimes being looked at as science ambassadors in their communities. Unfortunately, they may not know much science outside their immediate field - short-term prediction of weather - and have been known to misrepresent climate change issues.

"The Singularity" by Zimmer: Why Artificial Intelligence will not replace the human brain - but there are certainly technologies that might enhance it. Zimmer is a great science writer and does justice to this large subject.

"BP's Deep Secrets" by Whitty: In depth study of the long term environmental impacts of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and much about the physiology of the deep.

"The Estrogen Dilemma" by Gorney: Hormone replacement therapy may carry a few risks but the symptoms of menopause can be tough to deal with. Good example of why epidemiological studies are so hard to interpret. The variables and intricacies are endless.

"Cary in the Sky With Diamonds" by Beauchamp and Balaban: A couple of psychiatrists in Beverly Hills in the late fifties had long sessions with their famous patients starting with little blue pills - an adjunct to their psychotherapy. "Look" magazine gave a big thumbs up to the new wonder drug and Cary Grant swore LSD made him a new man.

"The Longest Home Run Ever" by Brenkus: The Physics of the game. Mickey Mantle hit the longest home run on record in 1953 - 565 feet. In neurotic detail our author calculates how far the ideal batter could hit the ideal pitch under ideal circumstances.

*My favorite - "Nature's Spoils" by Burkhard Bilger: A delightful romp through an alternative lifestyle as you rediscover the symbiotic relationship between humankind and bacteria. The author takes us from "urban squatters" who are not above dumpster diving to homesteaders living on communes who prefer raw milk and roadkill. Be prepared to "read through" some of the earthier parts of this article while our author drives home the idea that "Modern hygiene has prevented countless colds, fevers, and other ailments, but its central premise is hopelessly outdated. The human body isn't besieged: it's saturated - infused with microbial life at every level."

*My least favorite - "The Mess He Made" by Rosenwald: The office a**hole used to be just a jerk but nowadays he has a psychiatric diagnosis. Likewise, in this article, the author tries to make his pathological messiness into something more than laziness and unwillingness to change bad habits. I can't imagine what this is doing in a collection of science essays. Another article or two like this one and I'd have had to downgrade the book's rating.

"Professor Tracks Injuries With Aim of Prevention" by Schwarz: "Fred Mueller has almost singlehandedly run the National Center For Catastrophic Injury Research at the University of North Carolina for 30 years, logging and analyzing more than 1,000 fatal, paralytic, or other ghastly injuries in sports from peewees to the pros. His work has repeatedly improved safety for young athletes by identifying patterns that lead to changes in rules, field dimensions, and more."

"The Trouble With Scientists" by Blum: Scientists have historically been loath to engage the general public. They have even, at times, discriminated against certain of their colleagues (Carl Sagan, for example) who have tried to make science more available. That is changing and the author praises those scientists who blog, speak, or otherwise engage the general public - a public that is a bit antiscience these days and certainly needs to be more attuned to the scientific method that helped bring humanity out of the dark ages.

*One of my favorites - "The Data Trail" by Folger - Dave Bertelsen has been hiking in the Sonora desert for nearly 30 years and taking notes - as a hobby. After a talk by climatologist Michael Crimmins in Tuscon, Bertelsen approached him and said, "I have a big data set - I don't know if you'd be interested." Crimmins and his wife, an ecologist, were blown away by his data. His mile-by-mile notes are now being used by scientists at the University of Tuscon to study how global warming has changed the desert.

"Earth on Fire" by Ohlson: People have reported fires in coal beds for thousands of years. Ever since the industrial revolution, numbers of smoldering coal beds have increased dramatically around the world. The coal bed fire was so bad in (now ghosttown) Centralia, Pennsylvania that Congress gave Pennsylvania $42 million to relocate all its citizens.

"A Deadly Misdiagnosis" by Specter: "While hardly a threat in the West, tuberculosis is still a killer in the developing world." A new test is available to expedite diagnosis but it might not be used in India where the disease is a huge problem. Doctors in India make so much of their money using ineffective methods of diagnosis and treatment, they'd rather keep the status quo.

That's 14 out of 21 - I think you get the idea. This is a great read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars overwhelming slant toward health and life science, January 14, 2012

By 

Benjamin Crowell - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Science Writing 2011 (Paperback)

Skloot is the author of a fascinating book about Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer became an immortal cell line. That book showed her strengths (telling personal stories and depicting the human dimension of science) and her area of comfort (health and the life sciences). Unfortunately, Skloot stays in her comfort zone as editor of this installment in what is usually an excellent series. Although the title refers to an unqualified "Science," the contents have an overwhelming slant toward health and the life science. There is virtually nothing here about the physical sciences.

3.0 out of 5 stars A great series...but, February 13, 2012

By 

E. Mineart (Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Science Writing 2011 (Paperback)

Count me among the reviewers who found this volume a little underwhelming. Rare is the essay in a Best American Science Writing volume that I skip, but I found myself skipping many of the selected works.

"What Broke My Father's Heart" was the stand out essay and a fantastic selection.

If you are reading this review in September of 2012 I would just wait until the next volume is released.