The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 (Paperback)

by Jerome Groopman (Editor), Tim Folger (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Groopman (How Doctors Think) has collected a wide range of articles, covering futurology to forensics, for this sparkling entry in Tim Folger's annual series. In "Our Biotech Future," Freeman Dyson claims that "the century of biology" is upon us, when biotechnology follows the path of the computer industry, giving "the tools of genetic engineering" to the average breeder of animals or plants. In a New Yorker article, Jeffrey Toobin compares forensic experts who actually give testimony in court to the characters in television's C.S.I. series. Christopher Conselice, in "The Universe's Invisible Hand," discusses how the 1998 discovery of "so-called dark energy" in the universe has led some scientists to create models predicting that its evolution might "rip apart" existing galaxies. Robin Marantz Henig warns in "Our Silver-Coated Future" that there may be serious unforeseen risks in unchecked use of nanotechnology, especially the most commonly used, "nanosilver," an "antimicrobial" added to many consumer products. Though prolific readers may argue over the "best" moniker, each piece more than exceeds Groopman's standards ("novel and surprising arguments, protagonists who articulate their themes in clear, cogent voices, and vivid cinema"), making this a delight for any fan of popular science.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
In the latest volume in this outstanding series, doctor and medical researcher Jerome Groopman serves as guest editor and seeks to present “surprising and significant connections.” The result is thoroughly eclectic, ranging from a look at the determined inventor of the “gravity radio” to a visit with an interpreter seeking to literally untangle the Incan language. Communication is also the focal point in a sprawling article on the Piraha people and their long interaction with Christian missionaries. Groopman has selected profiles of innovators pushing the boundaries of research in all sorts of unexpected ways, including the operator of a hybrid animal zoo, and sharing a yearning to reach beyond the accepted order. One memorable quote can stand as the volume’s credo. In “Science and Islam in Conflict,” Todd Pitock pays tribute to Jordan’s Prince El Hassan bin Talal and writes, “Vision is not an individual thing. It’s a collaboration.” This can also be read as a broad reminder of what people who value scientific inquiry must do—band together—as the American war on science continues its disastrous advance. --Colleen Mondor --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (October 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618834478
• ISBN-13: 978-0618834471
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #107,120 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Collection of Scientific Articles, October 13, 2008

By	The Spinozanator (Waco, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Not much hard science, but every essay is compelling reading - a good way to bring your scientific side up to date yearly. I have not missed one in the entire series and every year I end up thinking the new edition is the best ever. This year's editor, Jerome Groopman, made the final selections.

John Cohen - You won't find hybrids in American zoos where purebreds are the rule but in alternate sites it's a different story. Whether by the natural method, artificial insemination, or by techniques that allow scientists to manipulate DNA, more are turning up more every year - zorses, wholphins, tigons, beefaloes, lepjags, zonkeys, camas, bonanzees, and pizzly bears. Some of them breed and appear more fit than either parent. I won't even mention the humanzees.

John Colapinto - *among my favorites - The Piraha tribe of Brazil has a tonal and melodic language unrelated to any other. According to linguist Dan Everett, who has lived with them on and off for 25 years, the language also doesn't exhibit "recursion," a requirement of modern linguistic theory. Recursion is an "idea within an idea" - example: John's hat, which was red, one of several possible colors...and so on. Chomsky's dominant theory of linguistics says Everett just isn't looking hard enough but Chomsky's fellow linguists can't find the recursion either. The Piraha have no religion, live in the here and now, and are not the least bit interested in anything outside their culture.

Christopher Conselice - A thorough discussion of dark energy, the substance that makes up the bulk of the universe. Get ready for some major tweaking in your understanding of cosmology. This is one of the hard science articles.

Gareth Cook - Yes, the Incas did too know how to write. They just did it with bundles of knotted strings called khipu, but deciphering the language confounds computer and language specialists. We may need another Rosetta Stone.

C. Josh Donlan - Why not restore the Pleistocene with current wild animals from around the world - large animals similar to many that went extinct in the not-too-distant past. Let's bring the excitement of the African safari to the US in vast and securely fenced ecological history parks.

Freeman Dyson - *another of my favorites - As the 20th century was dominated by physics, the 21st will be dominated by biology. Future generations reared on biotech games and toys will not face resistance to the use of genetic manipulation. If followed down its most utopian path, biotechnology could make rural poverty disappear.

Steve Featherston - The military battleground of the future will be loaded with unmanned weapons of all shapes, sizes, and capabilities. "Within our lifetime, robots will give us the ability to wage war without committing ourselves to the human cost."

Michael Finkel - *another of my favorites, about malaria. It is written in prose reminiscent of great literature: "It begins with a bite, a painless bite. The mosquito comes in the night, alights on an exposed patch of flesh, and assumes the hunched, head-lowered posture of a sprinter in the starting blocks. Then she plunges her stiletto mouthparts into the skin..."

James Geary - The assassination of Alexander Litvenenko, apparently by the successor agency to the Russian KGB, with a tiny lethal dose of polonium. "The former Soviet Union has always been one of the world's premier think tanks for exotic assassination methods."

Robin Marantz Henig - Nanotechnology is coming with wild promises for the future. For example, "a new power grid based on carbon nanotubes, which can carry up to a thousand times as much electricity as copper wiring without throwing off heat, and solar energy farms that use thin, cheap, flexible nano-engineered solar panels." A nanometer is defined as a billionth of a meter. At those sizes, things act differently. Federal agencies wrangle with whose responsibility it is to deal with an essentially unregulated industry. None have obvious jurisdiction over nanomaterials.

Edward Hoagland - Hands down, this essay about the human nightmare in Africa is the saddest one in the book. Much of the continent is endemic in poverty, genocide, and disease; despite the quietly heroic efforts of the author and others like him.

Olivia Judson - A fascinating and fairly comprehensive study of how altruism evolved. Almost as an afterthought, the author mentions Williams syndrome. These individuals are born missing a small segment of chromosome #7, a segment that makes about 20 proteins the brain uses. People with this syndrome "are typically terrible with numbers but good with words...and they are incautiously friendly and nice - and unafraid of strangers."

Walter Kirn - Why multitasking can't be a good thing. This article strikes at the heart of stimulus overload.

Andrew Lawler - There is a growing view among scholars that the early Christian community was very diverse during the first two centuries, before the consolidation brought about by Constantine. Biblical archeology buffs will like this essay.

Jon Mooallem - Gravity is a more mysterious force than you can imagine. Newton called it "so great an absurdity." Einstein coined the phrase "spookey action at a distance" for quantum entanglement, but it could just as easily have applied to gravity. This is a jewel for theoretical physics fans and is another hard science offering.

Ian Parker - *another favorite - When conflict threatens a hippy-like commune of bonobos, the females go into seduction mode. Soon the orgy begins and the range of sexual behaviors mirrors anything you can imagine humans doing - or is that just what happens when bonobos are studied in captivity? This author shows that bonobos are extremely difficult to study in the wild. They move on immediately when their space is breached and their home-turf is so dense with vegetation, you can't observe them with binoculars. He has evidence they can behave just as ferociously as chimps.

Todd Pittock - "A common device of Islamic science is to cite certain examples of how the Koran anticipated modern science intuiting hard facts without modern equipment or technology." Legitimate scientists in many Islamic countries have to keep a low profile when their science contradicts the Koran.

David Quammen - Many sporadic epidemics kill a few hundred people and then just disappear but the viruses are not really gone. They are hiding in a reservoir host that frequently turns out to be a bat.

Ron Rosenbaum - *another favorite - How a whole industry of volunteers are conning the con artists - tricking Nigerian internet scammers to, for example, buy expensive plane tickets to show up at a non-existent bank to collect their money. The more elaborate the counter-scam, the more prestige is earned on an "anti-scammer trophy-room" website.

Oliver Sacks - *another favorite - Tony Cicoria was struck by lightning. He changed into a more spiritual person - and with an unexplained new obsession for classical music. At the age of 42 he became an accomplished pianist. Salimah M. had a benign brain tumor removed. Afterwards, her demeanor changed from reserved and self-absorbed to warm and popular - keenly sympathetic and interested in the lives and feelings of her co-workers. Sacks feels that "even the most exalted states of mind - the most extraordinary transformations - must have some physical basis or at least some physiological correlate in neural activity." This reminds me of Williams syndrome, mentioned in the article by Olivia Judson.

Michael Specter - Humans have descended not only from earlier primates, but also from viruses. Our genome is littered with fragments of retroviruses. Careful DNA study provides thousands of examples of genetic fossils that leave undeniable evidence of evolution.

Jeffrey Toobin - "Fictional criminalists speak with a certainty that their real-life counterparts do not." The forensic job in real life is a lot messier with the only gold standard being DNA.

Andreas Von Bubnoff - Statisticians and epidemiologists don't like each other. The former say the latter play too fast and loose with the data. The latter say their methods are valid. What we end up seeing in the news is contradictory information about, for example, whether coffee causes or prevents colon cancer.

Florence Williams - *another favorite of mine - The Danish island of Samso, population 4200, entered a contest proposing how they would achieve energy independence. After they won, they took the grant money and created a remarkable display of solar, wind, and biotechnology. They are energy independent and sell their excess back to the energy grid in Denmark. Samso is the most carbon-negative settlement of its size on earth.

Curl up a chair and treat yourself to this fantastic collection. I picked and chose what I wanted to read first. My only disappointment is that the book wasn't longer.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stellar collection, November 13, 2008

By	David M. Giltinan (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This anthology, edited by Jerome Groopman, is exactly what one would hope for - a wide-ranging collection of well-written, fascinating articles which will expand the reader's horizons and are fun to read. Groopman's anthology benefits from his having cast a very broad net, as well as from the depth of his intellectual curiosity. In his introduction, he outlines his criteria for inclusion:

"the articles ... have novel and surprising arguments, protagonists who articulate their themes in clear, cogent voices, and vivid cinema. They are not verbose or tangential. They are filled with simple declarative sentences. ... I suspect none of the articles was easy to write. Each shows a depth of thought and reporting that takes time and considerable effort."

These target criteria show that we are in good hands - the only remaining question is whether they are actually achieved for the pieces included in the anthology. The answer is a resounding yes - with very few exceptions (only Freeman Dyson's piece on biotechnology and Michael Specter's article on retroviruses seemed fuzzy to me) the writing is crisp and clear, and the subject material is interesting and thought-provoking. That is, in my estimation, Dr Groopman's batting average is 22 excellent pieces of 24 (and your view on the Dyson and Specter pieces may differ). Which far exceeds the norm for this kind of anthology.

Here is a partial list of the articles included:
Jon Cohen: "Zonkeys are pretty much my favorite animal"
John Colapinto: "The Interpreter" (the linguistic anomaly represented by the Piraha language)
Robin Marantz Henig: "Our silver-coated future" (safety assessment of nanotechnology)
Michael Finkel: "Malaria: Stopping a Global Killer"
Olivia Judson: "The Selfless Gene"
Todd Pitock: "Science and Islam in Conflict"
Ron Rosenbaum: "How to Trick an Online Scammer into Carving a Computer out of Wood"
Ian Parker: "Swingers" (mating habits of bonobos)
Jeffrey Toobin: "The CSI effect" (forensics: TV versus reality)

Other articles cover topics as diverse as dark matter, "spooky action at a distance", khipu knots of the Incas, the coming robot army, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko by polonium-210, the Hendra virus, difficulties in the interpretation of epidemiological studies, wind energy, and the requisite Oliver Sacks case study (musicophilia).

This is an excellent, thought-provoking collection. I highly recommend it.

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking accessible collection, June 21, 2009

By	Vance "Klaatu" - See all my reviews

It is always fun for a layman and a writer doing research or simply mining for ideas to read through these Best of anthologies. This one was not a disappointment. The writing was clear and dynamic, sometimes dramatic, right from the opening article, a neat little piece about hybrid animals by Jon Cohen, "Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animals." This one gave me an idea for a short story that I am already drafting. Also interesting Oliver Sachs' "A Bolt From the Blue," kept me turning the pages, as did several others. In fact, there were not many clunkers here.