The Best Science Writing Online 2012 edited by Bora Zivkovic and Jennifer Ouellette. New York, Scientific American/FSG, 2012 328 pp. ISBN: 978-0-374-53334-2
Any compilation of independent stories is going to have some unevenness in terms of style and substance. Except this one. In this case the editors deserve kudus for extracting such a high level of writing. The individual authors likewise merit praise for their own writing. Out of the fifty one articles there was not a lousy one amongst them.
Fortunately for the reader not one of the articles was written by Malcolm Gladwell or Oliver Sachs. These were written for the most part writing for smallish audiences. There are a few bigger names including Carl Zimmer, Ann Finkbeiner or PZ Myers but most were authors that were not recognizable to me...until now.
The book has an interesting history. It was born out of an effort to gather blogs, review and select the best ones and publish a book of them. In a time when there are ever advancing technologies used in place of simple paper books that one opens and holds on their lap while they read downloaded books, this effort is the reverse. It takes the blogosphere to print. It is the sixth time they have done it and the first time I was aware of it. Of course my recognition of it came from reading a blog.
Most anyone who is reading this recognizes that the internet is loaded with lies, folklore and nonsense. They also realize that it can be a very fruitful place to get information. There is a lot of personal time spent on this computer searching for information and the results are typically science pages that link to blogs. Blogs link to other blogs and so on it goes.
Recently I went to Google to find out about Oxbow Lake in Maryland. I had never heard of it but birders are referring to it regularly. In my internet searches I found a little valuable information as well as a site for ardent believers that Bigfoot resides there. While that was interesting reading it reminded me of the foolishness that can exist on the web. It also reminded me that the efforts such as the one these editors and bloggers provided some really fine work.
An avid reader of science blogs this is an indispensable book. There are 51 articles referencing the blogs as well as others. As a resource tool it is great. The editors did what good editors ought to do and that is to make their selections of the best science writing from as many fields as possible and from as many perspectives.
Blogs typically lack the sometimes strident and always conforming style of professional papers. They are not peer reviewed. In the case of this compilation they are very informative. There are a lot of chuckles to be had and a lot of new things to learn; a lot of new things to research; a lot of new blog sites to explore.
The reader can learn about all sorts of different studies that are occurring and where. They can learn about up and coming minds that are to fill the world with many new findings and many more new question. They can do it while riding the train to work as I did. It is hard to find a more delightful compendium and to know that there are five more of them that I only recently discovered and will have to test. So kudus to all those that made The Best Science Writing Online 2012 occur.
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