The Best American Science Writing

You don't even have to be an avid science reader to enjoy the 21 well-written science stories contained in this book. I enjoy reading scientific articles in science publications, but admit that they can be dry at times. Science and technical writing can also be choppy, full of jargon, and difficult to read. This is not the case with this book. The writing flows smoothly making the reading simple and enjoyable. The other aspect that I like about The Best American Science Writing 2006 is that I learn new information about our environment. Topics covered in the book are current and relevant to our lives. The article, Climbing in the Redwoods by Richard Preston, introduces the reader to a sub-environment within our environment that only a handful of people could ever experience themselves. In The Coming Death Shortage, Charles Mann discusses the potential results of our ever-increasing lifespans. At the retail price of $14.95, this book is a bargain. You would pay much more if you were buying these articles individually in magazines.

The Best American Science Writing shares a quality with books of a similar name but dated in 2004 and 2005. They are all very interesting! Richard Feynman wrote QED, in part, because he wanted to write a series of lectures that would make quantum electrodynamics understandable to his friend, Alix Mautner. I think Mautner would appreciate these books as well. In this collection, my favorites include "Earth Without People," "The Curse of Akkad," "Obesity: An Overblown Epidemic?," "Nature's Bioterrorist," "What Makes People Gay?," "Clone Your Troubles Away," "The Coming Death Shortage," "Devolution," "Mighty White of You," and "Is God an Accident?" "The Tangle" was a particularly interesting, and tricky, overview of the scientific process. Articles average about 20 pages, so it is relatively easy to pick this book up and enjoy an article, coming back to the others at another time. I've loaned my copy to others just so they could read one article. I await the next book in this series!

I get Best American books every year at this time, and I really look forward to them. My favorite is Non-Required Reading, but I would have to say Science Writing is usually a close second. In past volumes I had to skip over certain articles, specifically those within the field of physics. This was the first time I read them all. In fact, I even re-read one that I first saw earlier this year in The New Yorker. I thought that a good way to show my appreciation for this collection would be to share some of the best quotations: "H.L. Mencken once said that for every complex problem there is a simple solution - and it's wrong." This comes from Gibbs' "Obesity." It isn't actually Gibbs' idea, but it's well-placed and I have used it many times in the past few weeks. "The rational public-health approach would be to vaccinate those who would first be exposed [to avian flu] - heal-care workers and people in the region where an epidemic has struck. That is unlikely to happen." This is from Specter's "Nature's Bioterrorist," and it illustrates how power-hungry egotists will cause most of the human race to die needlessly in the future. (Possibly.) "The genotype may be identical in a clone, but it gets expressed differently." This is from Quammen's "Clone Your Troubles Away." I like it because I think it's hilarious to think of people spending millions on a spare pet or child and getting an entirely unexpected being. Mann's "The Coming Death Shortage" inspired me to write science-fiction stories. It interests me to think of a world in which "the 'becalmed temperament' of old people" is at war with "the legions of youth - 'the protagonists...of protest, instability, reform, and revolution.'" Orr, in "Devolution," gives a wonderful analogy for accidental natural selection: "When you're looking at a bustling urban street...you probably can't tell which shop went into business first. This is partly because many businesses now depend on one another and partly because new shops trigger changes in old ones..." "Because we no longer read mythological stories, we no longer appreciate their immense power. We find ourselves stunned at how something so many deeply long to be true will simply assemble itself into fact right before our eyes." Hitt, in "Mighty White of You," has pretty much discredited much of anthropology. Correct me if you get a different intepretation here. "...the real problem with natural selection is that it makes no intuitive sense. It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right to us." This is from Bloom's "Is God an Accident?" It makes the case that we simply cannot conceive (many of us) that things are not created by someone. "Among all members of our species, the chain reaction of contagious yawning synchronizes the behavioral as well as the physiological state of our tribe. Yawning is a reminder that ancient and unconsious behavior lurks beneath the veneer of our culture, rat

All the "Best American..." books are good because they are collections of the best writing, usually magazine writing, done in the year indicated. The series titles include Best American Science Writing, Best American Science and Nature Writing, Best American Essays, Best American Sports Writing, Best American Short Stories, even Best American Sex Writing. The essay choices are up to the person--always an illustrious figure, an expert--who edits each volume. For the year 2006 we have Dr. Atul Gawande, a famous surgeon and author of Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (2002). Previous editors of the "Best...Science..." series have been James Gleick (2000), Timothy Ferris (2001), Matt Ridley (2002), Oliver Sacks (2003), Dava Sobel (2004), and Alan Lightman (2005). I have read all or part of the entire series beginning in 2000, and while every collection has been interesting, even fascinating, this year's collection is particularly good. I say this because Gawande, in keeping close to his area of expertise, has chosen articles mainly in the fields of biology, medicine, computers and information theory, and evolution, and these happen to be fields that especially interest me. The emphasis in this volume then is on the so-called "soft" sciences rather than the "hard" ones, although not exclusively so. Moreover, Gawande has managed to find essays that are especially well-written. I was a bit dazzled at the wordsmithing ability of some of the writers to say nothing about the fascinating and informative content of their essays. In particular I want to point to Alan Weisman's "Earth Without People"; D. T. Max's "The Literary Darwinists"; Karen Wright's "The Day Everything Died"; Jack Hitt's "Mighty White of You"; and Paul Bloom's "Is God an Accident" as very impressive. One of the reasons the essays are so good is that they first appeared in some of our best journals, including Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Discover, The New Yorker, et al. where they were scrupulously edited by some of the best editors working today. A good editor is a godsend for a writer, and a great editor can make the difference between a piece that is ordinary and one that is outstanding. Anyone wanting to improve their writing might read these essays for that reason alone. Now just a few quick thoughts about some of the essays: Alan Weisman achieves an eerie, sci fi mood in his "Earth without People" as he imagines how the planet might change if people suddenly disappeared. His insights come partly from recalling what the planet was like before humans came upon the scene, especially North America with its teeming mass of extinct large mammals. Gardiner Harris and Anahad O'Connor point to the disconnect between scientific knowledge and the public's perception of what is likely true and what likely isn't in "On Autism's Cause, It's Parents vs. Research." It appears that there is almost no way that mercury in vaccines causes autism, yet there rem

This collection of exceptional articles comes out annually in the fall, as does its competitor, "Best Science and Nature Writing, 2006." I eagerly anticipate the publication of them both. Guest editor Atul Gawande made the final selection of 21 essays from 10 different periodicals and one book. "The New Yorker" had the most selections with six. Three essays were picked for both books. H. Allen Orr - An unusually non-polemic critique of intelligent design. Orr's analyzes the arguments of ID's two main advocates - Behe and Dempsky. Both of them have grudgingly admitted that once the cell was in existence, evolution by random mutation and natural selection could have done the rest. Richard Preston - The author joins Steve Sillett (botany professor and advanced tree climber) in exploring redwood canopies 300-375 feet above ground. To accomplish entry, they shoot an arrow from a powerful hunting bow over a low branch, perhaps 200 feet up. A fishing line is tied to the arrow, and is used to pull the 600 foot climbing rope back over that branch. That's the easy part. Frans B. M. de Waal - The author always enjoyed being tuned to his environment, watching people in action - especially their body language. During thousands of hours as a graduate student in the 70's, de Waal watched chimps, and found that Machiavelli was a better guide than his texts. Chimpanzee politics was like human politics - a matter of individual strategies clashing to see who came out ahead - of course the chimps were much more transparent. The author began to see people around him in a different light. Tom Mueller - Computers have triumphed at chess not by aping human thought, as most artificial intelligence experts had expected, but by playing like machines. Now they are playing subtler, more imaginative chess than the humans they've been designed to emulate. Programmers say, "This is an emergent phenomenon, not something I put into it." A growing number of cognitive scientists and philosophers see no fundamental distinction between computers and human brains. Michael Chorost - This article is one of my favorites and is one of three that appeared in both books. 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." Gardiner Harris and Anahad O'Conner - Analysis of the conspiracy theory that says the mercury preservative that used to be in vaccines has caused autism. Despite the opposition of overwhelming scientific consensus, Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David, lead