The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023

by Carl Zimmer, Jaime Green

Award-winning writer, columnist, and journalists Carl Zimmer selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in 2022.

A collection of the best science and nature articles written in 2022, selected by guest editor Carl Zimmer and series editor Jaime Green.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Essays, Nature, Anthologies, Audiobook, Medicine

267 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 17, 2023

About the author

Carl Zimmer is a columnist for the New York Times and the author of 15 books about science. His latest book is Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. Visit him at carlzimmer.com.

Reviews

[Lizzie S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adored The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023! I started reading this series with the 2022 edition, and will definitely keep reading them.

The 2023 edition is edited by Carl Zimmer, a prolific science author who has written numerous books, including She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. This collection included a wide range of science and nature writing, including many that focused on Covid-19 and global warming. I have thought frequently about the articles highlighted in this collection and have discussed many of them with family members and friends. Highly recommended!

Thanks so much to Carl Zimmer, Jaime Green, and Mariner Books for this ARC through NetGalley! The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023 will be available October 17th, 2023.

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every year I look forward to the new "The Best American Writing" collections, and "Science and Nature" is my favorite. In one volume you get a reliable representation of the most interesting magazine publications, not only the most popular, but also the more obscure - so you will always find hidden gems among them that you would never come across otherwise.

Thanks to the publisher, Mariner Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ugh this made me remember why I wanted to be a science writer, so many amazing stories that just inspire awe.

Faves were all the health ones mostly: invisible epidemic, myopia generation, the Provincetown breakthrough, a French village’s radical vision, brain wave.

Docked a star for the complete lack of space stories 😡

[Niklas Braun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was awesome, I felt like a scholar reading it. But none of the selected works are dry or stale; they all read like enticing narratives.

[Adrian Manea · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good collection, but I wouldn't call it 'the best'. Of course any such appreciation is purely subjective, and as such, to my understanding and taste, I have read better pieces.

There are some standouts and overall it's worth a read, especially for those who don't have active subscriptions to quality magazines which publish such articles. If that's not your case, I think you're better off just reading those magazines and surely you'll find articles of comparable quality if not superior.

[Sue Dix · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s hard to review a book of best American science and nature writing. I love these types of anthologies, for lack of a better word, and I obviously liked or loved certain of the articles. They were all informative and some I cared about more than others. Some are extremely pertinent to the current election and beyond. If you like scientific writing, this will be your jam.

[Brandon Pytel · Rating 3 out of 5]

These books are an annual tradition — a good recap and reset of the year, pointing out the best of science and nature writing, turning me onto a couple writers and publications, and if I’m lucky, hooking me onto a topic or two I’ve never really thought about.

This book mostly covers the first two, but falls a little short on the last point. Existing in a time where the public health emergency of the pandemic is over, but as the coronavirus continues to evolve, this collection sits at a sort of purgatory, where science writers must deal with a shift in the public’s attention and forcing us to again widen our gaze beyond or above COVID-19.

With that, we get a collection that covers the pandemic and its evolution, climate change and its impacts, diseases and the sometimes radical way of adapting to and learning from them, stories that land within the intersection of politics and science, and stories that question how the universe works.

Within all this is the constant curiosity that drives scientific discoveries and those who write about them, alongside the beauty that is unearthed when good science and good writing takes over: “Sometimes what’s most compelling about a scientific story is the way it challenges us to think about the concepts we take for granted.”

The three-star rating is really only a reflection of the number of stories that really stood out to me or left an imprint — several less than our typical collection (this can also be because the book is much shorter than its predecessors, clocking in at only 240 pages). As always, I’ll run through some of my favorites:

“My Metamorphosis” is a short, beautifully written account of transformation, told through both a human’s and insect’s perspective, of shedding our skins and hoarding remains of past selves, all in the search for freedom: “I deserve to be comfortable. I deserve to feel at home in my body and what surrounds it.”

“Dislodged” captures that post-pandemic road trip feeling, the rush we all had collectively after a long year and a half of lockdown. But it also captured something more, “a magical interruption:” when a father and daughter were stuck on Highway 101 in California for hours: “Wanderers, all of us, forced to be still for a bit. To see what is around us and see one another… Our inability to see ourselves as tiny points on a much longer ecological spectrum is our uniquely human blind spot.”

Perhaps my favorite story in the collection, “True Grit,” is the insanely readable story of wild cows surviving Hurricane Ophelia in the Outer Banks. That story of resilience makes us question the role domesticated cattle have traditionally played in our lives and opens our eyes, uncomfortably, to their humanistic capabilities: their friendships, their mental toughness, and their desperate desire to stay alive.

Finally, “Don’t Look Down” is perhaps wonkier than my other favorites, but a classic climate change story of adaptation and survival at the edge of the world, this time in Alaska, where residents are dealing with thawing permafrost and collapsing and sinking grounds. A theme of the collection, these rapid changes are testing people’s abilities to cope, and bringing tons of complications to the area, including issues surrounding insurance and data. It is a balancing act, as some areas get wetter and melt, while others get drier and burn. Either way, people are learning never to underestimate nature’s complexity and making peace with the reality that change is coming.

[Stetson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think it would be difficult to understate how terrible this collection is. Its miserable quality is infuriating for two reasons. One, the subject matter, tone, and rigor simply are not what one expects from science writing. There are literally personal essays in this collection. Two, there are many superior alternatives. Some of the top science writers whose work from 2023 did not make this collection but theoretically should have includes Erik Hoel, John Hawks, Stuart Ritchie, Razib Khan, Adam Mastroianni, Matt Ridley, Scott Alexander, and many others. These are writers that actively work to communicate state-of-the-art research or rigorously and creatively tackle the nexus of science and humane concerns. It is reasonable to notice that most of these writers publish independently in online blogs rather than legacy publications like Scientific American or The Atlantic. However, it should be quite clear to sharp minds that much of what makes the pages of legacy magazines in the form of science writing is often of the same quality as this collection.

Fortunately, it was clear from the start that this collection was a disaster. The Forward from editor Jaime Green tendered a nonsensical defense of combining overtly political and scientific writing. Such an argument appears to entirely misunderstand the project of science and what science writing exists to do. The Introduction from Carl Zimmer, who generally publishes decent science writing, is forgettable and fails to provide a real understanding of why various selection were made and why they stood out in the crowded field of science writing. Zimmer appears to have been dragged along with Green agenda-driven triviality. The collection itself is mostly a procession of incurious and drab pieces that seem more interested in a false tone of emotional gravity and pushing hot sociopolitical buttons than effectively increasing the total scientific knowledge and competence of the public.

Having completed the entire collection for some unknown reason, I can confidently say that I found that maybe one or two piece warranted any real interest. This includes Fletcher Reveley's piece on the mysterious kidney disease afflicting El Salvadorian agricultural workers and Sarah Zhang's piece on trends and treatment of myopia. The Natalie Wolchover piece on theoretical physics was yeoman science writing at least but not particularly memorable.

Roster of Pieces in the Collection
1) "An Invisible Epidemic" by Elizabeth Svoboda
2) "The Myopia Generation" by Sarah Zhang
3) "A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature's Laws" by Natalie Wolchover
4) "The Coming Collapse" by Douglas Fox
5) "My Metamorphosis" by Sabrina Imbler
6) "The Bird and the Flame" by Sarah Gilman
7) "Dislodged" by Josh McColough
8) "Bright Flight" by Vanessa Gregory
9) "Brain Wave" by Ferris Jabr
10) "The Provincetown Breakthrough" by Maryn McKenna
11) "True Grit" by J. B. MacKinnon
12) "Another Green World" by Jessica Camille Aguirre
13) "A French Village's Radical Vision of a Good Life with Alzheimer's" by Marion Renault
14) "In El Salvador and Beyond, an Unsolved Kidney Disease Mystery" by Fletcher Renault
15) "The Climate Underground" by Emily Benson
16) "The Butterfly Effect" by Maggie Koerth
17) "Shadows, Tokes, Spring" by Ben Mauk
18) "An Ark for Amphibians" by Isobel Parshley
19) "Don't Look Down" by Lois Parshley
20) "American Motherhood" by Annie Lowrey

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually really enjoy these annual Best American anthologies, and science and nature writing is one of my favorite categories. It’s the one I tend to look forward to most. But I really struggled with the 2023 edition. It took me ages to read, and for the most part, I just couldn’t get into it.

Right off the bat I want to say that I actually really liked both the guest editor, and the series editor's introductions. They were warm, thoughtful, and made me hopeful that I was in for something special. But once I got into the essays themselves, that initial spark quickly fizzled. Most of the pieces were dense and felt like they weren’t really written for the average reader. I usually don’t mind being challenged, but this was the kind of challenging that made my eyes repeatedly glaze over. At one point I realized I was absorbing very little information, and I kept having to go back and re-read paragraphs I'd just read. Honestly, I just didn’t care. And that’s a weird place to be in when reading a genre I typically love to learn from.

That said, there were a few standouts I really enjoyed:

“An Invisible Epidemic” by Elizabeth Svoboda looks at the idea of "moral injury" - which is a specific kind of trauma that arises when people face situations that deeply violate their conscience or threaten their core values. (Think soldiers who kill innocents or doctors forced to turn away critically ill patients because there are no beds available.)

“The Myopia Generation” by Sarah Zhang explores the rise in childhood nearsightedness and how modern lifestyles might be reshaping our vision. (This was super interesting for me as my 11-year old just started wearing glasses after having perfect vision up until this point.)

“A French Village’s Radical Vision of a Good Life with Alzheimer’s” by Marion Renault was one of the few pieces that felt genuinely hopeful, showing how one community is rethinking care and dignity for those with Alzheimer's.

And I really loved “American Motherhood” by Annie Lowrey, which unpacks the lack of structural support for pregnant women and mothers in the U.S. and why the whole current situation is such a mess.

Clearly, my interests lean more toward medical topics, psychology, and social science... anything with a strong human focus. The essays that didn't land for me were the ones that felt removed from human experience and focused on abstract theory, hand-wringing about the climate, and highly intellectual takes on topics I just didn’t connect with. Unfortunately, that was about 60% of the book.

By the end, I was glad to be finished so I could move on to something else.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

My goodreads records indicate that I have read the 2011-2013 and 2015 instantiations of this series. I'm not sure why I stopped, but the 2023 edition is a good indication that stopping was a mistake.

The highest complement I can give an editor of a Best American title is that his or her preferences were difficult to discern. The essays need to be diverse in both content and style - something Carl Zimmer has definitely achieved. A few things do stand out though. There are no celebrity writers, Zimmer has dug deep among smaller magazines and web journals to find content (only one New Yorker article!), and there is a balance between literary nonfiction and straight reportage - with some articles having a level of detail that may deter casual readers.

This year COVID-19 has taken a backseat to climate change as the dominant (6-7 out of 23 essays) topic. Standout essays include a story about improving lives of Alzheimer's patients (from the New Yorker), a fairly technical account regarding probing ice shelves in Antarctica, a historical account of plague in Mongolia and China (with obvious COVID-19 parallels), and a hurricane survival tale involving some very tenacious cows in South Carolina (which may make you feel a bit guilty next time you eat beef). The volume closes with an absolutely harrowing first-hand account of two pregnancies that will stay with me for a while - a reminder of the dangers of the post-Roe world we live in.

A quick word of advice. Science articles often benefit from illustrations, but the budget of the best American series limits the articles to text. When I find an article that would benefit from illustration, I often google the original article. I did this for the ice-shelf article and an article on subatomic particles and found some very useful diagrams as well as some enriching photography. I still need to do this for a few other articles.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy for early review.

[Robert Yokoyama · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subjects are excellent because of the scientific insights I learned, the stories also increase my appreciation for nature and animals. I am nearsighted, so I am delighted to learn there are contact lenses and eye drops to improve my eyesight by reading the piece about myopia. I also love the piece that investigates the causes of chronic kidney disease in El Salvador. I am surprised to learn that heat stress and dehydration are two factors that cause chronic kidney disease. Diabetes runs in my family, so I enjoyed reading this information. The piece entitled "Brain Wave" is fascinating because I didn't know about all tasks that physically disabled people can do with brain and computer interface. Physically disabled people can play video games, create art and write email just by their thoughts by using a computer interface.

I enjoyed the piece entitled Dislodged. This piece is about a father and daughter road trip from Los Angeles to Seattle. I love the way the author writes about with such respect for the redwood trees and the thrush birds in Caliifornia. The author talks about the need to reconnect with the physical environment which is a sentiment that resonates with me. I also love the piece entitled "True Grit" because it highlights the intelligence of cows. A cow is an animal that I did not consider intelligent, but they are hardy animals and strong long-distance swimmers. This science and nature collection is such enjoyable reading.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve certainly enjoyed these collections in the past. This was not a strong set of stories. I believe in global warming. It is a major concern. I do not know if it needs to be the focus of so many of what is, presumably, supposed to be a diverse roundup of Science stories

The two stories I found ones I would pass on and talk about ( and really isn’t that the best qualifier) were ones I had actually read before.

The Myopia Generation by Sarah Zhang talks about the ever increasing instances of myopia in young people, the potential causes and possible treatments. What I found most interesting is how both our nearsightedness and the great need of braces and corrective appliances for our teeth both stem from the same basic problem. That is that our society and way of living has advanced and changed much faster than our bodies can adapt from our caveman ancestors

In “A French Village’s Radical Vision Of A Good Life With Alzheimer’s “ by Marion Renault we are given just that. Of course the cost of their plan would seem likely to be cost prohibitive as the need for late life care ever increases. For those able to receive such care this seems a godsend

[Robert Boissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twenty contributions. The kind of book you keep handy for when you have a little piece of unexpected free time, then power through one of the articles. Some articles take you on a bit of a review journey, like particle physics. Some crawling underground on a fairly personal venture involving stalagmite/stalactite data collection. (Will the drop collection technology work?) And each can be enjoyed on its own. There is no way I can think of to rate this kind of reading, as it is for those who have a broad education and want to keep it broad, sampling recent interesting science. You could likely do this profitably by many other methods, e.g. a subscription to Scientific American (where two selections in this volume are sourced), or perhaps the Atlantic (where two other selections are sourced), but that would not get you this hand-selected set by Carl Zimmer, someone who has taught nature writing since 2009 and has assigned prior volumes of this series to his classes. He took on the work this time and his choices are well worth the read. The last selection entitled American Motherhood by Annie Lowrey is not to be missed.

[Trish Remley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 3.75 for me. Hadn't read this yearly volume since Hope Jahren was editor in 2017. I like that I don't have to read a whole book on a subject, and can get up to date with a 10-15 page published article from a wide variety of sources looking at a wide variety of subject matter. At the same time there are some similar threads running throughout the book. EXAMPLE Climate Change: Bright Flight -Lightning Bugs; The Coming Collapse: Antarctic Ice Shelf; The Birds and the Flame: Big Basin Redwoods State Park and how a highly used park has a chance to be designed best for nature; The Climate Underground: Titan Cave in Wyoming reading how the environment was a hundred thousand years ago; and The Butterfly Effect concerning the disappearance of the Powershiek Butterfly in Michigan. EXAMPLE Medical Science: A French Village's Radical Vison of a good Life with Alzheimer's; In El Salvador and Beyond, an Unsolved Kidney Disease Mystery; And American Motherhood: The real dangers of pregnancy (this authors experience) and what does the life of a mother mean.

[Sami · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quite good collection of diverse scientific writing. Most of the writers expose their subject matter in an almost conversational, documentary-style prose that doesn't feel especially 'scientific', which is enjoyable to read and understand while learning something new. I particularly enjoyed Sarah Zhang's "The Myopia Generation", Sabrina Imbler's "My Metamorphosis", Ferris Jabr's "Brain Wave", Maryn McKenna's "The Provincetown Breakthrough", Marion Renault's "A French Village's Radical Vision of a Good Life with Alzheimer's", and Fletcher Reveley's "In El Salvador and Beyond, an Unsolved Kidney Disease Mystery". As expected, the articles I liked reading fell mostly in line with my interests in public health, epidemiology, medicine, and medical sociology. These articles have to do with undoing prejudices, understanding challenges and how they were overcome, and looking to the future for possible solutions to our current problems; always exciting stuff to read. Some of the bird articles were O.K. - but I've read better bird writing :)

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

** I received an advanced copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is scheduled to be published on October 17, 2023 in the US. **

This was an eclectic collection of interesting essays that covered various disciplines of science and medicine. I particularly enjoyed “Antarctica's Collapse Could Begin Even Sooner than Anticipated”, “True Grit”, “A French Village’s Radical Vision of a Good Life with Alzheimer’s”, “In El Salvador and Beyond, an Unsolved Kidney Disease Mystery” and “Don’t Look Down”. Most of which were topics that I had never really considered, so it opened up entirely new views on the state of the world from those perspectives.

[lupine]

"An Invisible Epidemic": An extremely well-written and darkly fascinating article! It resonated with me and made me wonder about my own mental state. Perfectly captures the devastation of the Covid 19 pandemic, and the hopelessness. I hope this article gets into as many hands as possible.

"The Myopia Generation": Living in this modern age of disinformation has, I think, made me colder, perhaps more critical of what I read. Perhaps my disgust for this piece is the juxtaposition of such a brilliant piece of writing that was "Epidemic" with this lackluster performance. I feel like this was written sloppily and I need data and more studies to convince me of the validity of this argument (in other words I do not agree with its inclusion in this anthology)

[Pauline Stout · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like reading scientific articles online and I jumped at the chance to read this when I saw it on Netgalley. It has articles and stories of a wide variety and topic and I thought it would be interesting. Turns out for me that there can be too much of a good thing in this case. The articles were interesting individually but it can be a bit of a slog to read them all back to back like this. My favorite articles were Dislodged and My Metamorphosis. I can only give this a 3 star at this time however. I may read it again when I don’t have a deadline to read like I did with the advanced readers copy so I can space everything out more and maybe my rating will go up then.

[Lisa Borges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection. Especially enjoyed the essay on implanted brain chips “Brain Waves,” “Dislodged” about a dad’s post pandemic roadtrip along the California coast with his dtr, and surprisingly, “metamorphosis” about a transgender journey which I didn’t think I would be able to grasp but was struck by the beauty of the writing. There was a lot of very alarming writing about climate change and the melting ice caps and sea level rise- terrifying. California was mentioned a disproportionate amount for some reason. Sacramento was used as an example of an inland location where millions of homes at sea level along our rivers would be by a few additional feet of sea.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

“ What happens when you have a group of about one hundred billion brain cells?” Strogatz asked me. “They start to have consciousness, they start to have emotions. An individual cell is not sad. But put enough of them together, and you get astonishing collective things that we call feelings and memories and perception.”

“Musk has described the ultimate goal of Neuralink as achieving “a sort of symbiosis with artificial intelligence” so that humanity is not obliterated, subjugated, or “left behind” by super-intelligent machines.”

Jesus Christ leave me behind.

The volume was good but not as good as some past ones. Still enjoyable.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

As mentioned in a previous review on the 2022 collection, these have obviously become heavily interconnected with climate change, although interestingly showing how diverse the problems are but also how interesting the secondary effects can be. Ones that particularly stood out to me were True Grit about wild cows surviving hurricanes in North Carolina, and The Provincetown Breakthrough about residents and long-time visitors to Provincetown organizing an ad hoc COVID communication system to limit the spread of an outbreak; but quite honestly if you are interested in natural science there is a lot here to love, but of course a lot of it is going to be a tad depressing.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great job of picking interesting and impactful essays that cover the environment, medicine, nature and more. There was only one essay that struck me as too technical. The rest were important reads. I liked them particularly because while climate change and pandemics dominated the topics, the overall mood wasn't strictly bleak but concentrated on the very real issues while still offering some hope about how people where doing things to be impactful and make positive inroads.

[Terragyrl3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars, if I could grant it. All the authors have written excellent pieces, but the preponderance of climate change essays skews the feel of the book. Yes, climate change affects every other area of science, but it’s not the only issue in science today. Other readers have mentioned the intrusive politics in the essays. I didn’t find the politics to be a problem. I love this series because I know I’ll encounter high caliber writing.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorite essay in this collection: True Grit, by J. B. MacKinnon. I didn't know cows could be so fascinating. This is heartbreaking and amazing, everything all at once.

Also liked The Myopia Generation (Sarah Zhang) and The Provincetown Breakthrough (Maryn McKenna). And of course, American Motherhood (Annie Lowrey) which every Supreme Court Justice and judge and congressperson who support banning abortion should be required to read.

[Evelyn Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

While entertained and introduced to a number of interesting facts, most of the essays seemed like the author went off to do something fun and learn some interesting things rather than an introduction to a problem, pursuing a solution(s), and what happened after that. In most cases the last part seemed to be missing. The stories became almost like fun, interesting chats, but lacked authority and conclusions.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a really great collection of works on a variety of topics from global warming to disease to fireflies. The majority of the articles were very engaging, even to someone without a lot of knowledge on the specific topic. I thought "Shadows, Tokens, Spring" by Ben Mauk was particularly good.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Amy]

Very diverse, fascinating essays. Every reader will have a favorite; mine is True Grit, a very new perspective on ... cows. I had a library copy but wound up reading almost all the essays online in the article form in which they originated, which gave me access to the illustrations. I recommend this.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slowly, gradually, we are getting out of the "everything is about Covid" era of science writing (the contents actually having been published in 2022), and back to what science and nature articles are like when they're not written by somebody dealing with borderline obsessive-compulsive thinking about only one issue.

[Dr. Lehman L Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally like this anthology but like many anthologies there are elements I like and a few I do not like. This keeps me from giving a five star review. I found the story on motherhood when having and delivering a baby very compelling especially in todays political climate. I do recommend this book because the diversity of stories is interesting and sometimes challenging to read.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are fascinated by science this is an excellent read as it's an anthology of scientific articles on a lot of topic.
Intriguing and informative
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine