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The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundred of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003, edited by Richard Dawkins, is another "eloquent, accessible, and even illuminating" collection (Publishers Weekly). Here are the best and brightest writers on science and nature, writing on such wide-ranging subjects as astronomy's new stars, archaeology, the Bible, "terminal" ice, and memory faults.
Natalie Angier Timothy Ferris Ian Frazier Elizabeth F. Loftus Steven Pinker Oliver Sacks Steven Weinberg Edward O. Wilson
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003, edited by Richard Dawkins, is another "eloquent, accessible, and even illuminating" collection (Publishers Weekly). Here are the best and brightest writers on science and nature, writing on such wide-ranging subjects as astronomy's new stars, archaeology, the Bible, "terminal" ice, and memory faults.
Natalie Angier Timothy Ferris Ian Frazier Elizabeth F. Loftus Steven Pinker Oliver Sacks Steven Weinberg Edward O. Wilson
352 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 30, 2018
I've really liked most of the books in this series, although I didn't care for the first one much. Burkhard Bilger was the overall editor for the first two. After that Tim Folger was the overall editor & the few I've read were fantastic, no matter the guest editor. This one was no exception. Excellent!
This guest editor is Richard Dawkins, a fantastic author & editor. His introduction, like my review, summarizes most of the articles quickly. He says some of the stories are the latest while others are timeless. The first worried me since this is so old. 15 years in our science today is ancient, but he managed to pick articles that were great even when there have been a lot of discoveries in the field. Like Dawkins, most of the authors don't pretend to have THE ANSWER, just some of the latest discoveries & they tended to explore what those meant in terms of our historic understanding & what they might mean to the future. They project a sense of wonder. They were wonderful unless I say otherwise.
I found the table of contents at this wonderful site which as links to the articles for the entire series, so if you see one you're interested in, check it out. Most are available.
* Natalie Angier. "Weighing the Grandma Factor", from The New York Times - Angier was one of the best contributors to the first book in this series & the guest editor of the last one (2002). Again, she's come up with great insights. Grandmothers were ignored for a long time by scientists, but it turns out the maternal grandmother is often the difference between life & death.
* Tim Appenzeller. "At Home in the Heavens", (alternate partial), from U.S. News & World Report - The discovery of exoplanets has come a long way, but this was still interesting.
* Alan Burdick. "Four Ears to the Ground", (alternate), from Natural History - elephants listen with their feet. Wow. Not only does Burdick explain this, but makes me wonder how much other communication we're missing.
* Clark R. Chapman and Alan W. Harris. "A Skeptical Look at September 11th", from Skeptical Inquirer - looks at the measures we've taken for security after 9/11 & how poor most are. They don't really make us safer, but take away a lot of our freedoms. He doesn't just gripe, but also makes some great suggestions. I wish someone had paid attention.
* David Ewing Duncan. "DNA as Destiny", from Wired - This is another area where science has leapt ahead, but it is almost prescient in its observations.
* Timothy Ferris. "Astronomy's New Stars", from Smithsonian - Is a good look at amateur & professional astronomers plus a thumbnail of their roles in astronomy. While the perspective is different from Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming & it's a lot shorter, the issues are the same.
* Ian Frazier. "Terminal Ice", from Outside - discusses melting icebergs. Interesting reading from before "Climate Change" became the default. We were still feeling our way there & this describes some of the steps along the way. Glaciologists say there's probably no connection between global climate change and the increase in the numbers of big Antarctic icebergs. Obviously not true today, but we've found a lot more out.
* James Gorman. "Finding a Wild, Fearsome World Beneath Every Fallen Leaf", from The New York Times - makes me want to go out in the woods & look around with a magnifying glass & microscope.
* Charles Hirshberg. "My Mother, the Scientist", (alternate), from Popular Science - His mother was Richard Feynman's sister & an excellent scientist in her own right at a time when women weren't thought to be good at such.
* Brenden I. Koerner. "Embryo Police", from Wired - What are the moral/ethical lines for fiddling with making babies? Definitely one of the timeless stories as we're no closer to figuring this can of worms out. This looks at the UK's HFEA, a group that makes these decisions. It refers to the US as the Wild West of fertilization, not what I would have guessed, but IVF clinics aren't restricted much here. It really made me think about how money talks & how hypocritical so many of the arguments are.
* Elizabeth Kolbert. "Ice Memory", from The New Yorker - drilling through ice to look at our world over 100K years ago. Wow.
* Andrew Lawler. "Treasure Under Saddam's Feet", from Discover - archaeology into the Assyrian empire. Not that interesting to me.
* Daniel Lazare. "False Testament" ($), (alternate), from Harper's Magazine - the Old Testament isn't even as vaguely accurate as many supposed. It's bad science to work toward a conclusion, but that's what most had done. It turns out it's pretty much myths put together as propaganda. No surprise nor of much interest.
* Elizabeth F. Loftus. "Memory Faults and Fixes", (alternate pdf), from Issues in Science and Technology - I've read several books & articles about this lately so thought this would be more of the same. Yes & no. She still managed to blow my mind. Anyone who is enraged by the Catholic pedophiles & 'Me too' stories should read this. Everyone should. It's amazing how easy false memories are.
* Charles C. Mann. "Homeland Insecurity", from The Atlantic Monthly - very interesting look at how security is only as good as its weakest link. Super cryptography doesn't help if your computer get a root kit installed. A subject close to my bread & butter. Everyone benefits by this look at security. 99.7% accuracy looks good, until you realize that means 500 false positives per day in 250k. That's the number of people that go through Logan airport in a year. Security will fail, but it needs to fail well & resiliently.
* Bill McKibben. "It's Easy Being Green" ($), from Mother Jones was really bad & slanted. I'm surprised at Dawkins for picking this. 'Oil bad, electric good'. I'm not convinced, especially by florescent bulbs & anything requiring rare earths.
* Steven Olson. "The Royal We", from The Atlantic Monthly - Think you're descended from kings? You probably are if you look far enough back. Fun with numbers & consanguinity.
* Dennis Overbye. "A New View of Our Universe", from The New York Times - went way beyond anything I'm interested in. It's full of string theory, anthropic principle in physics, multiple universes & more.
* Steven Pinker. "The Blank Slate" ($), (alternate .doc), from Discover - are kids a blank slate? Discusses the current thinking on Nature versus Nurture. He had me at 'any parent who has raised more than one child'. I have & they were all unique.
* Oliver Sacks. "Anybody Out There?", part II, from Natural History - is there life elsewhere? Good thoughts even 15 years later when we've made even more progress toward figuring out the odds.
* Steve Silberman. "The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks", from Wired - the author spent some time with him & reading this right after an article written by him is great. He's had other articles in other books in this series, too. Remarkable man. Died in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_...
* Adam Summers. "Fat Heads Sink Ships", from Natural History - I don't recall what this was about & there's no link to the article.
* Gary Taubes. "What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie?", from The New York Times Magazine - Our nutrition guidelines are a mess. Atkins may have been right.
* Bruce Watson. "Sounding the Alarm", (alternate), from Smithsonian - Rachel Carson sounded the alarm & changed the way we think.
* William Speed Weed. "The Very Best Telescope", from Discover - isn't a telescope, but a high tech array of incredible complexity that's changing the science dramatically. Castor isn't one star, but 6 orbiting about each other? Singular stars like Sol aren't the rule, but the exception?!!! Wow.
* Scott Weidensaul. "Raising the Dead", from Audubon - some thoughts on the ethics of resurrecting extinct species. Very well done.
* Steven Weinberg. "The Truth About Missile Defense" ($), from The New York Review of Books - As I read this, I thought he was kind of naive. Then he supported an argument with '51 Nobel Laureates signed a petition' & I knew it.
* Ted Williams. "Maine's War on Coyotes", from Audubon - the Eastern coyote is a problem that Maine is handling poorly. This guy was preaching to the choir, but he did a good job of it.
* Edward O. Wilson. "The Bottleneck" ($), from Scientific American - We're running out of every resource except people & need to look at things a different way. He makes his point well, but doesn't offer any real solutions. Still, it was good stuff.
This guest editor is Richard Dawkins, a fantastic author & editor. His introduction, like my review, summarizes most of the articles quickly. He says some of the stories are the latest while others are timeless. The first worried me since this is so old. 15 years in our science today is ancient, but he managed to pick articles that were great even when there have been a lot of discoveries in the field. Like Dawkins, most of the authors don't pretend to have THE ANSWER, just some of the latest discoveries & they tended to explore what those meant in terms of our historic understanding & what they might mean to the future. They project a sense of wonder. They were wonderful unless I say otherwise.
I found the table of contents at this wonderful site which as links to the articles for the entire series, so if you see one you're interested in, check it out. Most are available.
* Natalie Angier. "Weighing the Grandma Factor", from The New York Times - Angier was one of the best contributors to the first book in this series & the guest editor of the last one (2002). Again, she's come up with great insights. Grandmothers were ignored for a long time by scientists, but it turns out the maternal grandmother is often the difference between life & death.
* Tim Appenzeller. "At Home in the Heavens", (alternate partial), from U.S. News & World Report - The discovery of exoplanets has come a long way, but this was still interesting.
* Alan Burdick. "Four Ears to the Ground", (alternate), from Natural History - elephants listen with their feet. Wow. Not only does Burdick explain this, but makes me wonder how much other communication we're missing.
* Clark R. Chapman and Alan W. Harris. "A Skeptical Look at September 11th", from Skeptical Inquirer - looks at the measures we've taken for security after 9/11 & how poor most are. They don't really make us safer, but take away a lot of our freedoms. He doesn't just gripe, but also makes some great suggestions. I wish someone had paid attention.
* David Ewing Duncan. "DNA as Destiny", from Wired - This is another area where science has leapt ahead, but it is almost prescient in its observations.
* Timothy Ferris. "Astronomy's New Stars", from Smithsonian - Is a good look at amateur & professional astronomers plus a thumbnail of their roles in astronomy. While the perspective is different from Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming & it's a lot shorter, the issues are the same.
* Ian Frazier. "Terminal Ice", from Outside - discusses melting icebergs. Interesting reading from before "Climate Change" became the default. We were still feeling our way there & this describes some of the steps along the way. Glaciologists say there's probably no connection between global climate change and the increase in the numbers of big Antarctic icebergs. Obviously not true today, but we've found a lot more out.
* James Gorman. "Finding a Wild, Fearsome World Beneath Every Fallen Leaf", from The New York Times - makes me want to go out in the woods & look around with a magnifying glass & microscope.
* Charles Hirshberg. "My Mother, the Scientist", (alternate), from Popular Science - His mother was Richard Feynman's sister & an excellent scientist in her own right at a time when women weren't thought to be good at such.
* Brenden I. Koerner. "Embryo Police", from Wired - What are the moral/ethical lines for fiddling with making babies? Definitely one of the timeless stories as we're no closer to figuring this can of worms out. This looks at the UK's HFEA, a group that makes these decisions. It refers to the US as the Wild West of fertilization, not what I would have guessed, but IVF clinics aren't restricted much here. It really made me think about how money talks & how hypocritical so many of the arguments are.
* Elizabeth Kolbert. "Ice Memory", from The New Yorker - drilling through ice to look at our world over 100K years ago. Wow.
* Andrew Lawler. "Treasure Under Saddam's Feet", from Discover - archaeology into the Assyrian empire. Not that interesting to me.
* Daniel Lazare. "False Testament" ($), (alternate), from Harper's Magazine - the Old Testament isn't even as vaguely accurate as many supposed. It's bad science to work toward a conclusion, but that's what most had done. It turns out it's pretty much myths put together as propaganda. No surprise nor of much interest.
* Elizabeth F. Loftus. "Memory Faults and Fixes", (alternate pdf), from Issues in Science and Technology - I've read several books & articles about this lately so thought this would be more of the same. Yes & no. She still managed to blow my mind. Anyone who is enraged by the Catholic pedophiles & 'Me too' stories should read this. Everyone should. It's amazing how easy false memories are.
* Charles C. Mann. "Homeland Insecurity", from The Atlantic Monthly - very interesting look at how security is only as good as its weakest link. Super cryptography doesn't help if your computer get a root kit installed. A subject close to my bread & butter. Everyone benefits by this look at security. 99.7% accuracy looks good, until you realize that means 500 false positives per day in 250k. That's the number of people that go through Logan airport in a year. Security will fail, but it needs to fail well & resiliently.
* Bill McKibben. "It's Easy Being Green" ($), from Mother Jones was really bad & slanted. I'm surprised at Dawkins for picking this. 'Oil bad, electric good'. I'm not convinced, especially by florescent bulbs & anything requiring rare earths.
* Steven Olson. "The Royal We", from The Atlantic Monthly - Think you're descended from kings? You probably are if you look far enough back. Fun with numbers & consanguinity.
* Dennis Overbye. "A New View of Our Universe", from The New York Times - went way beyond anything I'm interested in. It's full of string theory, anthropic principle in physics, multiple universes & more.
* Steven Pinker. "The Blank Slate" ($), (alternate .doc), from Discover - are kids a blank slate? Discusses the current thinking on Nature versus Nurture. He had me at 'any parent who has raised more than one child'. I have & they were all unique.
* Oliver Sacks. "Anybody Out There?", part II, from Natural History - is there life elsewhere? Good thoughts even 15 years later when we've made even more progress toward figuring out the odds.
* Steve Silberman. "The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks", from Wired - the author spent some time with him & reading this right after an article written by him is great. He's had other articles in other books in this series, too. Remarkable man. Died in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_...
* Adam Summers. "Fat Heads Sink Ships", from Natural History - I don't recall what this was about & there's no link to the article.
* Gary Taubes. "What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie?", from The New York Times Magazine - Our nutrition guidelines are a mess. Atkins may have been right.
* Bruce Watson. "Sounding the Alarm", (alternate), from Smithsonian - Rachel Carson sounded the alarm & changed the way we think.
* William Speed Weed. "The Very Best Telescope", from Discover - isn't a telescope, but a high tech array of incredible complexity that's changing the science dramatically. Castor isn't one star, but 6 orbiting about each other? Singular stars like Sol aren't the rule, but the exception?!!! Wow.
* Scott Weidensaul. "Raising the Dead", from Audubon - some thoughts on the ethics of resurrecting extinct species. Very well done.
* Steven Weinberg. "The Truth About Missile Defense" ($), from The New York Review of Books - As I read this, I thought he was kind of naive. Then he supported an argument with '51 Nobel Laureates signed a petition' & I knew it.
* Ted Williams. "Maine's War on Coyotes", from Audubon - the Eastern coyote is a problem that Maine is handling poorly. This guy was preaching to the choir, but he did a good job of it.
* Edward O. Wilson. "The Bottleneck" ($), from Scientific American - We're running out of every resource except people & need to look at things a different way. He makes his point well, but doesn't offer any real solutions. Still, it was good stuff.
February 24, 2008
I read most of it on the train to Venice and finished it by the river today. I highly recommend it. Especially:
Terminal Ice
What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
False Testament
Memory Faults and Fixes
The Truth About Missile Defense
The Bottleneck
Can't wait to catch up on the next four editions...
Terminal Ice
What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
False Testament
Memory Faults and Fixes
The Truth About Missile Defense
The Bottleneck
Can't wait to catch up on the next four editions...
June 20, 2012
Very educational, and some essays are so engrossing that they read like novels.
November 18, 2017
These "Best" books are always rewarding and informative.
November 13, 2025
Kinda fell of off reading because of this book. Some of the journal excerpts and articles were interesting and captivating but a decent chunk of them were pretty boring.
July 19, 2007
this is a generally interesting anthology series of essays and articles. there is a variation in quality, but mostly they are interesting and timely.
August 15, 2011
Writing about ice was very popular in 2003.
September 10, 2011
Articles of interest: The Trandma Factor, Memory Faults and Blank Slate.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews