David Quammen, together with series editor Burkhard Bilger, has assembled a remarkable group of writers whose selections appeared in periodicals from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, SCIENCE, and THE NEW YORKER to PUERTO DEL SOL and DOUBLETAKE. Among the acclaimed writers represented in this volume are Richard Preston on “The Demon in the Freezer,” John McPhee bidding “Farewell to the Nineteeth Century,” Oliver Sacks remembering the “Brilliant Light” of his boyhood, and Wendell Berry going “Back to the Land.” Also including such literary lights as Anne Fadiman, David Guterson, Edward Hoagland, Natalie Angier, and Peter Matthiessen, this new collection presents selections bound together by their timelessness.

    Distinguished by new and impressive voices as well as some of the foremost names in science writing—David Dobbs, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Larissa MacFarquhar among them—this eleventh edition features outstanding journalism from a wide variety of publications, providing a comprehensive overview of the year’s most compelling, relevant, and exciting developments in the world of science. Provocative and engaging, The Best American Science Writing 2010 reveals just how far science has brought us—and where it is headed next.

    Natalie Angier probes the origins of language, Paul Raffaele describes a remote Amazonian tribe untouched by the modern world, and Frans B. M. de Waal explains what a new breed of economists is learning from monkeys. Drake Bennett profiles the creator of Ecstasy and more than two hundred other psychedelic compounds -- a man hailed by some as one of the twentieth century's most important scientists.Some of the selections reflect the news of the past year. Daniel C. Dennett questions the debate over intelligent design -- is evolution just a theory? --while Chris Mooney reports on how this debate almost tore one small town apart. John Hockenberry examines how blogs are transforming the twenty-first-century battlefield, Larry Cahill probes the new science uncovering male and female brain differences, Daniel Roth explains why the programmer who made it easy to pirate movies over the Internet is now being courted by Hollywood, and Charles C. Mann looks at the dark side of increased human life expectancy.Reaching out beyond our own planet, Juan Maldacena questions whether we actually live in a three-dimensional world and whether gravity truly exists. Dennis Overbye surveys the continuing scientific mystery of time travel, and Robert Kunzig describes new x-ray images of the heavens, including black holes, exploding stars, colliding galaxies, and other wonders the eye can't see.

    The first volume in this annual series of the best writing by Americans, meticulously selected by bestselling author James Gleick, one of the foremost chronicles of scientific social history, debuts with a stellar collection of writers and thinkers.  Many of these cutting-edge essays offer glimpses of new realms of discovery and thought, exploring territory that is unfamiliar to most of us, or finding the unexpected in the midst of the familiar.  Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg challenges the idea of whether the universe has a designer; Pulitzer Prize winner Natalie Angier reassesses caveman (and-woman) couture; bestselling author and Darwinian theorist Stephen Jay Gould makes a claim for the man whose ideas Darwin discredited; Timothy Ferris proposes a realistic alternative to wrap-speed interseller travel; neurologist and bestselling author Oliver Sacks reminisces about his first loves-chemistry and math.  This diverse, stimulating and accessible collection is required reading for anyone who wants to travel to the frontier of knowledge.

    Many readers will jump straight to Ron Rosenbaum's "Sex Week at Yale," an entertaining exposé of how academics can give their audience a headache when they yammer on about sex. Even the most science-wary readers will enjoy Peggy Orenstein's "Where Have All the Lisas Gone?" about trends in naming babies. Bird lovers (and cat haters) will laugh out loud at the Letters to the Bird Brain collected in Michael O'Connor's "Bird Watcher's General Store." And ailurophiles will be stunned by Robert Sapolsky's report ("Bugs in the Brain") on how the pathogen that causes toxoplasmosis alters its carriers' (rodents) brains so they no longer fear their number one predator (cats). Medical buffs will look for Atul Gawande's extended profile of the amazing Francis Moore, a pioneer in treatment of burns, nuclear medicine, hormone replacement therapies and organ transplants. Both Pinker's choice of subjects (linguistics, psychology) as well as sources (The American Conservative, The Cape Codder) range happily beyond the usual suspects; everyone will find something they haven't already read. The collection is recommended for intellectually omnivorous readers in this and all other universes.Introduction / Steven Pinker --Genesis of suicide terrorism / Scott Atran --The battle for your brain / Ronald Bailey --Fearing the worst should anyone produce a cloned baby / Philip M. Boffey --The bittersweet science / Austin Bunn --The new celebrity / Jennet Conant --The mythical threat of genetic determinism / Daniel C. Dennett --We're all gonna die! / Gregg Easterbrook --Far-out television / Garrett G. Fagan --A war on obesity, not the obese / Jeffrey M. Friedman --Desperate measures / Atul Gawande --The stuff of genes / Horace Freeland Judson --The bloody crossroads of grammar and politics / Geoffrey Nunberg --Ask the bird folks / Mike O'Connor --Where have all the lisas gone? / Peggy Orenstein --The design of your life / Virginia Postrel --Caring for your introvert / Jonathan Rauch --All the old sciences have starring roles / Chet Raymo --Sex week at Yale / Ron Rosenbaum --The cousin marriage conundrum / Steve Sailer --Bugs in the brain / Robert Sapolsky --Through the eye of an octopus / Eric Scigliano --Captivated / Meredith F. Small --Parallel universes / Max Tegmark --In click languages, an echo of the tongues of the ancients / Nicholas Wade --A prolific Genghis Khan, it seems, helped people the world / Nicholas Wade

    Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005 includes:Natalie Angier • Jared Diamond • Timothy Ferris • Malcolm Gladwell • Jerome Groopman • Bill McKibben • Sherwin P. Nuland • Jeffrey M. O'Brien • Oliver Sacks • Michael J. Sandel • William Speed Weed • and moreJonathan Weiner, guest editor, has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and many other honors. He lives in New York City and teaches science writing at the Columbia School of Journalism.

    Science is about flawed and complicated human beings trying to use whatever tools they've got, along with their minds, to see something strange and new. In that sense, writing about science is just another way of writing about the human condition." -- from the introduction by Richard PrestonThe twenty-eight pieces in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 span a wide range of topics, from the farthest reaches of space to the everyday world around us to the secrets hiddin in our own bodies. Michael Lemonick travels to an extinct volcano in Hawaii, where telescopes at the summit are providing researchers with a glimpse of the most distant galaxy ever seen -- and profound new insights into the creation of the universe. Neil deGrasse Tyson takes a sharp, witty look at Americans' delirium over space travel. And with surgical precision Michael Perry describes how a medical autopsy is performed. Dead men can tell tales.Here we also see examinations of the sometimes harmful impact of science on the natural world. Susan Casey gives an alarming portrait of plastic waste pollution in the world's oceans, including a dead zone in the mid-Pacific that's twice the size of Texas. Michael Shnayerson heads to West Virginia, where the Appalachians are being blasted at the rate of several ridgetops a week, all in the pursuit of ever-elusive coal. And Paul Bennett goes deep beneath Rome's streets, where cutting-edge excavation techniques are revealing newfound treasures in one of the world's oldest cities.A profile of a late, distinguished British ornithologist by John Seabrook reveals that the man's personal collection of bird skins, now in the British Natural History Museum, was largely stolen or bought and intentionally mislabeled. Richard Conniff visits a former Brooklyn social worker turned primatologist who has become a fierce advocate of the lemur. And Patricia Gadsby takes us into the kitchens of Europe's finest chefs to explain how the new field of molecular gastronomy is revolutionizing fine cuisine.

    Together these twenty-one articles on a wide range of today's most leading topics in science, from Dennis Overbye, Jonathan Weiner, and Richard Preston, among others, represent the full spectrum of scientific inquiry, proving once again that "good science writing is evidently plentiful" (American Scientist).

    Pulitzer Prize–winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, a leading cancer physician and researcher, selects the year’s top science and nature writing from journalists who dive into their fields with curiosity and passion, delivering must-read articles from a wide array of fields.

    Wilson, promises to be another “eclectic, provocative collection” (Entertainment Weekly) that is both a science reader’s dream and a nature lover’s sustenance.Iterations of immortality / David Berlinski --To save a watering hole / Mark Cherrington --New life in a death trap / Edwin Dobb --Abortion and brain waves / Gregg Easterbrook --Baby steps / Malcolm Gladwell --In the forests of Gombe / Jane Goodall --The doubting disease / Jerome Groopman --The recycled generation --Stephen S. Hall --Endurance predator / Bernd Heinrich --Harpy eagles / Edward Hoagland --Why the future doesn't need us / Bill Joy --A killing at dawn / Ted Kerasote --Seeing scarlet / Barbara Kingsolver and Steven Hopp --The best clock in the world / Verlyn Klinkenborg --The wild world's Scotland Yard / Jon R. Luoma --Breeding discontent / Cynthia Mills --Ice station Vostok / Oliver Morton --Being prey / Val Plumwood --Troubled waters / Sandra Postel --The genome warrior / Richard Preston --Megatransect / David Quammen --Inside the volcano / Donovan Webster

    Readers will find excerpts from bestsellers such as Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, Francis Crick's Life Itself, Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey, Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. There are classic essays ranging from J.B.S. Haldane's "On Being the Right Size" and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" to Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and Albert Einstein's famed New York Times article on "Relativity." And readers will also discover lesser-known but engaging pieces such as Lewis Thomas's "Seven Wonders of Science," J. Robert Oppenheimer on "War and Physicists," and Freeman Dyson's memoir of studying under Hans Bethe.A must-read volume for all science buffs, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a rich and vibrant anthology that captures the poetry and excitement of scientific thought and discovery.One of New Scientist's Editor's Picks for 2008.

    Freeman Dyson, renowned physicist and public intellectual, edits this year’s volume of the finest science and nature writing.

    The Best American Science Writing 2012 is yet another endlessly fascinating and mind-expanding installment of the popular science series that Kirkus Reviews calls, “Superb brain candy.” Edited by renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku, co-founder of string field theory, this collection contains the most engaging and provocative science writing of the year—gathering in one volume enthralling and eye-opening essays about the latest developments in biochemistry, physics, astronomy, genetics, evolutionary theory, cognition, and more.

    . . The essays in the collection [are] meditations that reveal not only how science actually happens but also who or what propels its immutable humanity.” — Maria Popova, Brain Pickings“A stimulating compendium.” — Kirkus ReviewsPulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author Deborah Blum selects the year’s top science and nature writing from writers who balance research with humanity and in the process uncover riveting stories of discovery across the disciplines.

    Provocative and engaging, the Best American Science Writing 2009 as edited by Angier covers the full spectrum of scientific inquiry—from biochemistry, physics, and astronomy to genetics, evolutionary theory, and cognition.Introduction / by Natalie Angier --The itch / Atul Gawande --Twitchy / Sallie Tisdale --The first ache / Annie Murphy Paul --A journey inside the brain / Oliver Sacks --The truth about autism / David Wolman --Blocking the transmission of violence / Alex Kotlowitz --Reading the wounds / Jina Moore --A cloud of smoke / Jennifer Kahn --War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing / John Horgan --Face-offs of the female kind / Marina Cords --Tough lessons from golden rice / Martin Enserink --Back to the future / J. Madeleine Nash --A tall, cool drink of ... sewage? / Elizabeth Royte --Contagious cancer / David Quammen --Looking up / Jennifer Margulis --Birdbrain / Margaret Talbot --Want to remember everything you'll ever learn? Surrender to this algorithm / Gary Wolf --Hello, HAL / John Seabrook --The anonymity experiment / Catherine Price --The sky is falling / Gregg Easterbrook --Big brain theory: have cosmologists lost theirs? / Dennis Overbye --The final frontier / Karen Olsson --Perhaps death is proud; more reason to savor life / Theresa Brown --Evolutionists flock to Darwin-shaped wall stain / The Onion