"Eloquent, accessible and often illuminating anthology." — Publishers Weekly
"The collection's real noteworthiness comes from its
authors' consistently bright insights and buoyant prose." — Kirkus Reviews
Selected by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling author Natalie Angier, The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2002 showcases the finest literary nonfictional writing on science and nature published in the past year.
The twenty-seven stellar pieces cover a wide range of topics. Barbara Ehrenreich challenges the commercialization of our breast cancer culture; Eric Schlosser investigates why McDonald's french fries taste so good; Gordon Grice ponders the meaning of mountain lions in the back yard. In two especially timely pieces, Dennis Overbye looks at the rise and fall of Islamic science, and Anne Matthews explores the ecology of Manhattan. "Although varied in theme and subject, the pieces work well as a set, offering many innovative ideas, theories, critiques, and observations to pay overall tribute to human curiosity," offers Kirkus Reviews.
Also included in this year's collection:
• Malcolm Gladwell on the subversive nonscience of standardized testing
• Joy Williams on lagoon life in Florida
• Gary Greenberg on the confusing concept of brain death
• Blaine Harden on coltan mining in the Congo
• Judith Newman on disappearing cancers
The pieces originally appeared in a variety of publications — Scientific American and Outside, The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine, Smithsonian and the New York Times.
As Angier comments in her introduction to the volume, "Perhaps the clearest sign that science writing has matured and is seated comfortably at the literary dining table is the impressive array of science essayists out there, writers who can convey complex ideas in a few deft, plangent paragraphs. The best essayists appeal simultaneously to the cognitive and emotional domains of the brain . . . so that you feel you have learned something and fallen in love all at once."
Indeed, the 2002 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing provides readers with plenty to learn and love.
Natalie Angier is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of the national bestseller Woman: An Intimate Geography. Her two previous works, The Beauty of the Beastly and Natural Obsessions, were named New York Times Notable Books. She writes for the New York Times, Time, and Discover. Angier lives with her family in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Tim Folger has been an editor and reporter at Discover and Science Digest. He is at work on a book on Navajo code talkers during World War II. Folger lives with his wife in Gallup, New Mexico.
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