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biolexicon's review
5.0
I've read a fair number in this series, and I usually give them four stars since the collection tends to have about the same number of hits and misses.
This was almost all hits. What a selection, I couldn't be more impressed.
This was almost all hits. What a selection, I couldn't be more impressed.
balletbookworm's review
5.0
Excellent collection of essays selected by Hope Jahren, not only about the science but about the lives and events behind the scientists. Of particular importance are two essays about the sexual harassment that women suffer in the sciences (apparently it is hard to conduct one’s self in an appropriate professional manner ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, which is completely not hard at all, ugh why are men. Don’t bother @ing me). Highly recommend.
m_chisholm's review
4.0
This edition of the Best American Nature and Science Writing was published just before the inauguration of Trump started to work back the major progress that Obama's administration had made in protecting and preserving the environment and halting the advance of climate change. It was curious to read these stories in the middle of 2020 when there is so much cynicism and feelings of betrayal from both me and many of my friends about where our natural world is heading.
The major contributions for this edition revolved around the work of astrophysicists and women in science in general. Hope Jahren (editor) did a wonderful job getting the easily buried stories of women in science to the fore, and there is a much-needed bias of getting these scientific "Joans-of-Arc" to the forefront of our environmental attention.
My favorite in the collection was Kathryn Joyce's "Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream," a damning account of how the National Park Service has slowly allowed a dark world of male-dominated harassment culture, victim-blaming, and toxic masculinity to perpetuate in the culture surrounding our natural treasures. A close second was Christopher Solomon's "The Devil is in the Details," another incredible exposé about how hard it is for wilderness advocates and industrialists to reach a spirit of compromise with how the land should be used.
Overall, the 2017 edition was an incredible collection whose stories make me sad that it seems like the work that many of these scientists were doing has stagnated in terms of official policy changes.
The major contributions for this edition revolved around the work of astrophysicists and women in science in general. Hope Jahren (editor) did a wonderful job getting the easily buried stories of women in science to the fore, and there is a much-needed bias of getting these scientific "Joans-of-Arc" to the forefront of our environmental attention.
My favorite in the collection was Kathryn Joyce's "Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream," a damning account of how the National Park Service has slowly allowed a dark world of male-dominated harassment culture, victim-blaming, and toxic masculinity to perpetuate in the culture surrounding our natural treasures. A close second was Christopher Solomon's "The Devil is in the Details," another incredible exposé about how hard it is for wilderness advocates and industrialists to reach a spirit of compromise with how the land should be used.
Overall, the 2017 edition was an incredible collection whose stories make me sad that it seems like the work that many of these scientists were doing has stagnated in terms of official policy changes.
pearseanderson's review
4.0
This book was a gift from Gaby Parlapiano! Thank you.
Hope Jahren was a stellar voice for this year's volume. At a time when science seems ever more emotional, personal, and at risk of attack, Jahren gives us essays about scientists inner lives, their associations, uplifts, and struggles, and great power whether they are administrators or citizens. So, the third section of this book is great, yeah. The first two sections are also good, but I dunno, some of them made me question why they were chosen. This year's anthology had a ton of science, and if their was nature writing it was the type found in an Oxford or Scientific American anthology, not a Chelsea Green one. Y'know?
Best pieces: The Art of Saving Relics; The Secrets of Wave Pilots; The Invisible Catastrophe; How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics; Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream. Quality quality quality quality quality.
This book gave me some new appreciations for science, environmentalism, and oft-forgotten bureaucrats of those fields. Certainly taught me a lot more than some classes of ENVS 201. And even when I didn't enjoy pieces, I just jumped to the next one, or I thought about why. And that was interesting. There were a bunch of examples of pieces that did so many things well, but if they just had a touch more Nieman's, they might have become something else.
Hope Jahren was a stellar voice for this year's volume. At a time when science seems ever more emotional, personal, and at risk of attack, Jahren gives us essays about scientists inner lives, their associations, uplifts, and struggles, and great power whether they are administrators or citizens. So, the third section of this book is great, yeah. The first two sections are also good, but I dunno, some of them made me question why they were chosen. This year's anthology had a ton of science, and if their was nature writing it was the type found in an Oxford or Scientific American anthology, not a Chelsea Green one. Y'know?
Best pieces: The Art of Saving Relics; The Secrets of Wave Pilots; The Invisible Catastrophe; How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics; Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream. Quality quality quality quality quality.
This book gave me some new appreciations for science, environmentalism, and oft-forgotten bureaucrats of those fields. Certainly taught me a lot more than some classes of ENVS 201. And even when I didn't enjoy pieces, I just jumped to the next one, or I thought about why. And that was interesting. There were a bunch of examples of pieces that did so many things well, but if they just had a touch more Nieman's, they might have become something else.
josh_caporale's review
4.0
I really enjoy reading these essays that are featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, as I did during 2016, and while I saw more standouts then, there were still some standouts in this collection that caught my attention and made me think.
Some of the standouts included:
"How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics" by Tom Philpott- In this essay, Philpott explores the detrimental impact of the meat industry and the use of antibiotics. There is some hope, though, as companies are making efforts to do away with using antibiotics in chicken that is being bred and made into food. It will take time for chicken to be completely antibiotic-free, though, and if the same efforts were made with pork and beef, it would take even more time.
"The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone" by Becca Cudmore- Cudmore makes an effort to debunk the idea that city rats are burdens and carry a great deal of diseases in the general human population.
"The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth" by Chris Jones- This essay is about Sara Seager and her research and discoveries in finding an Earthlike planet that can provide for and house living species. A great deal of detail is placed on Seager as well.
"The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort of) Rattled the Scientific Community" by Jon Mooallem- In this essay, we learn about Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who put together a magazine that he saw as a second thought and was "a magazine about nothing," but a fascination with clouds led to further research that would make him a serious figure in the world of science.
"The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene" by David Epstein- The most fascinating article in the 2017 collection of The Best American Science and Nature Writing was a piece about Jill Viles, who spent her life with muscular dystrophy and how she saw symptoms of hers and a particular gene of hers in an Olympic sprinter by the name of Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. While Lopes-Schliep seemed like a complete opposite, the results to Viles research turn out to be mindblowing. The same can be said about DIY research Viles engaged in which she learned about a heart condition her father happened to have, but know nothing about.
This collection as explores the impact of sexual harassment in the field of science and nature, in particular the articles "He Fell in Love with His Grad Student- Then Fired Her for It" by Azeen Ghorayshi and "Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream" by Kathryn Joyce. Both of these essays show heinous accounts of sexual desire getting into the way of forward progress or the ability to examine what science and nature has to offer. Works on this topic are also examined in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018.
I feel as if I get a great sense of everything going on when it comes to science and nature when reading these essays and the works in here provide a great sense of substance and backing to them, especially the works I highlighted as standouts. I would like to see some more standouts in the 2018 issue and perhaps the 2019 issue if I get to it this year, but if the editors are able to collect the best articles from a great deal of American publications throughout the year, there is certainly going to be someone that responds with wonder and is filled with contemporary knowledge.
Some of the standouts included:
"How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics" by Tom Philpott- In this essay, Philpott explores the detrimental impact of the meat industry and the use of antibiotics. There is some hope, though, as companies are making efforts to do away with using antibiotics in chicken that is being bred and made into food. It will take time for chicken to be completely antibiotic-free, though, and if the same efforts were made with pork and beef, it would take even more time.
"The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone" by Becca Cudmore- Cudmore makes an effort to debunk the idea that city rats are burdens and carry a great deal of diseases in the general human population.
"The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth" by Chris Jones- This essay is about Sara Seager and her research and discoveries in finding an Earthlike planet that can provide for and house living species. A great deal of detail is placed on Seager as well.
"The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort of) Rattled the Scientific Community" by Jon Mooallem- In this essay, we learn about Gavin Pretor-Pinney, who put together a magazine that he saw as a second thought and was "a magazine about nothing," but a fascination with clouds led to further research that would make him a serious figure in the world of science.
"The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene" by David Epstein- The most fascinating article in the 2017 collection of The Best American Science and Nature Writing was a piece about Jill Viles, who spent her life with muscular dystrophy and how she saw symptoms of hers and a particular gene of hers in an Olympic sprinter by the name of Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. While Lopes-Schliep seemed like a complete opposite, the results to Viles research turn out to be mindblowing. The same can be said about DIY research Viles engaged in which she learned about a heart condition her father happened to have, but know nothing about.
This collection as explores the impact of sexual harassment in the field of science and nature, in particular the articles "He Fell in Love with His Grad Student- Then Fired Her for It" by Azeen Ghorayshi and "Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream" by Kathryn Joyce. Both of these essays show heinous accounts of sexual desire getting into the way of forward progress or the ability to examine what science and nature has to offer. Works on this topic are also examined in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018.
I feel as if I get a great sense of everything going on when it comes to science and nature when reading these essays and the works in here provide a great sense of substance and backing to them, especially the works I highlighted as standouts. I would like to see some more standouts in the 2018 issue and perhaps the 2019 issue if I get to it this year, but if the editors are able to collect the best articles from a great deal of American publications throughout the year, there is certainly going to be someone that responds with wonder and is filled with contemporary knowledge.
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