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A review by pearseanderson
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 by Tim Folger, Hope Jahren
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.