The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000

by Quammen, David

• ISBN13: 9780618082957
• ISBN10: 0618082956
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-26
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

With The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Houghton Mifflin expands its stellar Best American series with a volume that honors our long and distinguished history of publishing the best writers in these fields. 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.

Author Biography

David Quammen has received the National Magazine Award twice, for science essays and other work in Outside, for which he wrote a monthly column for fifteen years. Burkhard Bilger is a senior editor at Discover and has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, and other periodicals.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Introduction: The Vine-Tree	xiii
David Quammen
Men, Women, Sex, and Darwin	1	(13)
Natalie Angier
Back to the Land	14	(8)
Wendell Berry
Africa's Wild Dogs	22	(12)
Richard Conniff
http://www.when_is_enough_enough?.com	34	(14)
Paul De Palma
Something Happened	48	(15)
Helen Epstein
Under Water	63	(4)
Anne Fadiman
The Cancer-Cluster Myth	67	(8)
Atul Gawande
Clock of Ages	75	(12)
Brian Hayes
That Sense of Falling	87	(4)
Edward Hoagland
A New Germ Theory	91	(23)
Judith Hooper
Heavy Grace	114	(2)
Wendy Johnson
The Wisdom of Toads	116	(9)
Ken Lamberton
The Island at the End of the Earth	125	(10)
Peter Matthiessen
Lulu, Queen of the Camels	135	(15)
Cullen Murphy
The Demon in the Freezer	150	(29)
Richard Preston
Brilliant Light	179	(30)
Oliver Sacks
This Is Not the Place	209	(26)
Hampton Sides
Gorilla Warfare	235	(10)
Craig B. Stanford
String Theorists Find a Rosetta Stone	245	(12)
Gary Taubes
Contributors' Notes	257	(4)
Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 1999	261

Excerpts

Foreword Ive never been bird-watching, but after months of searching out these stories in the New York Public Library, of hiking up marble canyons and through stacks of compacted trees, I know how it must feel. One day you see a flash of beguiling color - a lovely opening paragraph, say, or a compelling thesis - only to lose it in a thicket of confusing prose. The next day you stare at something for a moment and dismiss it as ordinary, only to catch your breath when the sun strikes its wings. You might spend hours tracking a familiar singer - be it Andrea Barrett or E. O. Wilson - through card catalog and database, across the mountains of Lexis-Nexis and into the valley of ProQuest Direct, only to find that her or his song hasnt been heard all year. There is no lack of birds, of course, but most are sparrows and grackles, and youre after something rarer and not quite so noisy. The problem, first of all, is deciding what to seek and where to seek it. Great science and nature stories dont come precategorized in official lists. They dont cleave to a single, recognizable form. Their one common trait is longevity - no matter how timely or rich in specific detail, the pieces that follow should still be worth reading in five or ten years, if not longer - but they shouldnt sacrifice immediacy for timelessness, information for reflection. This book is devoted to the best American science and nature writing, David Quammen points out, not the best American science and nature essays. For better or worse, it comes with a wide- angle lens, and so dooms us to more than a few wild-goose chases. There are limits, granted. Does our definition of writing include reports in scientific journals? Poetry? Prose poems? No, no, and no, though some passages by Peter Matthiessen and Anne Fadiman are poetic enough. Does straight reporting count? Yes, we decided, so long as the style is literary and its purpose broader than news gathering. Book excerpts are fine, too, but only if they appeared previously in a magazine and are truly self-contained. (Natalie Angiers essay on evolutionary psychology, taken from Woman: An Intimate Geography, qualifies on both counts.) But novels, commencement addresses, cartoons, and plays - even a Tom Stoppard play on the second law of thermodynamics - fall outside our purview. That covers the basics, but it leaves the thorniest questions unanswered. How broadly do we define science, for instance? Until a year or two ago, a science magazine like Discover rarely published stories on medicine or technology, calling these fields applied science rather than science proper. But that standard seems more arbitrary every year. Quantum physicists have colonized Wall Street and microbiologists have defected to the biotech industry in droves; mathematicians are programming computer games and chemists are creating laundry detergents. Some of the best science stories cover research where you least expect it: in camel racing ("Lu

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