Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads hundreds of pieces from dozens of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.
This second annual BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING volume, edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, scientist, and naturalist Edward O. Wilson, proves to be another "eclectic, provocative collection" (Entertainment Weekly). The volume highlights writing that ranges from the outer edges of scientific thinking -- Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, imagining "some better answers" to germline engineering -- to the inner life of a field biologist -- Jane Goodall writing on science as ecstasy. Read on for remarkable, timely writing from Gregg Easterbrook, Malcolm Gladwell, Jerome Groopman, Bernd Heinrich, Edward Hoagland, Barbara Kingsolver, Verlyn Klinkenborg, David Quammen, and many more in a volume that is both a science reader's dream and a nature lover's sustenance.