The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007

Couldn't finish. Richard Preston must have been in a rotten mood when he chose these essays: picking through Roman sewers, giant floating piles of trash, how terrorists might access nuclear material.

I love this series, man. Always chock full of really interesting, thought-provoking pieces.

The Best American Series is an anthology published yearly by Houghton Mifflin of articles that appeared in magazines over the past year - it's kind of a "best of" for magazine articles, in case you didn't get a chance to read 100s of magazines this past year. This one is for science and nature, but they also have them for fiction, travel, comics, etc.. The first was for fiction since 1915, but starting around 2000 they really expanded the line, including one that has blog articles(!). The Science and Nature Writing series began in 2000 so this is the seventh book. It is my first of the Best American series, of which I hope there will be many more on my shelf.

There are 28 articles by 28 authors arranged in alphabetic order by the authors show more last name. It is a box of surprises and a bag of chips - one never knows what comes up next, once you start it's hard to stop. It's unlike a short story anthology, it's a unique experience to read magazine articles in book form without the glossy pictures, narrow columns and advertisements, it is easier and more enjoyable, sort of like Tivo, with the best of TV distilled down and all the commercials removed.

Articles about science often don't have longevity since things naturally change rapidly, and this book does have a few articles about current events that in a few years will be outdated, but most of the articles have longer appeal that will last at least another decade, and some are timeless in scope and artistic appeal. The articles are written for a popular audience, so for the general reader, they are easily accessible small windows into what's going on in the world today.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd show less

Is the Michael Perry from the blurb my favorite, [a:Michael Perry|2772479|Michael Perry|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1231631186p2/2772479.jpg]?!