Best American Science and nature writing 2001

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 pieces from hundreds 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” (Entertain ment 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 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 single volume that is both a science reader’s dream and a nature lover’s sustenance.