This is a wonderful collection of essays about science Here, the word science is loosely defined, and includes a grab bag of topics, all absolutely fascinating Here I learned that the explosion of BP s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was not the worst aspect of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico The disaster was worsened by BP s actions cover up, and terrible clean up operations that worsened the disaster instead of mitigating it BP used a chemical called Corexit to disperse the oil in and above the w [...]

Short essays in all fields of science and medicine Nearly every one of them captured my attention at some level Everything from an essay calculating how far it is possible for a human to hit a baseball to why some of us are human pack rats to a description of some Americans with extremely bizarre appetites to dispensing of medical care on the streets of India All 21 of the essays are well written, easy to understand and stimulate the curious mind My favorites are those that cover topics in my pr [...]

As you might expect from a collection like this, you may need to put your cell phone on silent and put the TV on mute you re about to get some learnin Although not every essay is heady or stuffed with esoteric lexicon of the hard sciences, some of them grapple with subjects that, if you wield no working knowledge of its focus, you may feel the vertigo of information overflow likely to happen in a max of 3 essays that mostly deal with microbiology.This is not a very large collection there are onl [...]

A decent collection of science writing, although a bit on the bleak side The first three stories were about the author discovering he is a hoarder, a father being kept alive by pacemaker while suffering dementia, and a mother who has two sons diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, and her attempts to procure funding for research What s great about these articles is that even when they occasionally get technical, they never feel too pretentious or bogged down.

I love this series and always find it thought provoking and full of good writing this year is no exception The pieces on hoarding written by a hoarder and the craziness of medical care for the elderly and our messed up health care system were especially good Very recommended.

While some of the stories were a bit boring, most of them especially The Mess He Made were quite interesting

Good times Pick this up and learn about the following, and The incredibly sad story of a pacemaker extending a family s suffering and a look at the policies and ethics of life extension etc A mother sets out to slow or cure a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy Duchenne to save people from the disease that killed her sons She fights hard to change the minds and policies of doctors and administrators, and to fight against a corrupt and broken financially motivated medical system Incidentally, an int [...]

Really interesting collection of reprinted articles on science related topics taken from mainly non scientific magazines and newspapers New Yorker, NYT, Washington Post, Vanity Fair etc Covers topics as diverse as Deepwater Horizon, the psychopathology of hoarding, technological advances in the fight against TB, mathematical models of the behaviour of terrorist groups, moronic weathercasters in the US who don t know the difference between weather and climate and are providing unwitting assistanc [...]

This is one of the best anthologies I ve ever read Rebecca and Floyd Skloot gathered some of the most engaging and compelling pieces of science writing in this volume my favorites include The Animal Cruelty Syndrome by Charles Siebert, Mother Courage by John Colapinto, and The Estrogen Dilemma by Cynthia Gorney It s hard to review anthologies, because by nature they are fragmented and composed of so many different styles, but this extremely digestible volume is a must read for anyone who is even [...]

I obviously like the Best American series since I have ten volumes from six different series on my bookshelf here I have of them on my real wooden bookcases, that I glance through from time to time I know that trying to keep up with these series is an impossible task, but I keep acquiring them.I suspect family and friends would prefer that I didn t read this kind of book My inclination when I learn new facts that are fascinating to me, is to share them with anyone within earshot So while I was [...]

The standouts in the collection were Charles Homans s unsettling expose Hot Air, on TV weathercasters conservative and anti scientific views of global warming and climate change and their tendency to apply metereological models to climatological events Cynthia Gorney s The Estrogen Dilemma on new medical thinking on estrogen replacement therapy since the Women s Health Initiative and some vital missing and mis information that has not been corrected in the public s minds the particularly well wr [...]

A very well curated collection of science essays spanning from perennial sources The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Discover to Vanity Fair and Mother Jones to the Speakeasy Science and Not Exactly Rocket Science blogs Great breadth of sources.Must read articles include What Broke My Father s Heart included in The Best American Essays 2011, BP s Dark Secrets , The Estrogen Dilemma this one is really good, I took a course in clinical epidemiology from one of the original researchers [...]

Good collection of informative and thought provoking articles.The article about why TV weathermen are sceptical about climate change was particularly scary Two of the common arguments against the reality of climate change go like this Argument 1 If temperatures are gradually going up, why are we getting such severe winters Argument 2 Weather is notoriously variable and hard to predict How can you be confident you ve found this small signal you re calling climate change in all the normal noise of [...]

Somehow I missed this one and had to double back another fine anthology of popular science writing, with the highlights being pieces on the psychological basis of hoarding, the damage done by many TV weather people being climate change deniers, the connection between domestic and animal abuse, Cary Grant s therapy using LSD, the statistician responsible for tracking catastrophic high school sports injuries, how gut bacteria acquired from eating nori helps many Japanese extract better nutrition f [...]

The Mess He Made author s personal experience with hoarding Not very science y, but interesting What Broke My Father s Heart another personal essay, about the downside of a pacemaker artificially extending the life of an elderly man unable to care for himself after a stroke Powerful informative.

Always like this series.

Definitely worth a read

Well worth reading, the articles are still timely I recommend it.