The Best American Science and Nature Writing

[craig]

Have you considered an afterword? You could discuss questions raised by the pieces and how they might connect. For example, this year:
1.How does the Coming Death Shortage relate to the lack of autopsies? As people live longer will we just conclude they wore out and do even fewer?
2. Given the speed of commerce, ala BitTorrent and other factors, will we be able to control antibotic resistance in a world where people self medicate more often and can get drugs shipped from anywhere in the world?

I'm sure you and the guest editor could come up with better questions.

You could also use the afterword to provoke an on-line discussion among the writers and readers.

A couple of small comments- I have to hope that the Mysteries of Mass piece had diagrams or illustrations in the original- for the quantum impaired, could you include the link to the articles like it in the book or on-line here? (Yes, I could look it up.)

Overall- I liked this year, but I note the ongoing trend the last few years that it is The Best American SCIENCE and less nature- I'd like to see more pieces that relate to the natural world.

[tim]

Hi Craig,

I like your idea about the afterword; I'll talk about it with Houghton Mifflin's publishing staff.

As for illustrations, I agree, they would be extremely helpful, but the series has a limited budget so I don't think that will happen any time soon, unless the books suddenly start topping the bestseller lists....

I also agree that we need to feature more nature writing. Part of the dearth this year I think was due to the tastes of our guest editor, Brian Greene, who naturally enough prefers articles from the hard-core-science end of the writing spectrum.

Tim

[craig]

who naturally enough prefers articles
Very funny.

[tim]

Completely unintentional!