The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 (50 page)

 

Maggie Koerth-Baker
is a freelance science journalist. She writes the monthly column “Eureka” for the
New York Times Magazine
and is also the science editor at
BoingBoing.net
, a technology and culture blog with 6 million monthly readers. In 2012 she published
Before the Lights Go Out
, a book about the future of energy and the United States electric grid.

 

Elizabeth Kolbert
is a staff writer for
The New Yorker
and the author of
The Sixth Extinction
and
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.
She is a two-time National Magazine Award winner and has received a Heinz Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Kolbert lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

 

Joshua Lang
is a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco. He has lived in barns on horse-racing tracks in Chicago, chronicled a Sudanese woman's struggle to find health care in Alaska, slept in underground laboratories in Wisconsin, and trained at an abortion clinic in New Mexico. His writing on social and scientific topics related to medicine has appeared in publications including
The Atlantic
and the
New York Times Magazine.
His academic research focuses on early identification and prevention of chronic diseases in persons living with HIV.

 

Maryn McKenna
is an independent journalist specializing in public health, global health, and food policy. She is a contributing writer for
Wired
and for
National Geographic
's food-writing platform
The Plate
, and she writes for
Scientific American, Nature, Slate, the Guardian, The Atlantic
, and other publications in the United States and Europe. She is the author of the award-winning books
Superbug
, about the global rise of antibiotic resistance, and
Beating Back the Devil
, about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is currently working on a book about food production. She is a senior fellow of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and has been a research fellow at MIT and the University of Michigan.

 

Seth Mnookin
is the associate director of the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing. His most recent book,
The Panic Virus: The True Story of the Vaccine-Autism Controversy
, won the National Association of Science Writers' Science in Society book award in 2012. He is also the author of the 2006 national bestseller
Feeding the Monster
, about the Boston Red Sox, and
Hard News
, about the
New York Times.
He lives with his wife, their two children, and their nine-year-old adopted pit bull in Brookline, Massachusetts.

 

“Each life is an encyclopedia,” wrote Italo Calvino. “A library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles.” With such inspiration stuffed deep in his pouch,
Justin Nobel
has begun a project he calls The Decalogy, a set of ten books on topics close to the heart. He's presently at work on the second book, a string of vignettes from forgotten small towns of the American South, as well as the third, a collection of tales about the weather. Nobel lives in New Orleans with MissKarret and Jazzy-B, Fern, Ishtar, and Lady Sal.

 

Fred Pearce
is a longtime journalist and author on issues of the environment and development. He is an environment consultant at
New Scientist
and a regular contributor to
Yale e360.
His books include
The Coming Population Crash, When the Rivers Run Dry
, and
The Landgrabbers.

 

Corey S. Powell
is editor at large at
Discover
magazine, where he writes the “Out There” column and blog. He is also the acting editor of
American Scientist
and a visiting scholar at NYU's Science Health and Environmental Reporting Program. His writing appears in
Smithsonian, Popular Science
, and
Slate
in addition to
Nautilus.
He is the author of
God in the Equation
, an exploration of the spiritual impulse in modern cosmology.

 

Roy Scranton
's writing has appeared in the
New York Times, Boston Review, Sierra Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Theory & Event, Kenyon Review, The Appendix
, and other periodicals. He edited and contributed to
Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War
, an anthology of literary fiction by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and is currently working on a book-length version of “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene,” to be published in 2015. Scranton lives in New York and is finishing a PhD in English at Princeton.

 

Kate Sheppard
is a senior reporter and the environment and energy editor at the
Huffington Post.
She previously reported for
Mother Jones, Grist
, and the
American Prospect.
Her reporting has been recognized with awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), the Online News Association, and Planned Parenthood, and she is a board member of SEJ. She was raised on a vegetable farm in New Jersey but now calls Washington, DC, home.

 

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, nature writer
Bill Sherwonit
has called Alaska home since 1982. He has contributed essays and articles to a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, journals, and anthologies and is the author of more than a dozen books. His most recent books include
Living with Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey
and
Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska's Arctic Wilderness
. A collection of his essays,
Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska's Wildlife
will be published in fall 2014
.
See
www.billsherwonit.alaskawriters.com
.

 

Rebecca Solnit
is the author of fifteen books about environment, landscape, community, art, politics, hope, and memory, including
The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking;
and
River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
(for which she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and a Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a contributing editor to
Harper's Magazine
and a frequent contributor to the political site
Tomdispatch.com
.

 

David Treuer
is an Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the author of three novels, a book of criticism, and, most recently, a major work of nonfiction entitled
Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life.
His work has appeared in
Harper's Magazine, Esquire, Orion
, the
Washington Post
, the
New York Times
, and the
Los Angeles Times.

 

Edward Osborne Wilson
is generally recognized as one of the leading biologists in the world. He is acknowledged as the creator of two scientific disciplines (island biogeography and sociobiology), three unifying concepts for science and the humanities jointly (biophilia, biodiversity studies, and consilience), and one major technological advance in the study of global biodiversity (the Encyclopedia of Life). Among more than one hundred awards he has received worldwide are the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Crafoord Prize (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, for ecology) of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the International Prize of Biology of Japan; in letters, he has received two Pulitzer prizes in nonfiction, the Nonino and Serono prizes of Italy, and the International Cosmos Prize of Japan. He is currently Honorary Curator in Entomology and University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University.

 

Carl Zimmer
is a columnist for the
New York Times
and writes features and a blog for
National Geographic.
He is the author of twelve books, including
Parasite Rex
and
Evolution: Making Sense of Life
, a textbook he coauthored with the biologist Doug Emlen. He has won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award three times and has also won the National Academies Communication Award. A lecturer at Yale University, Zimmer lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with his wife, Grace Zimmer, and their two daughters.

S
ELECTED BY
T
IM
F
OLGER

 

N
ATALIE
A
NGIER

The Changing American Family.
New York Times.
November 25

 

N
ICHOLSON
B
AKER

A Fourth State of Matter.
The New Yorker.
July 8 and 15

R
ICK
B
ASS

Answering the Call.
Tricycle.
Fall

A
NDREW
B
EAHRS

Three-Stone Fire.
Virginia Quarterly Review.
Fall

Y
UDHIJIT
B
HATTACHARJEE

Death of a Star.
Science.
January 4

Mr. Borucki's Lonely Road to Light.
Science.
May 3

B
URKHARD
B
ILGER

The Martian Chronicles.
The New Yorker.
April 22

G
EORGE
B
LACK

Buried Treasure: The New Global Gold Rush.
On Earth.
Winter

P
AUL
B
LOOM

The Ways of Lust.
New York Times.
November 29

 

E
VE
C
ONANT

Russia's New Empire: Nuclear Power.
Scientific American.
October

R
ICHARD
C
ONNIFF

The Grand Animal Costume Party.
New York Times.
October 25

 

L
IAM
D
REW

The Scrotum Is Nuts.
Slate.
July 8

 

K
ATIE
F
ALLON

Rebirth.
River Teeth.
Fall

A
DAM
F
RANK

Welcome to the Age of Denial.
New York Times.
August 21

McK
ENZIE
F
UNK

Glaciers for Sale.
Harper's Magazine.
July

 

R
IVKA
G
ALCHEN

Every Disease on Earth.
The New Yorker.
May 13

T
ED
G
ENOWAYS

The Woman Who Loves Orcas.
On Earth.
Spring

D
AVID
G
ESSNER

Down by the Seaside with Dr. Doom.
Outside.
November

P
ETER
G
ODFREY
-S
MITH

On Being an Octopus.
Boston Review.
June 3

D
ANIEL
G
OLEMAN

Rich People Just Care Less.
New York Times.
October 5

 

A
ARON
H
IRSH

Songbirds in the Suburbs.
Nautilus.
Fall

J
ESSE
H
IRSCH

Space Farming: The Final Frontier.
Modern Farmer.
September 10

E
DWARD
H
OAGLAND

Pity Earth's Creatures.
New York Times.
March 23

D
AN
H
URLEY

Fate vs. Trait.
Discover.
May

 

R
OBERT
I
RION

It All Began in Chaos.
National Geographic.
July

 

R
AY
J
AYAWARDHANA

Listen Up, It's Neutrino Time.
New York Times.
December 13

 

V
ERLYN
K
LINKENBORG

Hey, You Calling Me an Invasive Species?
New York Times.
September 7

A
NNA
K
UCHMENT

The End of Orange Juice.
Scientific American.
March

M
EINARD
K
UHLMANN

What Is Real?
Scientific American.
August

 

J
ARON
L
ANIER

How Should We Think About Privacy?
Scientific American.
November

M
ICHAEL
D. L
EMONICK

Dawn of Distant Skies.
Scientific American.
July

 

C
HARLES
C. M
ANN

What If We Never Run Out of Oil?
The Atlantic.
May

A
MANDA
M
ASCARELLI

Growing Up with Pesticides.
Science.
August 16

B
ILL
McK
IBBEN

A Moral Atmosphere.
Orion.
March/April

K
ENNETH
M
ILLER

Mushroom Manifesto.
Discover.
July/August

J
OHN
M
OIR

Nature's Blinded Visionaries.
Catamaran.
Spring

M
ITCH
M
OXLEY

The Rat Hunters of New York.
Roads & Kingdoms.
2013

 

N
ICK
N
EELY

The Edge Effect.
Missouri Review.
Winter