The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023
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The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023
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About this listen
Award-winning writer, columnist, and journalists Carl Zimmer selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in 2022.
“What's most compelling about a scientific story is the way it challenges us to think about the concepts we take for granted,” writes guest editor Carl Zimmer in his introduction. The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing probe at the ordinary and urge us to think more deeply about our place in the world around us. From a hopeful portrait of a future for people with Alzheimer’s disease, to a fascinating exploration of the rise of nearsightedness in children, to the heroic story of a herd of cows that evaded a hurricane, these selections reveal how science and nature shape our everyday lives. With tremendous intelligence, clarity, and insight, this anthology offers an expansive look at where we are and where we are headed.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023 includes JESSICA CAMILLE AGUIRRE • VANESSA GREGORY • SABRINA IMBLER FERRIS JABR • MARION RENAULT • ELIZABETH SVOBODA NATALIE WOLCHOVER • SARAH ZHANG and others
©2023 Carl Zimmer and Jaime Green (P)2023 HarperCollins PublishersRelated to this topic
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 290
Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What is Life?
- By Shane S Shull on 04-29-21
By: Carl Zimmer
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The Best American Short Stories 2024
- By: Lauren Groff, Heidi Pitlor
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine, Vikas Adam, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
“There have never been as many exquisitely built stories in existence than there are now,” proclaims guest editor Lauren Groff in her introduction. This abundance led to a volume of robust stories with the nerve to push against narrative expectations. The Best American Short Stories 2024 boasts a collection of twenty stories that “buzz with their own strange logic.” Daring and resonant, the stories in this volume invite in Groff “a feeling that both the author and I were simultaneously discovering something together.”
By: Lauren Groff, and others
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The Possibility of Life
- Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos
- By: Jaime Green
- Narrated by: Jaime Green
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A dazzling journey into the vast depths of life’s meaning!
- By E. McDermott on 08-11-23
By: Jaime Green
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Life as We Know It (Can Be)
- Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World
- By: Bill Weir
- Narrated by: Bill Weir
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
Bill Weir has spent decades telling the stories of unique people, places, cultures, and creatures on the brink of change. As the first Chief Climate Correspondent in network news, he is immersed in the latest scientific warnings and breakthroughs while often on the frontlines of disasters, natural and manmade. After the birth of his son in April 2020, Bill began distilling these experiences into a series of Earth Day letters to his boy, weaving together worry and wonder into a poignant reminder that a better future can still be written.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Honesty …. and Self Actualization!
- By Elizabeth B. Simpson on 09-02-24
By: Bill Weir
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Our Moon
- How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
- By: Rebecca Boyle
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Many of us know that the Moon pulls on our oceans, driving the tides, but did you know that it smells like gunpowder? Or that it was essential to the development of science and religion? Acclaimed journalist Rebecca Boyle takes listeners on a dazzling tour to reveal the intimate role that our 4.51-billion-year-old companion has played in our biological and cultural evolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My first love was the Moon
- By Glenn Johnson on 02-17-24
By: Rebecca Boyle
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The Song of the Cell
- An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Abhishek Sharma
- Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3 out of 5 stars 10
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Performance2.5 out of 5 stars 9
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 9
In the late 1600s, a distinguished English polymath, Robert Hooke, and an eccentric Dutch cloth merchant, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, look down their handmade microscopes. What they see introduces a radical concept that sweeps through biology and medicine, touching virtually every aspect of the two sciences and altering both forever. It is the fact that complex living organisms are assemblages of tiny self-contained, self-regulating units. Our organs, our physiology, our selves—hearts, blood, brains—are built from these compartments. Hooke christens them 'cells'.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The terrible reader.
- By Amazon Customer on 07-30-24
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An Immense World
- How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Ed Yong
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,764
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,476
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,468
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us.
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2 out of 5 stars
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If you’ve never read about the wonder of animal sensory capabilities this is for you
- By MediaBaron on 06-27-22
By: Ed Yong
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Rabbits
- A Novel
- By: Terry Miles
- Narrated by: Christine Lakin
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,213
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,080
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,078
Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses the entire world as its canvas. Since the game started in 1959, 10 iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. The identities of these winners are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more dangerous the game becomes. Players have died in the past - and the body count is rising. And now the 11th round is about to begin.
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1 out of 5 stars
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No, just No
- By Jennifer on 07-14-21
By: Terry Miles
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Wonderful Life
- The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
- By: Stephen Jay Gould
- Narrated by: Jonathan Sleep
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 13
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 11
High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book, Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Science made interesting
- By An Old Crow on 09-13-23
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The Light Eaters
- How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
- By: Zoë Schlanger
- Narrated by: Zoë Schlanger
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 285
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 260
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 260
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Entertaining perhaps but not science.
- By Jerry Miller on 07-31-24
By: Zoë Schlanger