Read The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 Online
Authors: Mary Roach
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Ian Frazier
is the author of
Great Plains, The Fish's Eye, On the Rez,
and
Family
, as well as
Coyote v. Acme, Lamentations of the Father,
and, most recently,
Travels in Siberia.
A frequent contributor to
The New Yorker,
he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
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David H. Freedman
writes on health, science, and technology for a number of publications. He is the author of
Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us,
and four other books.
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Atul Gawande
is a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a staff writer at
The New Yorker.
He is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He also leads Lifebox, a not-for-profit organization, and the World Health Organization's Safe Surgery Saves Lives program. He is the author of three books:
Complications, Better,
and
The Checklist Manifesto.
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Malcolm Gladwell
is the author of
What the Dog Saw, Outliers: The Story of Success, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,
and
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,
all
New York Times
bestsellers. Gladwell has been a staff writer with
The New Yorker
since 1996. In 2007 he received the American Sociological Association's first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues, and in 2005 he was named one of
Time
's 100 Most Influential People. Gladwell was born in England, grew up in rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City.
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Andrew Grant
is a reporter at
Discover
who especially enjoys writing about physics and astronomy. He is a recent graduate of the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University and lives in New York City.
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Stephen Hawking
has worked on the basic laws that govern the universe. With Roger Penrose, he showed that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity implied that space and time would have a beginning in the big bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated that it was necessary to unify general relativity with quantum theory. One consequence of such a unification, he discovered, was that black holes should not be completely black but rather should emit radiation and eventually disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. He has written three popular books: his bestseller
A Brief History of Time, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, The Universe in a Nutshell,
and, most recently,
The Grand Design.
Professor Hawking has twelve honorary degrees. He was awarded the CBE in 1982 and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. The recipient of many awards, medals, and prizes, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He continues to combine family life (he has three children and three grandchildren) and research into theoretical physics with an extensive program of travel and public lectures.
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Amy Irvine
lives in southwestern Colorado. Her second book,
Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land,
won the 2009 Orion Book Award and the 2009 Colorado Book Award.
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Rowan Jacobsen
writes about place and how it shapes ecosystems, cultures, cuisines, and us. His quest to capture the spirit of place and people has led him from the volcanic mountains of Mexico to the misty marshes of Alaska's Yukon Delta, from the bayous of Louisiana to the rivers of Amazonia. He has written for the
New York Times, Harper's Magazine, Newsweek, Outside, Sierra,
and others. He is the author of
A Geography of Oysters,
which won a James Beard Award;
Fruitless Fall
, which received the 2009 Green Prize for Sustainable Literature;
The Living Shore;
and
American Terroir,
which was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by
Library Journal
. His newest book is
Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland,
which began life as "The Spill Seekers."
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Christopher Ketcham
has written for
Harper's Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Orion, Vanity Fair, GQ CounterPunch,
and many other magazines and websites. Find more of his work at
www.christopherketcham.com
or contact him at
[email protected]
.
Â
Dan Koeppel
is the author of
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
and a contributor to
Popular Mechanics, Wired,
and
National Geographic.
He lives in Los Angeles, where he mostly travels by bike and bus. His website is
www.dankoeppel.com
.
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Jaron Lanier
, a partner architect at Microsoft Research and an innovator in residence at the Annenberg School of the University of Southern California, is the author most recently of
You Are Not a Gadget.
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Leonard Mlodinow
received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, and was on the physics faculty at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of seven books, which have appeared in twenty-five languages. His book
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
was a
New York Times
bestseller and was short listed for the Royal Society Book Award. His most recent book is
The Grand Design,
coauthored with Stephen Hawking. He has also written for television, including
MacGyver; Star Trek, the Next Generation;
and the comedy
Night Court.
He lives in South Pasadena, California.
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Jon Mooallem
has been a contributing writer to the
New York Times Magazine
since 2006 and is currently working on a book, to be published by Penguin Press, about people and wild animals in America. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.
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George Musser
is a staff editor and writer for
Scientific American,
where he focuses mostly (though not exclusively) on space science and fundamental physics. He was one of the lead editors for the magazine's single-topic issue "A Matter of Time" (September 2002), which won a National Magazine Award for editorial excellence, and he coordinated the single-topic issue on sustainable development "Crossroads for Planet Earth" (September 2005), which was an Ellie finalist. In 2010 he received the Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award from the American Astronomical Society. His first book,
The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory,
was published in 2008.
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Jill Sisson Quinn
is the author of
Deranged: Finding a Sense of Place in the Landscape and in the Lifespan.
Her essays have appeared in
Fourth Genre, Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone,
and elsewhere. She won the Annie Dillard Award in Creative Nonfiction in 2003 and the John Burroughs Award for an Outstanding Published Nature Essay in 2011. Her essays have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Scandinavia, Wisconsin. Quinn's website is
www.jillsissonquinn.com
.
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Oliver Sacks
is a physician and the author of eleven books, including
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
and
Musicophilia,
in which he describes patients struggling to adapt to various neurological conditions. His book
Awakenings
inspired the Oscar-nominated film of the same name and the play
A Kind of Alaska
by Harold Pinter. He practices neurology in New York City, where he is also a Columbia University Artist.
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Evan I. Schwartz
lives in Boston and writes about discovery and innovation. He is a former editor at
BusinessWeek
and
Technology Review
and is the author of five books, including
The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit & the Birth of Television.
His first article for
Wired
appeared in 1994.
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Sandra Steingraber
, PhD, is the author of
Living Downstream: An Ecologist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment,
now the subject of an award-winning documentary. Her most recent book,
Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis,
explores the relationship between fossil fuel extraction, including fracking, and toxic chemical exposure and concludes that the ongoing environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of family life. A scholar in residence at Ithaca College, she lives with her husband and children in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, where 40 percent of the land is leased to gas drillers.
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Abigail Tucker
has been a
Smithsonian
staff writer since 2008. Previously she was a general assignment reporter for the
Baltimore Sun
and the
Post-Star,
in Glens Falls, New York. She lives in Washington, DC.
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Tim Zimmermann
is a correspondent for
Outside
and the founder and editor of the weekly
Adventure Fix
newsletter. He is a former senior editor and diplomatic correspondent for
U.S. News & World Report
and the author of
The Race: The First Nonstop, Round-the-World, No-Holds-Barred Sailing Competition.
He has been a National Magazine Award finalist (in the category of feature writing) and has received the Thomas Renner Award (for outstanding reporting on organized crime) from Investigative Reporters and Editors. Tim lives in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife and two children.
A
NIL
A
NANTHASWAMY
Ice Fishing for Neutrinos.
Discover.
March.
Â
M
ICHAEL
B
ALTER
Anthropologist Brings Worlds Together.
Science.
August 13.
B
RUCE
B
ARCOTT
What's the Catch?
OnEarth.
Summer.
R
ICK
B
ASS
Into the Wild Again.
OnEarth.
Fall.
M
ATTHEW
B
ATTLES
A New Wrinkle in Time.
The Atlantic.
November.
J
ESSICA
B
ENKO
Mother of God, Child of Zeus.
VQR.
Fall.
T
IM
B
ERNERS
-L
EE
Long Live the Web.
Scientific American.
December.
J
ENNIFER
B
OGO
Digital Sight for the Blind.
Popular Mechanics.
November.
K
ENNETH
B
ROWER
The Danger of Cosmic Genius.
The Atlantic.
December.
D. G
RAHAM
B
URNETT
A Mind in the Water.
Orion.
May/June.
Â
C
RAIG
C
ALLENDER
Is Time an Illusion?
Scientific American.
June.
A
DRIAN
C
HO
Probing the Secrets of the Finest Fiddles.
Science.
June 18.
M
ARK
C
OHEN
My Illegal Heart.
Men's Health.
April.
K
ATE
C
OLEMAN
Predator.
Sierra.
May/June.
R
ICHARD
C
ONNIFF
Unclassified.
Discover.
June.
All-American Monsters.
Smithsonian.
April.
S
USAN
C
OISER
Band of Brothers.
Audubon.
May/June.
K
EN
C
ROSWELL
Heart of the Milky Way.
National Geographic.
December.
Â
E
DWIN
D
OBB
Alaska's Choice.
National Geographic.
December.
M
ARK
D
OWIE
Relocating Newtok.
Orion.
November/December.
G
ARETH
D
YKE
Winged Victory.
Scientific American.
July.
Â
B
LAKE
E
DGAR
The Power of Chocolate.
Archaeology.
November/December.
Â
D
OUGLAS
F
OX
The Insanity Virus.
Discover.
June.
M
CKENZIE FUNK
A Mountain Transformed.
National Geographic.
May.
Â
J
EFFREY
G
OLDBERG
The Hunted.
The New Yorker.
April 5.
A
LISON
G
OPNIK
How Babies Think.
Scientific American.
July.
P
AUL
G
REENBERG
Time for a Sea Change.
National Geographic.
October.
J
EROME
G
ROOPMAN
The Plastic Panic.
The New Yorker.
May 31.
E
LIZABETH
G
ROSSMAN
Trading Places.
Earth Island Journal.
Summer.
Â
F
RED
H
AEFELE
Beetlemania.
Outside.
August.
R
OBIN
M
ARANTZ
H
ENIG
When Does Life Belong to the Living?
Scientific American.
September.
P
AUL
H
OFFMAN
Unbelievable.
Discover.
October.
J
OHN
H
ORGAN
Reconciling Hawks and Doves: On the Possibility of Ending War.
Ecotone.