Book Description
Together these twenty-one articles on a wide range of today's most leading topics in science, from Dennis Overbye, Jonathan Weiner, and Richard Preston, among others, represent the full spectrum of scientific inquiry, proving once again that "good science writing is evidently plentiful" (American Scientist).
Customer Reviews:
really good.......2007-10-06
This is the first edition of this series that I have read. It's pretty good, although, this is more science reporting than science writing. There is a difference, but the articles were well researched and interesting. And they cover a wide variety of topics. Not as good as the Best American Science and Nature Writing, but a great layman's source for the world of science.
Yay for science!.......2007-06-23
Delivers what it promises; engaging informative scientific papers from the year. Good read! These books get better every year
Good essays, on average.......2007-06-12
The overall result is positive, some essays not that good, some nice, and a few nicer. By the end, it is worth to go through them and discover one by one.
Good Anthology.......2007-01-25
This is a good anthology of high quality science journalism. Most of the writers are professional journalists, some with strong scientific backgrounds, but two of the better pieces are by well known biologists, the evolutionary biologist Allen Orr and the primatologist Frans de Wall. All the pieces are written well and all are at least good, though some are clearly better than others. Some, like the piece on obesity, have been dated by recently emerging data, but the best ones, are quite enjoyable reading.
Easy-to-Read, Interesting Science Writing.......2007-01-14
You don't even have to be an avid science reader to enjoy the 21 well-written science stories contained in this book. I enjoy reading scientific articles in science publications, but admit that they can be dry at times. Science and technical writing can also be choppy, full of jargon, and difficult to read. This is not the case with this book. The writing flows smoothly making the reading simple and enjoyable. The other aspect that I like about The Best American Science Writing 2006 is that I learn new information about our environment. Topics covered in the book are current and relevant to our lives.
The article, Climbing in the Redwoods by Richard Preston, introduces the reader to a sub-environment within our environment that only a handful of people could ever experience themselves. In The Coming Death Shortage, Charles Mann discusses the potential results of our ever-increasing lifespans. At the retail price of $14.95, this book is a bargain. You would pay much more if you were buying these articles individually in magazines.
Book Description
The college version of The Best American Essays, Fourth Edition, is acollection of essays for first-year composition courses, loosely arrangedby broad aims of discourse, including narrative, informative, andargumentative essays. In addition to its rhetorical organization, thereader also offers flexibility for instructors who prefer a thematic oralphabetical organization. The editor introduces students to various typesof essays, followed by commentary from well-known writers on such subjectsas "Essayists Must Tell the Truth" and "Essays Are Not ScientificDocuments." The 36 essays are presented in this volume with streamlinedapparatus, including brief general and biographical introductions for eachessay, followed by three straightforward questions for reflection. Thishandy, slim volume of literary-quality essays has become a classic forcollege writing courses.
The editor has selected these essays from the popular annually updatedHoughton Mifflin Best American Essays trade series based on theirappropriateness for college writing programs. The essays are organized bycategory—personal, informative, and persuasive—to reflect the typesof writing most often taught in introductory and even advanced composition courses.
- New! One-third new readings include recent essays by Gary Wills, David Halberstam, Ashraf Rushdy, Edwidge Danticat, Danielle Ofri, Rebecca McClanahan, and Anne Fadiman.
- New! The general introduction, "Encountering the Essay," examines the essayas a genre and provides context for student writers.
- New! The "Essayists on the Essay" section features well-known writers sharingtheir perspectives on writing and reading essays. The section contains acollection of commentaries from the guest-editors of the trade series,including Annie Dillard, Joseph Epstein, Elizabeth Hardwick, andJustin Kaplan.
- New! Each selection is preceded by a biographical headnote and followed by abrief set of questions for class discussion or writing.
- New! An end-of-book section entitled "Alternative Arrangements" provides flexibleoptions for constructing a course syllabus in three additional ways:organized by rhetorical modes, literary and journalistic techniques,and contemporary issues.
Book Description
Tim Cahill writes in his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2006, "'Story' is the essence of the travel essay. Stories are the way we organize the chaos in our lives, orchestrate voluminous factual material, and -- if we are very good -- shed some light on the human condition." Here are twenty-six pieces that showcase the best travel writing from 2005, filled with "keen observations that transform ordinary journeys into extraordinary ones" (Library Journal).
Mark Jenkins journeys into a forgotten valley in Afghanistan, Kevin Fedarko takes a wild ride through the rapids of the Grand Canyon, and Christopher Solomon reports on the newest fad to hit South Korea: downhill skiing. For David Sedaris, a seemingly routine domestic flight is cause for a witty rumination on modern airline travel. Alain de Botton describes the discreet charms of Zurich, and Ian Frazier recalls leaving the small Midwestern town he called home. Michael Paterniti gives a touching portrait of the world's tallest man -- eight and a half feet and growing, while P.J. O'Rourke visits an airplane manufacturer to see firsthand how the French make the world's biggest passenger plane. George Saunders is dazzled by a trip to the "Vegas of the Middle East," Rolf Potts takes on tantric yoga for dilettantes, and Sean Flynn documents a seedier side of travel -- the newest hotspot in the international sex trade.
Culled from a wide variety of publications, these stories, as Cahill writes, all "touched me in one way or another, changed an attitude, made me laugh aloud, or provided fuel for my dreams. I wish the reader similar joys."
Customer Reviews:
Literary Travels.......2007-07-24
I wasn't able to travel this summer, so I was more or less stuck in my small town in the middle of Oklahoma. Luckily, a handful of well-chosen books escorted me to exotic--and some very familiar--ports of call, this book, 2006's Best American Travel Writing being one of the most memorable. This is a wonderfully diverse collection of writings, featuring what many of us think of as "exotic" travel narratives, as well as my favorite kind of travel writing, essays that question the nature of travel and what we learn in the process of leaving the familiar behind.
One of the gems of this collection is Alain de Botton's piece, "The Discreet Charm of the Zurich Bourgeoise." I, too, am fascinated by the comfortable, efficient towns and cities in the world, ones that are rarely tourist destinations, but are fascinating in their own, discreet way. This piece is very similar to his book, The Art of Travel, as he juxtaposes Pieter de Hooch's paintings and their seemingly unremarkable domestic world with his love for the sedate charms of Zurich. It won't appeal to the National Geographic type of tourist, but this is what makes travel writing such a vital genre to me--and why I buy books like this.
Other high points include Sean Flynn's portrayal of American sex tourists in Puerto Rico, Ian Frazier's beautiful memoir of small town Ohio, Michael Paterniti's remarkable piece about befriending a Ukranian giant, Kira Salak's tour of modern-day Libya, George Saunder's enthusiastic (and humorous) account of Dubai, and by far the most laugh-out loud selection of all, Christopher Solomon's "Let's Ski Korea," which is everything you expect and more.
I always delight in these Best American... volumes, and the Travel Writing remains my favorite to read and re-read. Tim Cahill did an amazing job in selecting these works, and I look forward to "traveling" in them whenever the simple pleasures of Ada, Oklahoma become rather less poetic.
my travel writting text book--and a good read too!.......2007-06-13
It is a little bit hard to review this book because I have read most of the series and like them all. This is no exception and I thought that there are a few things that I can add.
As always a good/great selection of material and most/all are great reads. As has been stated elsewhere if you do no like one, you can skip it. However, I never skip a story. I sort of think that I might not finish one, but then I do and am glad that I did.
Not only do I like the stories, but I think of the book as a study guide for an aspiring travel writer. Thus far I have limited my travel writing by sneaking it into other nonfiction wrting that I do (I recommend this technique). I may never seriously go down the travel writting road, but the idea helps me notice things that I might not otherwise.
Here is a specific tip. Be sure to read the forematter of the book--the foreword and introduction. They are good reading too.
One small point. Compared to the others in the series that I have read, this edition would have to qualify for an R rating because of the story about prostitution in Costa Rica. I liked the story--and you can, of course, skip it if you do not like it--but I fell obligated to mention it. There was one other place (that I forget right now) that made me think the same thing.
As soon as I finished this book, I went out and bought one from the sports series!
Great selection of excellent travel articles.......2007-04-19
I bought this book to supplement a travel writing course. I read many of the travel articles and found them interesting and well-written. It was especially helpful to read these articles without the pictures that must have accompanied many of them -- the writing for the most part was superb.
Travel stories.......2007-04-04
Travel wrting is a special skill and the editor has chosen what I consider the best of last year's articles. I found the writing style and content of these articles show the special talents of these writers.
A great collection from Tim Cahill.......2007-02-04
No matter how your personal tastes run, it would be hard to find fault with this impressive collection of great writers at the top of their game. You've got Pico Iyer on a Japanese convenience store, P.J. O'Rourke on the largest commercial airplane in the world, Alain de Botton on why interesting people shouldn't need Zurich to be interesting for them, and David Sedaris hilariously covering his beef with a seatmate on a flight--coughdrop accidentally spit onto her lap and all.
This is an unsually varied collection that still manages to hit a home run far more often than most anthologies manage. George Saunders' GQ story on the have-nots and the super-haves of Dubai is like taking a walk on another planet. Caitlin Flanigan's New Yorker story about a huge hotel complex in Hawaii is a keen-eyed, honest, and downright funny critique of the expensive mega-resort concept--"The Price of Paradise." Christopher Solomon runs down the Korean ski experience in a piece from Ski magazine. Sean Flynn looks into the seedy underbelly of Costa Rica's sex tourism trade. Tad Friend rides around Oman with Tony and Maureen Wheeler, founders of the Lonely Planet empire. Michael Paterni spends time with a different kind of giant: an 8-foot Ukranian man living in a little village with no plumbing. And on it goes, one quirky surprise after another, usually highly entertaining or full of new insights we haven't read a dozen times already somewhere else.
Those who love Cahill's work will be happy to find some "writer tests the limits" adventure travel too, whether it's by camel through Libya, by sailing ship around the world, or being the first Western Whities to cross through an old Silk Road pass in Afghanistan.
This is a collection of essays that captures the joy, the wonder, and the irony of travel in the world we live in now.
Amazon.com
The title The Best American Essays of the Century seems transparent enough, but don't be deceived. What Joyce Carol Oates has assembled is not so much a diverse collection as a sonorous march through what keeps getting called the American century. Read this not as a collection to dip into but as a history--a history of race in America. Oates says it best herself in her introduction: "It can't be an accident that essays in this volume by men and women of ethnic minority backgrounds are outstanding; to paraphrase Melville, to write a 'mighty' work of prose you must have a 'mighty' theme." The mighty pens at work here belong to, among others, Zora Neale Hurston ("How It Feels to Be Colored Me"), Langston Hughes ("Bop"), and James Baldwin ("Notes of a Native Son"). Oates has opted not for the most unexpected but for the most important and stirring essays of our time.
Other chords sound repeatedly as well: the problem of our relationship with nature (Annie Dillard, John Muir, and Gretel Ehrlich); the difficulty of identity in disrupted times (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion, and Michael Herr). In her essay "The White Album," Didion famously declares: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." The stories Oates has collected are not easy. Here is the hard-won truth, from writers unwilling to forgive even themselves. Even Martin Luther King Jr. doesn't let himself off the hook, as he writes in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail": "If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me." --Claire Dederer
Book Description
This singular collection is nothing less than a political, spiritual, and intensely personal record of America's tumultuous modern age, as experienced by our foremost critics, commentators, activists, and artists. Joyce Carol Oates has collected a group of works that are both intimate and important, essays that move from personal experience to larger significance without severing the connection between speaker and audience. From Ernest Hemingway covering bullfights in Pamplona to Martin Luther King, Jr."s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," these essays fit, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, "into a kind of mobile mosaic suggest[ing] where we've come from, and who we are, and where we are going." Among those whose work is included are Mark Twain, John Muir, T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Joan Didion, Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Hoagland, and Annie Dillard.
Customer Reviews:
great book.......2007-06-12
book arrived in great conidtion and i deciced to keep it after i passd my english class.
chocolate box of 20th-century thinking.......2007-05-14
This is a fantastic sampling of American memoir and reflections on race, gender, nature, literature, and other topics of broad interest. It features the century's greatest, starting with Twain, ending with Bellow. The volume is beautifully introduced by Atwan and Oates, both of whom help chip away at the manifold mystery of what makes a good essay. If memoir is of particular interest to you, you will appreciate the poetic sensibilities of the writers. The position essays are equally lucid. I will be teaching a course shortly on developing narrative style and feel fortunate to have stumbled upon this collection. For readers who are looking for varied and pleasant readings, the works in this book will provide that with a challenging edge.
An Essay for Every Taste.......2006-02-18
I loved this book because it illustrated to me how much our society has and hasn't changed over the years. The writing was exquisite which was a pleasant respite from today's 24/7 verbal and informational assaults which are produced so quickley and usually without much pondering or maturing of themes and ideas. I see the essay as a slowly dying art form and I am just an average American who loves to read and think and write, I'm definitely not an academic predicting the end of civilization because of the pace of life and thinking brought about by technology.
Very good indeed .......2005-09-05
Joyce Carol Oates is not simply a prolific writer, she is also a tremendously 'prolific' reader. In this selection of the best American essays of the century, she and her co- editor series editor Robert Atwan choose many of the most important American essays of the century. If I just think of those I know beforehand there is William James famous ' The Moral Equivalent of War' which talks about the place of sport in American life. There is perhaps the most well- known literary essay of the century T.S. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' in which he argues that each new literary work of significance redefines the whole Tradition, makes us see it all in a new way. There is F. Scott Fitzgerald's tremendously moving personal essay on his own breakdown,'The Crack-up' in which he tells us ' in the dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning. There is James Baldwin's searing essay, 'Notes of a Native Son' and Mark Twain telling us in 'Corn-pone' that where the person gets his core- pone is where his opinions is. It is a typical humorous and brilliant Twain attack on the common-sense conventional mind, and a call for the kind of independent thinking he in his work so exemplified.
There are a considerable number of essays on race, on the condition of the blacks in America. Richard Wright, Zola Hurston, Baldwin, Maya Angelou. There are outstanding essays on science by Lewis Thomas, Stephen J. Gould, Oliver Sachs. There are literary explorations and explorations of the American lanscape and mind.
Among the other writers included are Eudora Welty, Susan Sontag, Tom Wofe, Donald Hall, Cynthia Ozick ,William Manchester, John Updike, Saul Bellow, James Agee, John Jay Chapman, John Muir, Nabovkov, Edwin Hoagland, Willam Gass, Hemingway, Elizabeth Hardwick, S.J. Perelman, Gertrude Stein, Thurber, E.B. White , Oates herself and many others.
It may not contain all the best, and it may not all be good, but much of it is the best, and a good share very good indeed.
Not bad, but not the best of the century.......2003-08-19
Some good essays here, but a number of boring ones as well, if they had 100 years of essays to choose from, I'm suprised this was the best they could come up with.
Book Description
A brilliant collection, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 highlights a bold mix of fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, television writing, and more alternative comics than ever. Compiled by Dave Eggers and students from his San Francisco writing center, contributors include Judy Budnitz, The Onion, The Daily Show, This American Life, and George Packer.
Customer Reviews:
Find new and interesting authors - expand your horizons.......2007-09-14
This is a great book for those who wish to be exposed to new contemporary authors. I especially enjoyed the story on Dubai by George Saunders, "The New Mecca". If you've never read about Dubai (or even if you have), it's a real treat to hear more about the Fantasyland of the Middle East...
Different brand of humor, but its the kind I like!.......2007-09-04
I first became a Dave Eggers fan after getting into McSweeney's thanks to an NPR review. I'm actually not retirement age, listening to NPR, but a 20 year old college student. This book is great because I can read it in short spurts, like before class starts, and not really lose the focus of an intense novel. Also, the stories in this edition are truly riveting- the tale of a "freedom fighter", a future "Body Works" corpse- and yet some just make your face light up- the best fake headlines, courtesy of The Onion, random first lines of books. Overall, this is random, but a great cross section of pop culture. Weird? yes. Nonrequired? It's so good, it should be required.
worst edition yet.......2007-08-24
I've been reading the Nonrequired Reading since its first volume, and it is usually one of my favorites of the series, but, much like this year's essay collection, this is the worst I've seen yet. I love Matt Groening, but his introduction just seemed pointless. Eggers has a new format, with his best new words, band names, fake headlines, etc. basically section one is a waste of trees. In fact, most in this volume is a waste of time and energy and ink. The only things worth reading are the Onion headlines, the excerpt from the military blog, Downey's Rolling Stone piece, "The Insurgent's Tale," which helps to humanize and somewhat better understand jihadist, Michael Lewis's "Wading Toward Home" a piece about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, Murakami's short story, Jeff Parker's short story, Rakoff's story of becoming a citizen, Joe Sacco's comic, Saunders fluff piece on Dubai, Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God, and finally, the masterful Kurt Vonnegut. But over half the book isn't worth reading. I hope next year's edition is back up to the standard Eggers set early in the series.
Some of it is more nonrequired than you may think.......2007-08-05
This is a good enough read mostly for the fact that you can skip whatever you don't care enough about and read only what peaks your interest. It's even better if you did like me and got it from the library.
The first section is good with all the Onion articles and Daily Show transcript. Then I also enjoyed Julia Sweeney's essay about letting go of God like he was almost an imaginary friend. Also, The Innocents and one or two of the other comics were good. False Cognate as well, was superbly done. And Kurt Vonnegut, c'mon, the man could find something interesting to say about parting your hair, let alone creative writing, which he did know quite a bit about. The best was the diagram of Kafka.
Too many of the stories unfortunately deal with Iraq and the Middle East in general, however, and this is the part I meant when you are able to skip over uninteresting parts. This is no doubtdue to the selection committee is mostly high school area kids from the Bay Area. You take that impressionable age group and you throw in a democratic selection process so everyone gets a say, you're going to wind up with a message along the lines of "Uh, this is like real important to us, man. Cuz". Yeah, you kiddies mean well, but teenagers, if you're going to attempt vague hippie-esque techniques, don't forget the dope, guns, and f'ing in the streets.
Good stuff.......2007-08-03
The collection of stories was surprisingly good. I'm not much for compilations like this, but I found myself truly enjoying this one.
Book Description
"The essays in this volume are powerful, plainspoken meditations on birthing, dying, and all the business in between," writes Lauren Slater in her introduction to the 2006 edition. "They reflect the best of what we, as a singular species, have to offer, which is reflection in a context of kindness. The essays tell hard-won tales wrestled sometimes from great pain."
The twenty powerful essays in this volume are culled from periodicals ranging from The Sun to The New Yorker, from Crab Orchard Review to Vanity Fair. In "Missing Bellow," Scott Turow reflects on the death of an author he never met, but one who "overpowered me in a way no other writer had." Adam Gopnik confronts a different kind of death, that of his five-year-old daughter's pet fish -- a demise that churns up nothing less than "the problem of consciousness and the plotline of Hitchock's Vertigo."
A pet is center stage as well in Susan Orlean's witty and compassionate saga of a successful hunt for a stolen border collie. Poe Ballantine chronicles a raw-nerved pilgrimage in search of salvation, solace, and a pretty brunette, and Laurie Abraham, in "Kinsey and Me," journeys after the man who dared to plumb the mysteries of human desire. Marjorie Williams gives a harrowing yet luminous account of her life with cancer, and Michele Morano muses on the grammar of the subjunctive mood while proving that "in language, as in life, moods are complicated, but at least in language there are only two."
Customer Reviews:
its good.......2007-09-28
i have no issue with the product...jus the delivering of the product. it took about a week and a 3 days for me to receive my book. i ordered three books at once and i just received my last book about a week ago. mind you...i purchased the set a month ago
mediocre.......2007-09-25
It's not that there weren't a few good essays, because there was, just no truly great esssays, the kind you want to anthologize forever. At least there were no truly bad essays, but most were mediocre or average. Not what I've come to expect this series.
Good sampling of American Prose.......2007-08-05
As a high school AP English teacher, I love this series as an overview of current American prose. This particular year's collection is not my favorite, but it does present an assortment of strong writing styles and an interesting cross-section of American essays from a variety of publications.
Extremely dissappointed with selection.......2007-07-26
I can not imagine what Lauren Slater was thinking about when she chose these essays as the best American essays of 2006. They range from the infantile to the salacious. Surely there were some other essays written in 2006 that could have better been awarded the title of Best Essay. I was extremely dissappointed in this book.
With Death as a Baseline..........2007-07-19
If you're looking for relief from daily pain and grief, this volume, which reads like a primer on death, may prove hard-going. If so, turn to the essay titled "Relief," by Kim Dana Kupperman. It's worth the price of admission. Here you'll find a nearly pitch-perfect example of the power of detail in constructing a narrative--and the power of reason, reflection, and poetic language to transcend the described events. Kupperman takes us down deep but brings us back up for air in a very satisfying fashion.
Book Description
In his introduction to The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006, Brian Greene writes that "science needs to be recognized for what it is: the ultimate in adventure stories." The twenty-five pieces in this year's collection take you on just such an adventure. Natalie Angier probes the origins of language, Paul Raffaele describes a remote Amazonian tribe untouched by the modern world, and Frans B. M. de Waal explains what a new breed of economists is learning from monkeys. Drake Bennett profiles the creator of Ecstasy and more than two hundred other psychedelic compounds -- a man hailed by some as one of the twentieth century's most important scientists. Some of the selections reflect the news of the past year. Daniel C. Dennett questions the debate over intelligent design -- is evolution just a theory? --while Chris Mooney reports on how this debate almost tore one small town apart. John Hockenberry examines how blogs are transforming the twenty-first-century battlefield, Larry Cahill probes the new science uncovering male and female brain differences, Daniel Roth explains why the programmer who made it easy to pirate movies over the Internet is now being courted by Hollywood, and Charles C. Mann looks at the dark side of increased human life expectancy. Reaching out beyond our own planet, Juan Maldacena questions whether we actually live in a three-dimensional world and whether gravity truly exists. Dennis Overbye surveys the continuing scientific mystery of time travel, and Robert Kunzig describes new x-ray images of the heavens, including black holes, exploding stars, colliding galaxies, and other wonders the eye can't see.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent collection........2007-08-21
This was given to me as a gift and I kept coming back to it. It includes so many different fields, authors and styles of writing that you can't get bored. Almost every essay is excellent, and if you get tired of one the next one will be amazing. One minute it's string theory and the next it's linguistics and the next biology. It's hard to keep up with all that's going on in the science community but this is a great way to hear some of the stories and learn about a broad range of great science. Thoughtful but hardly too technical.
I liked this collection so much that I bought the 2005 and 2004 collections. 2005 was not as interesting to me, a lot more focused on policy and less thrilling as a whole, though some gems in there. 2004 was somewhere between the quality of 2006 and 2005. A different guest editor each year... looking forward to the next one. Gave 2006 to a friend as a must-read. The most interesting work I've read in some time. Thanks Mr Green and the many authors.
The amazing things we don't (but should) know about our world.......2007-01-01
This is a series I particularly look forward to every year for the thought-provoking glimpses it provides into the role science and technology play in our daily lives and future prospects, from the downside of increasing longevity and the dangers of decreasing autopsies to the evolutionary role of swearing and the scary consequences of indiscriminate antibiotics use.
John Hockenberry has a particularly fascinating piece on military blogs - how the immediacy of the technology affects our view of war and how little the brass knows about how to handle it. What makes this article so riveting is his ability to capture the diverse personalities and strong views of the bloggers and the technology's tantalizing implications for the future.
There are portraits of quirky people doing unusual things, like Kevin Krajick's profile of Arthur Aufderheide who dissects mummies and preserves their tissues for research that can tell us much about how they lived.
And Drake Bennett's visit with "Dr. Ecstasy," Alexander Shulgin, a man who has devoted his life to the study of hallucinogenics. The inventor of Ecstasy (among many other illegal substances), and a man of 4,000 psychedelic experiences, Shulgin was on the government payroll until he decided to publish a how-to book.
The eloquent Oliver Sacks remembers DNA's Francis Crick and Crick's influence on his own career, and John Horgan profiles neuroscientist and brain chip pioneer Jose Delgado whose impressive achievements have been intentionally forgotten.
Since Greene is a physicist ("The Elegant Universe") there are precise and elegant (that is, comprehensible) pieces on time travel (Dennis Overbye), gravity (Juan Maldacena) mass (Gordon Kane), and NASA's X-ray Observatory (Robert Kunzig). There are also articles on Earthquake prediction (Kevin Krajick), indigenous people displaced by conservationists (Mark Dowie), and animal deal making (Frans B.M. De Waal).
One of the book's most moving and fascinating articles is Michael Chorost's essay on his cochlear implant and his pursuit of music. Mostly deaf from birth, he became profoundly deaf as an adult. While the implant allowed him to hear speech, his enjoyment of Ravel's "Bolero," had gone. Working to regain this pleasure he initiates us into mysteries of deafness, the technology of cochlear implants and the nature of music.
Many pieces will spur readers to further reading, depending on their interests, and all are elegantly written and of wide appeal. If you read only one "Best of" book this year, make it this one.
-- Portsmouth Herald
Excellent Journalism for Critical Thinkers From Any Field.......2006-10-11
Every year I eagerly anticipate the publication of another edition of this fine series - and its competitor, the "Best of American Science Writing." Series Editor Tim Folger painstakingly selected 100 articles from American periodicals early this year, all of which attest to the intrigue of science. Sometimes the scientific method is seen to be, as he puts it, "an intensely human endeavor, with nobility and self-sacrifice commingling with self-doubt, ambition, swollen egos, and sometimes outright fraud...Even though the intellectual brawls never stop, charlatans are invariably exposed...[yielding] an understanding of reality impossible to achieve by any other means."
This year's guest editor, physicist Brian Greene, selected the final 25 essays. He suggests that when science writing is done well, it lowers the historical barriers between science and the humanities: "Like master chefs, the best science writers pare away all but the most succulent material, trimming details essential to the researcher that would only be a distraction to the reader."
Natalie Angier: A lesson on the cultural and linguistic analysis of swearing - an underestimated form of anger management. Swearing is present in every culture - men consistently cursing more than women "unless said women are in a sorority."
Drake Bennett: The story of Alexander Shulgin, an American chemist who has spent his life legally synthesizing hundreds of psychedelic compounds. On the door of his lab is a sign that reads, "This is a research facility that is known to and authorized by the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, all San Francisco DEA Personnel, and the State and Federal EPA Authorities," with phone numbers. He posted the sign after the second raid (the agencies later apologized).
Larry Cahill: Within the past ten years, research has revealed an astonishing array of structural, chemical, and functional variations between the brains of males and females - many of them existing at birth. The assumption that researchers can study one sex and apply findings to both is no longer an option.
Michael Chorost: This article is one of my favorites. The author was born almost deaf and didn't learn to talk until he got hearing aids at age three and a half. At age 15 he somehow got hooked on the "Bolero," a famous orchestral piece known for its dynamic crescendos. From that time on, he judged each new hearing aid by listening to his favorite rendition of "Bolero." Then for unexplained reasons he became completely deaf at age 38. The story of how a cochlear implant brought back his hearing ranges through engineering, computer science, physics, ear physiology, and the continued use of "Bolero."
Daniel Dennett: Explains eloquently how no intelligent-design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation for evolution. "You haven't explained everything yet" is not a competing hypothesis.
Frans de Waal: Humans descended from group-living, highly social primates. Like them, we are highly motivated to fit in with those we live and work with. He calls "Behavioral economics" an evolutionary explanation for why we interact as we do - embracing the golden rule not accidentally, but as a result of our history as co-operative apes.
David Dobbs: Nothing reveals errors like an autopsy. The author quotes studies showing that when an autopsy was done, 25% - 40% of the time the cause of death was not correctly diagnosed. Unfortunately, forces stacking up against the autopsy - regulatory, economic, and cultural - overcome attempts to revive it.
Mark Dowie: Another of my favorites. A small group of leaders representing indigenous tribes from all over the world have a pneumonic for their biggest enemy - BINGO. This stands for Big International Nongovernmental Conservation Organizations. Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and others - are well-funded and have been paying poor governments to establish national parks as fast as they can. Indigenous people always live in these locations, are almost always left out of the negotiations, and are almost always robbed of their land and their culture. This lamentable outcome is frequently barely discernable behind a smoke screen of slick promotion.
John Hockenberry: A fascinating survey of US soldiers in Iraq whose hobby is blogging about the war. Nearly all of the contributing bloggers say the current system of limited restrictions can't possibly last. The policies are currently under Pentagon review.
John Horgan: Remember the dramatic 1963 photograph depicting Jose Delgado calmly standing in the path of a charging bull? With a hand-held transmitter, Delgado stopped the bull by stimulating electrodes in key areas of the bull's brain. This is the dynamic story of his field in the 60's and its rebirth in the 21st century.
Gordon Kane: Another favorite of mine, but qualified* - the physics-impaired reader may have trouble. This is a concise summary of the particles of the Standard Model and how the Higgs field gives them mass - complete with teasers about dark matter, string theory, and the "Theory of Everything."
That's a paragraph about each of the first 11 essays out of 25. To keep this review from being any longer, I'll do only one more - another favorite:
Paul Raffaele - Primitive tribes that barely know we exist live deep in the Amazon, not far removed from the stone age. Sydney Possuelo represents the Brazilian government in protecting these indigenous people and their land from the "whites" (anyone else), and has made first contact with seven different tribes. The author spends a dangerous week with Possuelo visiting the Korubo tribe, otherwise known as the headbashers. Possuelo's advise: "Be on your guard at all times when we're with them, because they're unpredictable and very violent."
The remaining 13 essays are just as invigorating as these. Some readers will say there's too much fluff - others will side-step the hard science, but any critical thinker from any field will find many articles they love. Top Notch, as usual.
This popular science book will blow your mind!.......2006-10-09
I was struck by something Brian Greene says in the intro to this
enjoyable book: more or less, that it's generally acceptable for
people with degrees in the humanities not to know anything about science;
and that that's not good for us as a scientifically competitive country.
My three favorite articles: "Dr. Ecstasy", "His Brain, Her Brain",
and "Remembering Francis Crick", by Oliver Sacks. That last looks like a
sedate title, but this coverage of the correspondence between
Sacks and Crick, who discovered the double-helix of DNA, is not only a great adventure; but if you haven't read Oliver Sacks before, it is a good,
broad overview of what his writing is about. I've read some Sacks books, but this made me want to read all the rest.
Average customer rating:
- Erma is my hero!
- A must for for Erma fans
- A BEAUTIFUL TRIBUTE TO A POWERFUL LADY
- Why we loved Erma
- Erma wasn't the best, she was the only.
|
Forever, Erma: Best-Loved Writing From American's Favorite Humorist
Erma Bombeck
Manufacturer: Andrews McMeel Publishing
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Binding: Paperback
 Essays
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ASIN: 0836236734 |
Amazon.com
Erma Bombeck occupied a seat of honor in the homes of millions of Americans. Hers was inevitably the column you read aloud at the breakfast table, the piece you tore out on the bus to send to your mother, or the clipping you stuck on the fridge as a chuckling reminder of our modern lives' sublime ridiculousness. Bombeck had an eye for our common experience and a knack for throwing it into touching relief; we laughed because we saw ourselves in her work. She died last April, and this collection--the profits of which benefit her favorite charities--pulls together some of her best loved columns. The columns span Bombeck's career and the book includes tributes delivered at her memorial service.
Customer Reviews:
Erma is my hero!.......2007-03-17
I bought this book recently in honor of Erma's birthday. The stories bring me back to my childhood. I remember reading the columns when I was younger, and now that I have my own children I can really relate!
A must for for Erma fans.......2007-03-08
I loved this book. Erma wrote about every day happenings that you will recognize instantly. While reading the book I got the feeling that Erma must have spied on me! You are left with a lovely feeling that someone understands you. Many were the times I actually laughed out loud. I truly recommend this book to anyone with a sense of humor!
A BEAUTIFUL TRIBUTE TO A POWERFUL LADY.......2006-08-11
When it comes to humour, there is no one who could pack a more powerful punch than Erma Bombeck. In this collection of essays, Erma tackles children, motherhood, fatherhood, neighbours, family gatherings and then finds the humour in life's most ordinary events. Five days before her passing, Erma wrote her final message and still, she faced life with amazing courage and wit.
As the years pass by, we still miss Erma deeply. She became a part of our own family and mothers could read her words of wisdom and come to the conclusion, "It puts my mind as ease to know that I am not the only one who fells this way about...."
Erma was a lady ahead of her time and a primary lesson we learn from her is "don't fret the small stuff; look at each day as a new experience and enjoy it to the fullest. Soon, our children will leave the nest; we will grow older and develop wrinkles but become more tolerant and accepting of ourselves. Even in her last days, she managed to find the beauty and humour in life...what better legacy could she leave us? The book, like Erma, is deserving of a thousand twinkling stars. No wonder the Heavens shine so brightly.
Why we loved Erma.......2006-05-31
Why we loved Erma and miss her is right here. She made you feel good about your mistakes. Suddenly being a fallen human made you feel superior to those who were too perfect to admit it!
Erma wasn't the best, she was the only........2002-10-22
I loved Erma Bombeck from the beginning. Her ability to make you laugh without being mean or crude, to see the humor in any situation, to be dignified and tolerant without being forceful about it. These make her a unique person.
This is a collection of some of her best columns. She knew the world could be mean, cruel, bitter, and unfair, yet she never was any of these things. She was a great writer and a great person.
I love the tribute section of this book, though the story from her husband made me cry. It was April 22, 1996 and the ride was over.
Book Description
Now in its twentieth year, this "consistently refined and lively series" (Booklist) still highlights "the best that the form can be" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Edited by the best-selling writer Susan Orlean, this year's collection highlights lively and provocative writing for these difficult times. Contributors include Roger Angell, Andrea Barrett, David Sedaris, Holly Welker, and others.
Customer Reviews:
weakest one yet.......2007-08-17
I read this series every year, and usually love it, but this edition is rather weak, and I'm surprised, I like and respect Susan Orlean's work, and I would have thought that she would pick better essays. Alas, it isn't so. There are no essays that are truly, truly exceptional. Some are quite good, like Franzen (no surprise there), Kitty Burns Florey, Danielle Ofri (again no surprise), and Shine. Most fall in the blah category. You could take them or leave them. They aren't bad, but they aren't all that good, and definitely should be in this volume. And then there are the clunkers, more than I'm used to seeing in this series (Angell, Barrett, Hoagland, Levy, Masello, States, Ullman, Wallace, and Welker).
22 satisfying servings of brain food (and 3 duds).......2006-06-18
Guest editor Susan Orlean has served up an anthology of essays that emphasizes intelligent, well-written, powerful works that leave an impression long after one finishes reading them. There is a definite New York / Northeast intelligentsia bias in her selections, and for some reason dogs and cooking appear repeatedly as subjects, but aside from these quirks I feel she has performed her job admirably, and created the strongest volume over the past four years of this series (which is how long I've been reading it).
There are more than a few memorable essays in this volume. The most memorable essay is also the most maddening, Mark Greif's "Against Exercise". One hopes that Greif wrote this essay as an intellectual exercise, similar to an assignment in a debating society in which one has to create winning arguments for a position that is directly opposite one's own beliefs. Greif's essay is entirely one-sided, and he does an incredible smear job against a practice (exercise) that would certainly benefit the country as a whole if more Americans did it regularly. I was almost compelled to write a rebuttal, but refrained from doing so on the hope that Greif was just kidding.
Memorable, well-written essays that were enjoyable as opposed to maddening included:
-- Roger Angell's "La Vie en Rose": a beautiful reminiscence of the author's taste of "the good life" among the elite in post-war Europe.
-- Paul Crenshaw's "Storm Country": a powerful first-person account of what it is like to live in Tornado Alley in Arkansas.
-- Jonathan Lethem's "Speak Hoyt-Schemerhorn": an engaging essay about, of all things, a subway station in Brooklyn, whose history mirrors the changing times of the city and society.
-- Oliver Sacks' "Speed": a detailed account of the nature of speed and time, and how it is perceived differently by different people, plants and animals.
-- David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster": an account of the Maine Lobster festival that turns into an exposition of the author's moral struggles with consuming lobsters and meat.
The three duds, and the reasons I feel they are duds, are:
-- Michael Martone's "Contributor's Note": other authors may identify with Martone's neurosis, but this short essay is inconsequential and forgettable.
-- David Masello's "My Friend Lodovico": very narcissistic, although instead of staring into a mirror, the author stares into a painted portrait.
-- Sam Pickering's "Dog Days": self-indulgent navel gazing by an opinionated know-it-all.
Others will no doubt have a different list of hits and misses, but the 2005 Best American Essays contains much to nourish the mind.
Wonderful Essays!.......2006-02-01
Perfect book for vacation reading or for introducing others to what an essay can be. Wide variety of essay styles, and none of them call attention to themselves as actually being "essays."
Too journalistic.......2006-01-30
Robert Atwan is an absolutely marvelous editor of this series. But the guest editors, lately, are not literary enough--or rather their choices aren't. When you reread essays selected by Elizabeth Hardwick ('86) or Cynthia Ozick ('98), they hold up beautifully. I'm not sure Orlean's pieces are as timeless. It must be hard, after all these years, to keep finding distinguished new guest editors, so I certainly can't blame Atwan for turning to glossy article writers.
Indigestible mixture.......2006-01-23
I sympathize with the worthy aims of this compilation. It would be shame for such magnificent pieces of writing to remain ephemeral, never to be aired outside the pages of magazines. Yet the mixture is indigestible. I found it hard to read it through and shift my moods. It was like eating through a buffet table. Probably reading through it is the wrong way to do it. You should browse and pick on one that interests you, but that's exactly what you do at the newsstand or thumbing through a magazine, and that's where I'm afraid these belong. Two of the best essays for me were the Foreword and Introduction by Susan Orlean and Robert Atwan,which discuss the place of the essay in modern literature. The reason the they were the best was because they caught and held me at the moment where I was deciding whether to read a book of essays. That's the point I'm trying to make. Maybe I'll come back to David Foster Wallace's essay next time I'm deciding whether to eat lobster or to Paul Crenshaw's next time there's a tornado warning.
Meanwhile I'll keep up my subscriptions to the New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Asimov's and Antioch Review and pick up the Atlantic and New Yorker at Penn Station and I'll feel I've done my duty by the essay.
Book Description
For fans of sports and just plain great writing, this collection of twenty-seven of the finest pieces from the past year features "outstanding sports reporting on a wealth of different topics" (Booklist). Guest editor Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Moneyball and Coach, has assembled a compelling look at the sports stories and issues that dominated 2005. Pamela Colloff reports from the politically and sexually charged world of competitive cheerleading in Texas. Paul Solotaroff meets the star of the University of Georgia wrestling team, a nineteen-year-old world-record weightlifter who was born with no arms or legs. Ben Paynter travels the gay rodeo circuit. Pat Jordan profiles the world's greatest poker player, a boyish thirty-year-old whose mom still packs him a brown bag lunch. Jeff Duncan travels to Florida, where a New Orleans high school and its football program are picking up the pieces in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We also discover Linda Robertson reporting on the supersizing of NFL players. S. L. Price profiles the most famous U.S. Paraolympian. Katy Vine introduces a girl who can dunk -- in eighth grade -- and more. The pieces in this outstanding volume show the true reach and impact of sports, its importance often extending far beyond the playing field. As Lewis writes in his introduction, "What's reassuring about great sports writing is what's reassuring about great sports performances: facing opposition, and often against the odds, someone, at last, did something right."
Customer Reviews:
Engaging and interesting.......2007-08-09
The chief strength of this anthology is its diversity. Very contemporary in flavor, this one appealed to me even though I'm only on the outer fringes of the world of sporting events.
Micheal Lewis' has culled an intriguing mix of stories related to sport. In this collection, you will find a young girl who wants to box, the gay rodeo, the story of Mike Webster, a rainbow coach, the fastest sprinter with a prosthetic leg, post-Katrina football among other gems. Truly a sign of our times. Each story has a unique protagonist and/or setting and each writer does a very good job bringing his/her narrative to life. Excellent summer reading!
Best American Sports Writing 2006.......2007-03-11
Have been reading "Best Sports Writing" since 2001 and it is a hit every year. Only three stories so far; the limbless wrestler was a fantastic "fighter" and had great courage. Loved "Brooklyn Heights". She could play. Also had a look at NBA article. If memory serves me correctly there was some discussion about young players going straight to NBA without college degree. Kareem A.J. made several good comments in a video clip in New York Times saying that these young players miss out on important life experiences by not going to college, but made the point that with so much money going around who could blame the young players.
Got off the track.
Love B.A.S.W. and looking forward to reading more of the stories. Keep it going.
Nick Moschetta, Adelaide(Andrew Thomas territory), South Australia
Underdogs, Oddballs, and Goat Dressers.......2006-11-29
Michael Lewis, this year's guest editor to Best American Sports Writing, is somewhat of a newcomer to sports writing. After fifteen years of fairly successful (and really interesting) journalism in his books about high finance, a presidential campaign, and Silicon Valley, Lewis hit on a major success with Moneyball, a story of money and baseball. Then he wrote Coach, about a crusty old high school baseball coach. Now he has a book out about football, The Blind Side, that tells of a poor black kid who is (with the help of a wealthy white family) on the brink of pro football success. Suddenly, instead of writing about the always fascinating topics of money, greed, and power, Lewis is writing about sports. And while it is certainly possible to write about money, greed, and power in sports, Lewis has made a disturbing turn to the heartwarming.
So I approached the 2006 edition of Best Sports Writing warily. Sure enough, there are enough heartwarming articles in here to satisfy any fan of inspirational writing. The world's fastest amputee, a cyclist with Parkinson's, a girl boxer, a gay boxer, a homeless softball star, a quadriplegic wrestler, all fighting bravely against overwhelming odds.
Fortunately though, there are also pieces on oddball sports like golf course fishing and gay rodeo (which features an event called goat dressing, in which the contestant puts a pair of boxer shorts on a goat in the quickest time) and competitive cheerleading. An article on the Dakar Rally and a profile of Rickey Henderson were two of the best entries in the book, in my opinion. They put you right there, in the car hurtling through the desert, and in Rickey Henderson's head.
Two of the most powerful articles were about football, and despite Lewis's apparent decision to appeal to the Reader's Digest crowd, these essays are not heartwarming. One is about Mike Webster, a retired pro football player who died in 2002 at age fifty after struggling with hypertension, depression, and dementia, all probably brought on by football injuries. The other article is called XXL and it's about the alarming trend in football, at all levels, to encourage players to be heavy. Because of the changes in the game over the past thirty years, physical size is more important, and players in the NFL are on average 65 pounds heavier than they were in 1975. Over 300 players in the NFL today are over 300 pounds, compared to none thirty years ago. Young players who hope to make it to the pros someday start bulking up early. Coaches and even parents encourage the kids to put on the pounds.
All in all, a satisfying collection of good writing, mostly about sports (is poker a sport?).
Books:
- The Best American Travel Writing 2002 (Best American)
- The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
- The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
- The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve
- The Death of Superman
- The Distant Land of My Father
- The Eagle's Last Flight
- The Fat Resistance Diet: Unlock the Secret of the Hormone Leptin to: Eliminate Cravings, Supercharge Your Metabolism, Fight Inflammation, Lose Weight & Reprogram Your Body to Stay Thin-
- The Glory Field
- The Golem's Eye (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 2)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Trading in the Zone: Master the Market with Confidence, Discipline and a Winning Attitude
- Terry Texas Ranger Trilogy: Terry's Texas Rangers, Reminiscences of the Terry Rangers, the Diary of
- Professional Development: The Dynamics of Success
- Mosquito Bite
- Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture
- The Common Reader: First Series, Annotated Edition
- Snakes Of The Southeast
- Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
- Measuring and Controlling Interest Rate and Credit Risk
- Kompass Australia, 2002
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006 (The Best American Series)
The Best American Science Writing 2005 (Best American Science Writing)
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
The Best American Travel Writing 2006 (The Best American Series)
The Best American Essays 2006 (Best American Essays)
