The "Best Of" Some Good Reading

Every year Houghton-Mifflin puts out a edited volume entitled "The Best American Science and Nature Writing". The latest volume looks like some delightful bedtime reading (although I may be biased because I was chosen as one of the authors). It includes works by Freeman Dyson, Edward Hoagland, David Quammen, Oliver Sachs, and many others. Editor Jerome Groopman pulls from a variety of publications including the New Yorker, Outside Magazine, and Scientific American. He suggests "the articles...draw the reader more tightly into the web of the world. They forge links in unexpected ways. They connect us to nature and to each other, and those connections nourish the intellect and uplift the spirit." So far, I agree with him.