Sy Montgomery - The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019

Copyright 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright 2019 by Sy Montgomery

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ISBN 9781328519009 (print) ISSN 15301508 (print)

ISBN 9781328519016 (ebook) ISSN 2573475X (ebook)

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A Compassionate Substance by Philip Ball. First published in Laphams Quarterly, Summer 2018. Copyright 2018 by Philip Ball. Reprinted by permission of Laphams Quarterly / Philip Ball.

The Search for Alien Life Begins in Earths Oldest Desert by Rebecca Boyle. First published in The Atlantic, November 28, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Rebecca Boyle. Reprinted by permission of Rebecca Boyle.

Glimpses of Mass Extinction in Modern-Day Western New York by Peter Brannen. First published in The New Yorker, July 4, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Cond Nast. Reprinted with permission.

This Sand Is Your Sand by Chris Colin. First published in Outside Magazine, May 30, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Chris Colin. Reprinted by permission of Outside Magazine.

The Brain, Reimagined by Douglas Fox. First published in Scientific American, April 2018. Copyright 2018 by Douglas Fox. Reprinted by permission of Douglas Fox.

Little Golden Flower-Room: On Wild Places and Intimacy by Conor Gearin. First published in The Millions, October 3, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Conor Gearin. Reprinted by permission of Conor Gearin.

The Endling by Ben Goldfarb. First published in the Pacific Standard with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, June 8, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Ben Goldfarb. Reprinted by permission of Food & Environment Reporting Network.

What If the Placebo Effect Is Not a Trick? by Gary Greenberg. First published in The New York Times Magazine, November 7, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Gary Greenberg. Reprinted by permission of Gary Greenberg.

The Great Rhino U-Turn by Jeremy Hance. First published in Mongabay, September 28, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Jeremy Hance. Reprinted by permission of Jeremy Hance.

The Fading Stars: A Constellation by Holly Haworth. First published in Laphams Quarterly, December 5, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Holly Haworth. Reprinted by permission of Holly Haworth.

Saving Baby Boy Green by Eva Holland. First published in Wired, May 27, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Eva Holland. Reprinted by permission of Eva Holland.

The Fire at Eagle Creek by Apricot Irving. First published in Topic, August 2018. Copyright 2018 by Apricot Irving. Reprinted by permission of Apricot Irving.

Deleting a Species by Rowan Jacobsen. First published in Pacific Standard, June / July 2018. Copyright 2018 by Rowan Jacobsen. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here by Brooke Jarvis. First published in The New York Times Magazine, November 27, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Brooke Jarvis. Reprinted by permission of Brooke Jarvis.

No Heart, No Moon by Matt Jones. First published in The Southern Review, Summer 2018. Copyright 2018 by Matt Jones. Reprinted by permission of Matt Jones.

The Scientific Detectives Probing the Secrets of Ancient Oracles by Kevin Krajick. First published in Atlas Obscura, May 17, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Kevin Krajick. Reprinted by permission of Kevin Krajick.

You Really Dont Want to Know What Its Like to Be a Right Whale These Days by J. B. MacKinnon. First published in The Atlantic, July 30, 2018. Copyright 2018 by J. B. MacKinnon. Reprinted by permission of J. B. MacKinnon.

How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet (originally titled Life on a Shrinking Planet) by Bill McKibben. First published in The New Yorker, November 16, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Bill McKibben. Reprinted by permission of Bill McKibben.

The Story of a Face by Rebecca Mead. First published in The New Yorker, March 12, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Rebecca Mead. Reprinted by permission of Rebecca Mead.

How to Not Die in America by Molly Osberg. First published in Splinter, January 31, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Gizmodo Media Group. Reprinted by permission.

Why Paper Jams Persist by Joshua Rothman. First published in The New Yorker, February 5, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Cond Nast. Reprinted with permission.

The Professor of Horrible Deeds by Jordan Michael Smith. First published in Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Jordan Michael Smith. Reprinted by permission of Jordan Michael Smith.

Welcome to the Center of the Universe by Shannon Stirone. First published in Longreads, March 15, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Shannon Stirone. Reprinted by permission of Shannon Stirone.

The Hidden Toll: Why Are Black Mothers and Babies in the United States Dying at More Than Double the Rate of White Mothers and Babies? The Answer Has Everything to Do with the Lived Experience of Being a Black Woman in America by Linda Villarosa. First published in The New York Times Magazine, April 11, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Linda Villarosa. Reprinted by permission of Linda Villarosa.

When the Next Plague Hits by Ed Yong. First published in The Atlantic, July / August 2018. Copyright 2018 by The Atlantic Monthly Group LLC. Reprinted by permission of The Atlantic.

Paper Trails by Ilana Yurkiewicz. First published in Undark, September 24, 2018. Copyright 2018 by Ilana Yurkiewicz. Reprinted by permission of Ilana Yurkiewicz.

Earlier this year, I received an email from a self-declared longtime reader of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. The reader noted that the anthology had been getting more political over the last few years, and he asked me to please keep the selections for 2019 focused on science and nature.

My first thought was: Sorry, guy. Tough luck. (I hadnt even yet read our guest editor, Sy Montgomerys, introduction at the time.) My second thought was: Tony Kushner. Yes, the playwright. There are many thinkers who have argued that everything is political, that an apolitical stance is inherently political, too, but Tony Kushner is the one I think of first. In his essay Notes About Political Theater, Kushner writes, In life, as in art, much energy is devoted toward blurring the political meaning of events, or even that events have a political meaning... When theater artists assiduously avoid politics, we deny the existence of the political and are making a political statement, committing a political act.

You can easily swap science in for events, readers of this book for theater artists. Here:

In life... much energy is devoted toward blurring the political meaning of [science], or even that [science]