The Best American Science Writing 2002 (Best American Science Writing (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: Compelling collection of fascinating reading
Review: These are exactly the type of articles I love to read on airplanes trips or in doctors' offices. Real science written for non-scientists.

Rating:
Summary: More! More!
Review: These essays are phenomenal- all intriguing and all lingering in our minds well after reading. Science writing is an art I particularly relish. The math is gone- and that's good- indeed all of the qualifiers for a scientific career or training are reduced to one- fascination- and there's plenty of that in this collection. My favorite author, in this category is Jerome Groopman, M.D. a feature writer for the New Yorker and a practicing oncologist. His topic is cell-speak, the astounding discovery that cells communicate between distances. The scientific term is `signal transduction.' Groopman's prose evokes molecular music receiving and answering and generating movement. Skeleton like structures are woven by these messages and the whole stunning revelation becomes political, economic and religious in its challenges and possibilities. The least of which is nothing less than universal design and grand scale unity of all matter. Microscopic matters, as equally valuable to the private sector laboratories as to the religious nature of being and infinity.
Athol Gwande, another New Yorker writer, writes about the painful ramifications of excessive blushing. The embarrassment is so defeating that people undergo surgery- and not minor surgery- just to control it. Post surgery, people report a quality of life surge that makes the risks and costs well worth it. Perhaps the most allegorical piece is a study of the plastic surgeon who dreams of giving people wings and other improvements as implanting rods and cones to make our vision more spectacular. These dreams are oddly absent when the same physician attends to remodeling a face eaten away by cancer. At odds most dramatically by the callow bedside manner and the narcisistic ego of this Leonardo of the dream. Condemned by colleagues and despised by the residents we try to ascertain if he is a visionary, Icarus or would he create another Frankenstein.
The strange and the miraculous are in turn celebrated and given to dark reservations and caution. All of the entries are nothing less than Magnificent!