I'm a huge fan of non-fiction writing, and as far as I'm concerned you can never learn enough about science. When The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 went on sale for a small amount I bought it. The way this anthology works, it collects essays/articles from 2023, and is published at the start of 2024. Which means that by the time I read it, it's 2 years out of date. That's no big deal, if it's good science it's going to stay valid.
What I wasn't prepared for was how depressing the first third of the book was. That's because it's about climate change, and the news there is not good. We're clearly not on a good trajectory there and things are going to get much worse. Much of the reporting is from third world countries like Pakistan, Brazil, and so forth. But it's depressing to realize that the Amazon rainforest has gone from being a carbon sink to a carbon emitter and we have made no progress as far as disincentivizing the burning of rainforest to produce farmland.
The rest of the book includes one article on mining for the green energy world, an article about the largest beaver dam in the world (it can be seen from space!), an article about sperm whales, and one about Scottish hill farming. Missing from the book notably are any articles about AI, physics, chemistry, or astronomy. Basically, none of the hard sciences are represented.
I cannot honestly recommend this book. It's got a very narrow idea of what science writing is or should encompass.
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