Without scanning dozens of summaries of Research Reports every day, where can the average person find great science writing ?
The answers may surprise you. You might start by looking at any year's volume of an annual series called "The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Each volume contains a list of source publications from which its articles were drawn. Where were most of the articles originally published ? Here's the rundown for three recent volumes:
In the 2010 volume, edited by Freeman Dyuson, 8 of the 28 articles first appeared in a general interest magazine -- The New Yorker. A close second was National Geographic Magazine, with 6 articles. Surprisingly, only 2 articles appeared in Discover Magazine, a publication totally devoted to science. Other sources were OnEarth (2 articles), The New York Review of Books (2), GQ Mazine (1), The New York Times (1), The Minnesota Conservation Volunteer (1), Living Bird Magazine (1), Orion (1), Wired (1), Conservation Magazine (1), and The American Scholar (1).
Each annual volume has a different editor, so it is natural that each new annual editor will choose slightly different sorts of articles from a few different sources. For instance, in the 2011 volume, only six articles come from The New Yorker. Three come from Orion. Two come from Outside. Two come from Discover Magazine. Two comes from Scientific American. No articles come from National Geographic Magazine. One comes from Slate. Two come from The Atlantic Magazine. One comes from Esquire. One from Popular Mechanics. One comes from "The New York Times" while another comes from "The New York Times Magazine." One comes from Ecotone. One comes from Wired. And one comes from Smithsonian.
Check out this source for the best science writing around for laymen.
The answers may surprise you. You might start by looking at any year's volume of an annual series called "The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Each volume contains a list of source publications from which its articles were drawn. Where were most of the articles originally published ? Here's the rundown for three recent volumes:
In the 2010 volume, edited by Freeman Dyuson, 8 of the 28 articles first appeared in a general interest magazine -- The New Yorker. A close second was National Geographic Magazine, with 6 articles. Surprisingly, only 2 articles appeared in Discover Magazine, a publication totally devoted to science. Other sources were OnEarth (2 articles), The New York Review of Books (2), GQ Mazine (1), The New York Times (1), The Minnesota Conservation Volunteer (1), Living Bird Magazine (1), Orion (1), Wired (1), Conservation Magazine (1), and The American Scholar (1).
Each annual volume has a different editor, so it is natural that each new annual editor will choose slightly different sorts of articles from a few different sources. For instance, in the 2011 volume, only six articles come from The New Yorker. Three come from Orion. Two come from Outside. Two come from Discover Magazine. Two comes from Scientific American. No articles come from National Geographic Magazine. One comes from Slate. Two come from The Atlantic Magazine. One comes from Esquire. One from Popular Mechanics. One comes from "The New York Times" while another comes from "The New York Times Magazine." One comes from Ecotone. One comes from Wired. And one comes from Smithsonian.
Check out this source for the best science writing around for laymen.
