Booklist Review of The Best American Science Writing 2006

This installment of a popular annual has a new selection criterion: if editor Gawande decides a piece is "cool," it gets in. Meeting this exacting if subjective standard are topics such as time travel--definitely cool; maverick scientists--always cool; and weird science--totally cool, dude. Gawande, a surgeon by occupation and an essayist by avocation, is slightly more serious than that, but he does pick popular--science articles with some bounce. Drawn from periodicals such as the New Yorker, Harper's, and Discover, Gawande's 21 choices all possess other aspects of coolness, such as topical controversy (the "epidemic" of obesity), eccentric characters (computer-chess programmers), or interesting oddity (the "science" of yawning). Writer David Quammen (Monster of God, 2003) writes about the strange reasons people go in for cloning their pets and exemplifies the coolest thing about all these essays: the writing is both lively and humorous. A browser's delight, to be paired with Houghton Mifflin's rival annual, The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

--Gilbert Taylor, © American Library Association.