The Best American Science Writing 2006. Editor: Atul Gawande. Series Editor: Jesse Cohen. Harper Collins Publishers, 2006, $13.95, 384 pages.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Carrying the imprimatur of bestselling author Atul Gawande, a rock-and-roll-loving surgeon and one of our foremost writers on medicine, The Best American Science Writing 2006 explores the full range of scientific inquiry -- from biochemistry, physics, and astronomy to genetics, evolutionary theory, and cognition. Culled from a wide variety of publications, the pieces provide a comprehensive overview of the year's most thought-provoking and exciting scientific developments.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

Publishers Weekly: Surgeon and New Yorker contributor Gawande ( Complications ) says the "coolest" science writing isn't necessarily found in the science press. His collection of the year's best includes only one research paper -- an American Scientist treatise on yawning. And though Jack Hitt's essay (from Harper's ) on racist subtexts in the archeological study of who the first Americans were has footnotes, they tend to contain side jokes, not science. Most of Gawande's selections come from mainstream publications like the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly , and especially from fellow New Yorker writers like Elizabeth Kolbert (on avian flu), Jonathan Weiner (on a rare neurological disease), and Richard Preston (on redwoods). Still, there are plenty of opportunities for writers at other publications to shine. D.T. Max's piece from the New York Times Magazine presents a lively inquiry into "literary Darwinism," speculating on the evolutionary function of storytelling. And in the anthology's most moving essay (from Wired), Michael Chorost recounts his efforts to find hearing aid technology that will help him to hear Ravel's Boléro with the same clarity it held before he went deaf. The diversity and readability of Gawande's selections are very cool indeed.

ABOUT THE SERIES EDITOR:

Jesse Cohen has been a senior editor at Lipper Publications, co-publishers of the distinguished Penguin Lives series, where he developed a series of short-format books about science. He is a senior editor at Atlas Books, a division of W.W. Norton. He lives in New York City.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE SERIES EDITOR:

Jesse Cohen was finishing his work week on a damp end-of-summer Friday afternoon in New York when I phoned. Here on the West Coast, the clouds, coolness, and quality of light also hinted at fall's arrival. He began by giving some background on how this series came to be. "It got started because Dan Halpern at Ecco wanted to have an anthology of the year's best science writing. It was really his brainchild. He contacted James Gleick, who wrote Chaos and Genius, among other things, and asked him to be the first guest editor. "At that time, I was in the process of doing a proposal for a series of short books on science called Great Discoveries. This was for a company that later became Atlas Books. Dan knew I was working on this series and thought that I might be the right person, given my background, to be the series editor, and it's worked out very well. I had a great experience working with Jim Gleick on that first volume in 2000."

"What is your background in science?"

"My background in science is that I have no background in science. I was an English major in college and went into book publishing and did literary fiction and serious nonfiction at Doubleday. As a result of the research I did to prepare for the Great Discoveries series, I became conversant with a lot of what was happening in science writing. Although I'm not a scientist, I feel in some ways that's to the good. I come to this as our idealized reader would: not an expert, but somebody who is interested in the subject and wants to be told what's going on in a way that isn't dumbed down, but isn't so technical that it can't be understood."

"Do you see a significant difference between the way Americans write about science and the way writers from other nations approach the topic?"

"I haven't read that much of foreign science writing. The great thing about the anthology, though, is that we are open to anything that is by scientists, science writers and journalists and all sorts of other people. Sometimes we even include a poem. It's pretty eclectic in terms of the writing. The 'American' side of it is a little bit loose. Sometimes a British writer or a Canadian writer will find their way in."

"How do you decide who will be the guest editor for a particular year?"

"Dan Halpern and I brainstorm. We try to think of science writers or scientists who people know because they've written best-selling books or who are on the radar somehow. This year Atul Gawande is our editor, and he's a remarkable guy. He wrote a wonderful book called Complications a few years ago. He writes regularly for The New Yorker , in addition to being a surgeon and a professor at Harvard. He's a brilliant mind and a brilliant man and a great guy. We were thrilled that he was willing to do it. I don't know where he finds the time. He must never sleep."

In the introduction to The Best American Science Writing 2006. Gawande explains that, to him, science writing is "...writing about the scientific investigation of the world, about the knowledge acquired, or about what happens when that knowledge is thrown back into the world." I ask Mr. Cohen if he concurs with this definition.

"I've been thinking about this a lot, because I've been doing this for a long time. I agree with Gawande in general. But, I would add that good science writing is good writing, and good writing is good storytelling. We want to be told a story, and that helps us understand the world we live in. It can be a story about a scientist who has a brilliant idea, or the story of a discovery, or the story of our origins. In this volume, and others, we do have a few meditative essays, but for the most part everything has a very strong narrative. That really gets you caught up in whatever topic is being written about."

A case in point in this year's compendium is a story by Gardiner Harris and Anahad O'Connor about the parents of children with autism being at odds with a growing body of research that finds no correlation between vaccinations and the disease.

"The thing that struck me about that article is that so many of the people who become scientists are not temperamentally prepared to understand the degree to which people in the situations of these parents can have their emotions overwhelm them. I can't think of anything more anguishing to a parent than this kind of diagnosis, and it obviously sets in place all these strong, primal emotions to protect their child and to find out what's going on. I think the scientists haven't done as good a job as they should of understanding that side of it. I think they look at the facts, and the facts are telling them something and they communicate what they find, and feel that should be enough. What they're forgetting is that they're dealing with people who want something more than cold reason.

"This vaccination issue has become almost folkloric. I have small children, and I know people who won't have their kids inoculated and vaccinated. It's interesting. I have my concerns, too, but we went ahead with it. I know all these studies, and they are pretty convincing. At the same time, I also know people whose children have been diagnosed with autistic-like symptoms, and it's very hard to deal with."

I tell Mr. Cohen that Gibbs's article on obesity was, for me, the most surprising in the book. It turns out that there is little scientific evidence to support the claim that excess fat, by itself, is a serious health risk.

"That's a classic case of a lot of good intentions building something into something it's not. Everybody wants Americans to be more fit, but, as is pointed out in that article, the numbers just don't make the case.

"It's very interesting, because a few years back we ran an amazing article by Greg Christer on obesity and how doctors were so concerned at seeing certain symptoms, like juvenile diabetes, increasing. That was a very different take.

"Because we don't have a point of view, we can put forth these robust arguments and very strong stories -- it's akin to the scientific approach, in some ways -- allowing the storytelling and the facts to make the case."

I ask Mr. Cohen if there is a piece in the series that is particularly intriguing to him.

"They're all intriguing for me, because the process of doing this is that I cull them from a much larger set. Then I submit 50 or so to our guest editor, and he whittles it down further. So, these are among my favorites for the year.

"One thing that happens a lot is that I will find, in the months after the book comes out, stories in the newspaper that speak to a story or theme or issue that was in the anthology. In New York right now everybody's talking about this rather bizarre story about Brooke Astor, the millionaire socialite who is 104 years old, and her 80-year-old son. There has been a huge dispute as to whether he is or isn't providing appropriate care for her, whether he's bilking her out of money and so on. This speaks very strongly to Charles C. Mann's article, "The Coming Death Shortage."

"He used the example of Anna Nicole Smith and that whole fight, but you just get the feeling that if he had written the article one year later, he'd be seizing on this Astor stuff. It's a complete demonstration of the kind of generational warfare that Mann is predicting."

The demotion of Pluto from planet status and the identification of a California redwood as the world's tallest tree are also news stories from the past month that are presaged in

The Best American Science Writing 2006.

I share with Mr. Cohen that an article from a previous issue, two or three years ago, has haunted me. "It was a story about genetically altered goats that secreted spider web material along with their milk."

"It's amazing what scientists are thinking of and doing. What's going on in genetics has been a theme in all of our volumes. David Quammen's article this year, called "Clone Your Troubles Away" has just the right tone. He's so good at explaining this stuff without sounding ponderous. The article is basically about trying to clone your pet, and he tells us it's never going to be the answer. The last image he leaves is so powerful. The cat that's the clone of a beloved pet is a tabby, but the cat it was cloned from was a calico, so it doesn't even look like the original cat. That's because there are things that happen epigenetically that affect the color of the cat's coat. The article is a real plunge into the obscurities and ambiguities of genetics."

"Walk me through your year. There must be a cycle, at this point, in putting together the anthology."

"There's definitely a cycle. Throughout the year I collect and clip articles from various magazines. Around summertime I put together a group of articles that I think deserve the guest editor's attention and send it to him or her. The first few batches of articles I send and get feedback on are very important because then I have a better sense in what to look for. Each guest editor wants to promote or highlight a certain kind of article. Tim Ferris (2001) wanted to make sure that there was a good sampling of astrophysics and astronomy articles, because that's his particular bent. Oliver Sacks (2003) made sure that we had a good array of articles from scientists he liked.

"There's always a bit of a scramble at the end of the year. The guest editor makes the final selections and writes an introduction. Then, I have the happy duty of telling all the contributors they're in. I gather from them a short statement about the article and their bio. By early in the year everything is in to Harper Collins and gets put together for the fall."

Hoping for hints about the 2007 edition, I ask, "So, what's the pile of articles for next year looking like?"

Mr. Cohen laughs deeply. "My pile for next year is looking good. There have already been quite a few really interesting articles, but I don't want to give anything away."