The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024
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Narrated by:
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Eileen Stevens
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Stephen Graybill
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Lee Osorio
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Gina Daniels
About this listen
Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year.
“This was the most anomalous year (so far) in human history,” guest editor Bill McKibben writes, “the year in which the relationship between people and planet showed its most dramatic signs yet of unraveling.” The selections in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 reveal a trying year for our planet—from the Lahaina wildfire tragedy to the lush Amazon jungle slowly turning to savanna—while also celebrating the earth’s beautiful and mysterious ways—from the largest beaver dam on earth to the heroic innovation to prevent birds from crashing into Chicago’s expanse of glass buildings. These essays offer solace in trying times, showing a way for a better future. They are, as McKibben says, “a reminder that this world is still a lovely and deep place, well worth the fighting for.”
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 includes IAN FRAZIER • AMANDA GEFTER • DOUGLAS FOX • SARAH KAPLAN • BEN GOLDFARB • RAYMOND ZHONG • ALEX CUADROS • AND OTHERS
©2024 Bill McKibben and Jaime Green (P)2024 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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The Best American Short Stories 2024
- By: Lauren Groff, Heidi Pitlor
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine, Vikas Adam, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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“There have never been as many exquisitely built stories in existence than there are now,” proclaims guest editor Lauren Groff in her introduction. This abundance led to a volume of robust stories with the nerve to push against narrative expectations. The Best American Short Stories 2024 boasts a collection of twenty stories that “buzz with their own strange logic.” Daring and resonant, the stories in this volume invite in Groff “a feeling that both the author and I were simultaneously discovering something together.”
By: Lauren Groff, and others
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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024
- By: Hugh Howey, John Joseph Adams
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston, Frankie Corzo, David Lee Huynh, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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“These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world” warns guest editor Hugh Howey in his introduction. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 promises a treasure trove of audacious characters, daring worldbuilding, and twisted realties. A sibling duo of supernatural hitmen. A traveling spellbreaker and his trusty alligator mount. Superheroes registering for work. Sentient spaceships with an AI-human interface grow up together with their human pilots.
By: Hugh Howey, and others
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The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2022
- Best American
- By: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson - editor, Jaime Green - series editor
- Narrated by: Tracey Leigh, Jennifer Aquino, Ulka Simone Mohanty, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, renowned marine biologist and co-founder of the All We Can Save climate initiative, compiles the best science and nature writing of the year.
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The worst book in the series I have read.
- By O on 06-19-23
By: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson - editor, and others
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The Best American Essays 2023
- Best American
- By: Vivian Gornick, Robert Atwan
- Narrated by: Will Tulin, Marie Hoffman, Elena Rey, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.
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Loved It
- By Marcel on 10-24-23
By: Vivian Gornick, and others
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The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024
- By: S.A. Cosby, Steph Cha
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez, Bill Andrew Quinn, John Pirhalla, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In his introduction, guest editor S. A. Cosby observes that writing short stories is “a special skill that combines brevity with wit and cleverness and the hint of the existential malaise that imbues crime fiction with its gravitas.” The stories in this collection overflow with gravitas in the most unexpected ways: a cryptic note left on a windshield, a murder for hire meets a game of Mouse Trap, a swipe right on a dating app goes horribly wrong.
By: S.A. Cosby, and others
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The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon
- A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened
- By: Bill McKibben
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth. But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril. And he is curious: What the hell happened?
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Mind blowing
- By Amazon Customer on 02-16-23
By: Bill McKibben
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Mississippi River Tragedies
- A Century of Unnatural Disaster
- By: Christine A. Klein, Sandra B. Zellmer
- Narrated by: Troy McElfresh
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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American engineers have done astounding things to bend the Mississippi River to their will: forcing one of its tributaries to flow uphill, transforming over 1000 miles of roiling currents into a placid staircase of water, and wresting the lower half of the river apart from its floodplain. American law has aided and abetted these feats. But despite our best efforts, so-called "natural disasters" continue to strike the Mississippi basin as raging floodwaters decimate waterfront communities and abandoned towns literally crumble into the Gulf of Mexico.
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Interesting History of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and the People of the Area
- By Michelle on 12-12-23
By: Christine A. Klein, and others
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Third Ear
- Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening
- By: Elizabeth Rosner
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Rosner
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This illuminating book weaves personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with the latest scientific breakthroughs in interspecies communication to show how the skill of deep listening enhances our curiosity and empathy toward the world around us.
By: Elizabeth Rosner
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The Honey Bus
- A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees
- By: Meredith May
- Narrated by: Candace Thaxton
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee crawled on her arm. She was five years old, her parents had recently split, and suddenly, she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard. That first close encounter was at once terrifying and exhilarating for May, and in that moment, she discovered that everything she needed to know about life and family was right before her eyes, in the secret world of bees.
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Touching story
- By Tess Villa on 05-31-19
By: Meredith May
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The Best American Essays 2022
- By: Alexander Chee
- Narrated by: Robert Atwan, Iva-Marie Palmer, Ewan Chung, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.
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Best of this series ever
- By Melissa on 02-28-23
By: Alexander Chee
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A Time of Gifts
- On Foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube
- By: Patrick Leigh Fermor
- Narrated by: Crispin Redman
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot - from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the listener with him as far as Hungary. It is a book of compelling glimpses - not only of the events that were curdling Europe at that time, but also of its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers, the sun on the Bavarian snow, the storks and frogs, the hospitable burgomasters who welcomed him, and that world's grandeurs and courtesies.
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Nobody Writes Like This Anymore
- By Jennifer Calderone on 07-09-18
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Into the Great Wide Ocean
- Life in the Least Known Habitat on Earth
- By: Sönke Johnsen
- Narrated by: Perry Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The open ocean, far from the shore and miles above the seafloor, is a vast and formidable habitat that is home to the most abundant life on our planet, from giant squid and jellyfish to anglerfish with bioluminescent lures that draw prey into their toothy mouths. Into the Great Wide Ocean takes listeners inside the peculiar world of the seagoing scientists who are providing tantalizing new insights into how the animals of the open ocean solve the problems of their existence.
By: Sönke Johnsen
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The End of Nature
- By: Bill McKibben
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the Earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever.
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Excellent.
- By Thomas on 01-29-23
By: Bill McKibben
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Understanding Human Evolution
- By: Ian Tattersall
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Human life, and how we came to be, is one of the greatest scientific and philosophical questions of our time. This compact and accessible book presents a modern view of human evolution. Written by a leading authority, it lucidly and engagingly explains not only the evolutionary process, but the technologies currently used to unravel the evolutionary past and emergence of Homo sapiens.
By: Ian Tattersall
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The Elements of Marie Curie
- How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
- By: Dava Sobel
- Narrated by: Pat Rodrigues
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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“Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name,” writes Dava Sobel at the opening of her shining portrait of the sole Nobel laureate decorated in two separate fields of science—Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre and Chemistry by herself in 1911. And yet, Sobel makes clear, as brilliant and creative as she was in the laboratory, Marie Curie was equally passionate outside it.
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For the love of science
- By CAMarathonRunner on 11-27-24
By: Dava Sobel