On the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2023

This is a strong if imperfect collection of nature and science writing. The most ass-clenching piece was “American Motherhood,” but there were other good ones — “Shadows, Tokens, Spring,” “True Grit,” “Brain Wave,” “Dislodged,” and “A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink the Structure of Nature’s Laws.” Climate change and pandemics loom large here, and I wish there’d been more on space and technology, but most science writing reflects current concerns, and the collection reflects that.