The best American science and nature writing 2021 / Ed Yong, editor.

This overlooked variable is the key to the pandemic / Zeynep Tufekci -- They say Coronavirus isn't airborne--but it's definitely bourne by air / Roxanne Khamsi -- The difference bettween feeling safe and being safe / Amanda Mull -- I'm an ER doctor in New York. None of us will ever be the sake / Helen Ouyang -- The Covid drug wars that pitted doctor vs. doctor / Susan Dominus -- The soft butch that couldn't (or: I got Covid-19 in March and never got better) / Heath Hogan -- What happened in Room 10? / Katie Engelhart -- It's not too late to save Black lives / Julia Craven -- The scramble to pluck 24 billion cherries in eight weeks / Brooke Jarvis -- Rabbit fever / Susan Orlean -- An atlas of the cosmos / Shannon Stirone -- Periwinkle, the color of poison, Modernism, and dusk / Katy Kelleher -- The unsung heroine of lichenology / Sabrina Imbler -- Happiness won't save you / Jennifer Senior -- Out there, nobody can hear you scream / Latria Graham -- The empty space where normal once lived / Bathsheba Demuth -- This is how we live now / Emily Raboeau -- What the Coronavirus means for climate change / Meehan Crist -- River of time / Namwali Serpell -- Fish out of water / Maya L. Kapoor -- Cancel earthworms / Julia Rosen -- Long may they reign / Nora Caplan-Bricker -- A toxic secret lurks in deep sea / Rosanna Xia -- SpaceX is taking over a tiny Texas neighborhood / Marina Koren -- The friendship and love hospital / Jiayang Fan -- The last children of Down Syndrome / Sarah Zhang.

"The stories I have chosen reflect where I feel the field of science and nature writing has landed, and where it could go," Ed Yong writes in his introduction. "They are often full of tragedy, sometimes laced with wonder, but always deeply aware that science does not exist in a social vacuum. They are beautiful, whether in their clarity of ideas, the elegance of their prose, or often both." The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing brought clarity to the complexity and bewilderment of 2020 and delivered us necessary information during a global pandemic. From an in-depth look at the moment of the virus’s outbreak, to a harrowing personal account of lingering Covid symptoms, to a thoughtful analysis on how the pandemic will impact the environment, these essays, as Yong says, "synthesize, evaluate, dig, unveil, and challenge," imbuing a pivotal moment in history with lucidity and elegance." --back cover.