The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2026

A collection of twenty pieces that represent the best science and nature writing published the previous year and explores our ever-changing world.

On his selections for this year’s The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Randall Munroe writes, “Rather than simply telling people facts, I leaned toward articles that explained why we knew those facts, and why we cared, sharing portraits of people trying earnestly to understand the world around them.” The essays in this collection are deeply informative and ultimately uplifting explorations into our ever-changing world—and our ever-changing place in it. From water shortages in Pakistan, to a medical device reversing the effects of vertigo, to the politics of the 2025 Los Angeles fires clean-ups, these stories span mental health, conservation, politics, climate, and more, celebrating our unending quest to better understand the world around us.

THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2026 INCLUDES: Sabrina Imbler • Rivka Galchen •
Rachel Aviv • Nathaniel Rich • Tatiana Schlossberg • Trevor Quirk • Roy Richard Grinker

Randall Munroe is the author of the webcomic xkcd and the New York Times bestsellers What If?, What If? 2, Thing Explainer, and How To. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time. The International Astronomical Union has named an asteroid after him; that asteroid, 4942 Munroe, is large enough that it could cause widespread devastation if it were to hit Earth. He lives in Massachusetts.

Jaime Green, series editor, is a science writer and essayist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Aeon, Slate, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Astrobites, and elsewhere. She is the author of The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos.