For this column, NASW book editor Lynne Lamberg asks NASW authors to tell how they came up with the idea for their book, developed a proposal, found an agent and publisher, funded and conducted research, and put the book together. She also asks what they wish they had known before they began working on their book, what they might do differently the next time, and what tips they can offer aspiring authors. She then edits the A part of that Q&A to produce the author reports you see here.
NASW members: Will your book be published soon? Visit www.nasw.org/advance-copy-submission-guidelines to submit your report.
Publication of NASW members' reports in Advance Copy does not constitute NASW's endorsement of their books. NASW welcomes your comments and hopes this column stimulates productive discussions.
While science and marketing are separate disciplines, effective science communication draws on knowledge and skills from both, Sheeva Azma asserts in Science X Marketing, a book summarizing her experiences studying neuroscience and working as a science writer, educator, marketer, and policy advisor. Azma also explores ethical challenges that people who work in science marketing may face.
Despite extinction of nearly 600 seed plant species since the 18th century, the number of top US universities offering botany degrees continues to fall, Erin Zimmerman reports in Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science. Protected maternity leave, pumping space, remote work options, and childcare at conferences, she asserts, could keep more highly trained women in science.
All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises, herpetologist George R. Zug and NASW member Devin A. Reese report in Tortoises of the World: Giants to Dwarfs. Tortoises may converse via low-frequency vocalizations, this illustrated guide to 47 tortoise species relates. They can feel tactile stimulation of their shells. Habitat change and direct exploitation threaten their survival.
Solitude, often disparaged, linked to loneliness, or thought an unattainable luxury, offers many benefits for everyday life, Netta Weinstein, NASW member Heather Hansen, and Thuy-vy Nguyen write in Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone. Solitude can boost creativity, reflection, and resilience, the authors say. Surprise: it also often fosters improvements in social relationships.
More than a century after Einstein published his theory of general relativity, physicists and mathematicians still strive to unravel its implications and expand upon it, NASW member Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau write in The Gravity of Math: How Geometry Rules the Universe. Continual exchange and spillover of ideas across disciplinary boundaries, they note, advance our understanding of the universe.
“Cosmic rays remain one of the most intractable scientific puzzles of all time,” Mark Wolverton asserts. Debate between two physicist superstars over what cosmic rays are and how they came to be roiled scientific, religious, and philosophical groups in the 1930s, Wolverton writes in Splinters of Infinity: Cosmic Rays and the Clash of Two Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists over the Secrets of Creation.
Whales fertilize the ocean with their poop. Forest elephants eat small fast-growing trees, helping larger slow-growing trees flourish. In Animal Climate Heroes!, Alison Pearce Stevens urges readers aged 8 and up to become climate heroes, too, by cutting back on single-use plastics, encouraging their families to buy local, planting a vegetable garden, and choosing to bike rather than riding in a car.
On April 8, the moon’s shadow will sweep over North America from Mexico across Texas to New England into Canada. Some 32 million people will see a total eclipse. This “precious shared experience,” David Baron suggests in a new edition of American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World, may boost recognition of commonalities in our divided nation.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars, but the 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics went to her male academic advisor—not a unique story. In She Can STEM: 50 Trailblazing Women in Science from Ancient History to Today, Liz Lee Heinecke chronicles 50 women scientists’ successes and struggles. Each account includes a guide to help readers ages 7-12 conduct topic-related experiments of their own at home.
