Advance Copy: Backstories on books by NASW members

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.

Alaina G. Levine—Create Your Unicorn Career: A Practical Guide to Designing the Authentic Career That Brings You Joy, Meaning, and Money—Even in Uncertain Times

What’s your dream job? How can you find or create it? If hit by a layoff, what should you do next? In Create Your Unicorn Career: A Practical Guide to Designing the Authentic Career That Brings You Joy, Meaning, and Money – Even in Uncertain Times, Alaina G. Levine provides tactics she has shared in her column in Science and as a professional speaker, science writer, career coach, & TEDx speaker.

Charles Piller—Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's

Fraud in science and medicine erodes trust in these fields, harms patients and families, delays effective treatment, and wastes vast sums. In Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's, Charles Piller exposes false data in 100s of Alzheimer’s research papers and explores the path forward. He won CASW’s 2025 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting.

Bethann Garramon Merkle (NASW member) and Stephen B. Heard—Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach

“Writing is hard. Teaching and mentoring writing often is even harder. It doesn’t have to be,” Bethann Garramon Merkle and Stephen Heard assert in Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach. Students need writing skills they can use over their entire careers, the authors say. They offer teachers a well-stocked toolbox of tactics to help students achieve that goal.

Jim Morris—The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers

Cancer and other work-related illnesses take 120,000 lives in the U.S. annually, Jim Morris writes in The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers, NASW’s 2025 Science in Society Book Award winner. Workers are mostly on their own, he says. Workplace safety varies. OSHA’s ineffectual. Physicians often fail to ask patients what work they do.

Barbara Gastel—Medical Editing: A Guide to Learning the Craft and Building Your Career

Medical editing is a helping profession that benefits publishers, authors, patients, the media, and the public, Barbara Gastel asserts in Medical Editing: A Guide to Learning the Craft and Building Your Career. Her book aims to introduce the field, foster readers’ core knowledge and skills, and describe career possibilities. “Even the best writers,” she says, “benefit from the input of an editor.”

Marie Zhuikov—High Fire Danger: Poems of Love and Nature

“My body contains more Neanderthal DNA variants than 87% of the rest of customers in the 23andMe database,” Marie Zhuikov reports in her poem, “Unwitting Neanderthals.” It appears in High Fire Danger: Poems of Love & Nature”, a collection of works written during Zhuikov’s three decades as a science writer for Wisconsin Sea Grant. Another poem, “Lake Superior Auntie,” recounts that experience.

Brad Fox—Another Bone-Swapping Event

On March 9, 2020, Brad Fox flew from New York to Peru to spend 10 days with a traditional curandero, or healer, learning about plant medicines in a remote jungle four hours’ walk from the nearest dirt road. After WHO declared the COVID pandemic two days later, Peru shut down international and domestic travel. In Another Bone-Swapping Event, Fox shares experiences from his 14 months there.

Ryan Goldberg—Bird City: Adventures in New York's Urban Wilds

Contrary to common belief, cities offer superb birding ops, Ryan Goldberg reports in Bird City: Adventures in New York's Urban Wilds. Goldberg takes readers around New York and around the year, to urban canyons, parks, rivers, & marshes, examining the impact of air quality, bright lights, window strikes, & more on 100s of bird species. Thankfully, few women today wear hats adorned with birds.

Ainissa Ramirez—Spark: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone

Growing up on a farm in Virginia in the 1930s, Jim West loved taking radios and other devices apart and putting them back together to figure out how they worked. In Spark: Jim West's Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone, Ainissa Ramirez introduces readers aged 5-9 to West’s role in developing the ubiquitous microphone. It’s the 1st book in her children’s series on Black inventors.

David Stipp—Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep and Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution

“Familiar things we tend to ignore in our daily haste are often more interesting than they seem,” David Stipp asserts. In Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep and Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution, he ponders Darwinian puzzles such as why many species of bees have yellow & black bands, & why humans need to sleep. Why questions about living things, he explains, often point to adaptive purposes.