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.
Sugar-sweetened beverages boost rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, Murray Carpenter asserts. In Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes Us Sick, he focuses on the world’s largest soda manufacturer, calling for greater consumer awareness of sodas’ nutritional risks and the strategies corporations use to hide those risks.
Differential privacy (DP), now the gold standard of algorithmic privacy protection, protects confidential data by adding random numbers to create statistical noise when the data is used. The U.S. Census Bureau used DP to protect 2020 census data, for example. In Differential Privacy, Simson L. Garfinkel tells what DP is and how it works. His book is part of an MIT science series for general readers.
Forget biological determinism! “Mainstream science is not as objective, neutral, or singularly truthful as people might expect,” Ambika Kamath & Melina Packer write in Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior. Scientists view animal behavior through their own social, cultural, & political lenses, they note, calling for more study of diverse perspectives.
“Pandemics start small, grow large due to negligence, and leave rot behind that we generally don’t bother to clean up before the next pandemic arrives,” Edna Bonhomme writes. In A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19, she details how racial, sexual, and class discrimination maintains disparities in healthcare and society.
The human cost of prolonged space travel urgently needs attention, Dennis Meredith asserts in Earthbound: The Obstacles to Human Space Exploration & the Promise of Artificial Intelligence. Astronauts experience bone loss & problems with vision, digestion, heart and immune system functions, cognition, & more. Using AI robotic space probes instead of humans, Meredith says, offers an ethical option.
“The Covid-19 pandemic was not a fluke,” Carl Zimmer writes in Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. Public health authorities initially said close personal contact spread the disease via droplets and fomites on surfaces. It took months for them to recognize Covid-19’s airborne transmission. “The Covid-19 pandemic,” Zimmer notes, “made the ocean of gases surrounding us visible.”
Shut down your screens. Go outside at night. As your eyes adjust, revel in the darkness. Tag along as Leigh Ann Henion attends a bat outing and a moth festival. Look for wondrous nightlife that may include synchronous fireflies, hooting owls, glowing fungi, and other creatures and plants that Henion describes in Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark.
“We really can die of a broken heart,” Mary-Frances O'Connor reports in The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing. The brain/body connection is real, she says, though poorly understood. When death, chronic illness, or other major losses disrupt one’s equilibrium, she suggests, improved self-awareness, habit-change, and reconnection with others may help restore it.
A lonely teenaged girl leading a birding tour in a northern Minnesota peat-moss bog finds a mummified Viking boy. A college biology student loses his way on a biosphere tour, finds he is locked in, and faces a creepy night. In The Path of Totality: Stories & A Novella, Marie Zhuikov draws on her experience as a science writer to craft stories that slip from real-world settings to science fiction.
