NASW Science Bookstore

Alun Anderson
Smithsonian Books/Harper

We have all seen the pictures of forlorn polar bears perched on tiny icebergs amid open water. The sea ice, which covers an area of ocean larger than the whole of the United States, is melting away, and the Arctic summer ice appears to be disappearing for good. Research biologist turned journalist Anderson combines science, business, politics, and adventure to take the reader to the ends of the earth and reveals the ways in which global warming is changing the Arctic faster and more dramatically than any place else on earth.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2009-10

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Elizabeth Grossman
Island Press

Portland, Ore., freelance author and journalist Elizabeth Grossman, who brought national attention to the contaminants hidden in computers and other high tech electronics, now tackles the hazards of ordinary consumer products. She shows that for the sake of convenience, efficiency, and short-term safety, we have created synthetic chemicals that fundamentally change, at a molecular level, the way our bodies work. The consequences range from diabetes to cancer, and reproductive and neurological disorders.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2009-10

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Dan Hurley
Kaplan Publishing

Hurley is a freelance science writer and journalist who regularly contributes to the New York Times Science Times and writes for numerous medical newspapers. In Diabetes Rising he investigates a disease now affecting 23 million people in the United States. The book chronicles the millennia-long quest to understand and cure what many consider the most mystifying, annoying, fascinating, and maddening disease known to humanity.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2009-10

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Douglas Isbell and Stephen E. Strom
University of Arizona Press

The southwestern United States, with its clear skies and low humidity, is an astronomer's paradise, unique in its loose federation of like-minded research outposts and in the quantity and diversity of its observatories. Douglas Isbell and Stephen Strom, both intimately involved in southwestern astronomy, have written a practical guide to the major observatories of the region for those eager to understand the role these often quirky places has played in advancing our understanding of the cosmos.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2009-10

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K. Kris Hirst
Left Coast Press

Hirst was a working archaeologist in the American midwest, American southwest and, for one heady season, in Mexico, before retiring in 2005 to write freelance science articles on archaeology, primarily for About.com. She loves a good quotation and has collected several hundred over the years. The material in her book come from academic papers and books on archaeology, as well as popular books and novels, movies, comic strips, music, and other pop culture (past and present).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2009-10

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Allan Boyle
Wiley & Sons

Allan Boyle, msnbc.com's science editor and the creator of Cosmic Log, traces tiny Pluto's ups and downs, its strange appeal, the reasons behind its demotion, and the reasons why it should be set back in the planetary pantheon. The Case for Pluto is the tale of a cosmic underdog that has captured the hearts of millions: an endearing little planet that is changing the way we see the universe beyond our backyard.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2009-10

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Dennis Meredith
Oxford University Press

Drawing on knowledge gleaned from a 40-year career in research communication, Dennis Meredith shows researchers and communication practitioners how to use a wide range of communication tools and techniques to disseminate discoveries to key audiences: colleagues, institutional leaders, legislators, corporate sponsors, funding agency administrators, media, and the public.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2009-10

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Natalie Angier
Ecco/Harper

Edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist and bestselling author Natalie Angier, The Best American Science Writing 2009 is distinguished by new and impressive voices as well as some of the foremost names in science writing. Among them is NASW member J. Madeleine Nash, former TIME magazine senior science correspondent now a freelance writer, for "Back to the Future" (High Country News, Oct. 13, 2008). This anthology provides a comprehensive overview of where science has taken us — and where it is headed.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2009

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Philip Bell, Bruce Lewenstein, Andrew W. Shouse, and Michael A. Feder
National Academies Press

Learning Science in Informal Environments is a guide for program and exhibit designers, evaluators, staff of science-rich informal learning institutions and community-based organizations, scientists interested in educational outreach, federal science agency education staff, and K-12 science educators. The book draws together disparate literatures, synthesizes the state of knowledge, and articulates a common framework for the next generation of research on learning science in informal environments across a life span.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2009

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Irene S. Levine
Overlook Press

Levine is the Huffington Post's "Friendship Doctor," a psychologist, a journalist, and a professor at NYU School of Medicine. Men, jobs, children, personal crises, irreconcilable social gaps — these are just a few of the reasons that may cause a female friendship to end. "No matter what the circumstances, the breakup of a female friendship leaves a woman devastated and asking herself difficult questions," she writes. "Was someone to blame? Is the friendship worth fighting for? How can I prevent this from ever happening again?"

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2009

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Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
DaCapo Press

U.K. professors Brian Cox, a particle physicist (named one of the "sexiest men alive" by People Magazine); and Jeff Forshaw, who received the Institute of Physics Maxwell Medal for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics, go on a journey to the frontier of 21st century science to consider the real meaning behind the iconic sequence of symbols that make up Einstein's most famous equation.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2009

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Pamela S. Turner
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

What's the difference between a frog and a toad? Turner explains and points out the western spadefoot toad, despite its common name, is actually a frog. The book focuses on Tyrone Hayes and his works trying to save the frogs from their drastic decline. A graduate of Harvard and Berkeley, he has already discovered that the most commonly used pesticides in the U.S. (atrazine) may play a role, as well as loss of habitat and a devastating fungal disease.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2009

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Lynn C. Klotz and Ed Sylvester
University of Chicago Press

Freelance Ed Sylvester teaches science and medical writing at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Co-author Lynn Klotz is a senior scientist with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, in Washington. They maintain that the billions of dollars spent since the 9/11 attacks on measures to defend the population against the threat of biological weapons hasn't made us any safer. According to the authors, the fundamental problem is the danger caused by the sheer size and secrecy of our biodefense effort.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2009

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Judith Horstman
Jossey-Bass (Wiley)

Why am I so cranky in the morning? How effective is multitasking? When do I make the best decisions? Journalist Horstman reveals the answers to these questions and a lot more. She reviews a full day of brainwork by accounting for the mental processes of everyday activities, arranged by hour, beginning with 5 a.m. and "coming to consciousness." Horstman shows how, as hormone and neurotransmitter levels change throughout the day, there may be an optimal time for everything.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2009

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Elisa Zied
Alpha Books/Penguin

Each day, consumers hear so much conflicting information about basic nutrition which makes it next to impossible to know what's fact and what's fiction. Zied, an award-winning registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, book that not only cuts through the clutter of nutrition misinformation, but provides readers with a comprehensive source for anything and everything about nutrition.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2009

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Kendrick Frazier, editor
Prometheus Books

For more than 30 years, The Skeptical Inquirer has been the leading voice for reliable scientific examination of the paranormal and other questionable claims popularized by the media and mass culture. In this new collection of outstanding recent articles, Editor Kendrick Frazier has selected topics of current interest.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2009

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Stephen S. Ilardi
Da Capo Press Lifelong Books

Depression rates have skyrocketed: approximately one in four Americans will suffer from major depression at some point in their lives, according to Ilardi, associate professor psychology at the University of Kansas. Inspired by the extraordinary resilience of aboriginal groups like the Kalluli of Papua New Guinea who rarely suffer from depression, Ilardi's book prescribes an easy-to-follow, clinically proven program that harks back to what our bodies were originally made for — and need.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2009

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Jorg Blech
Da Capo Lifelong Books

Blech, a the U.S.-based correspondent for Der Spiegel, notes that 60 percent of the world's population is described as sedentary and treatment for sedentary citizens in the United States alone costs $75 billion dollars a year. He builds the case for exercise with examples ranging from President Eisenhower's heart treatment to studies conducted by NASA, dismantling old preconceptions about bed rest along the way.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2009

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Ben Shaberman
Apprentice House

There's nothing funny about being vegan, unless you are science writer-humorist Shaberman. His book includes dog chases, fornicating grasshoppers, and chicken-stock sabotage. He explores the lighter side of the meat-free lifestyle. Shaberman's reflections will, he says, put a smile on the faces of vegans and omnivores alike.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2009

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Marcia Bartusiak
Random House

Bartusiak, a visiting professor of writing at MIT Graduate Science Writing Program, describes how on Jan. 1, 1925, Edwin Hubble announced findings that ultimately established that our universe was a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed and filled with myriad galaxies like our own. It was a realization, Bartusiak says, that reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2009

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Samuel S. Epstein, Randall Fitzgerald
Ben Bella Books

Epstein is professor emeritus of environmental and occupational medicine at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, and chairman of the non-profit Cancer Prevention Coalition. He provides a comprehensive, documented scientific analysis of the wide range of toxic ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products which he maintains continues to be ignored by the Food & Drug Administration. These include products for infants and children, women, beauty and nail salons, sun worshippers, and youth seekers.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2009

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K.C. Cole
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

K. C. Cole — a friend and colleague of Frank Oppenheimer for many years — has drawn from letters, documents, and extensive interviews to write a very personal story of the man whose irrepressible spirit would inspire many. As a young man Frank followed in his famous brother's footsteps — growing up in a privileged Manhattan household, becoming a physicist and working on the atomic bomb. Tragically, Frank and Robert both had their careers destroyed by the Red Scare. But their paths diverged. While Robert died an almost ruined man, Frank came into his own, emerging from 10 years of exile on a Colorado ranch to create not just a multimillion-dollar institution but also a revolution that was felt all over the world. His Exploratorium was a "museum of human awareness" that combined art and science while it encouraged play, experimentation, and a sense of joy and wonder.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Ellen Leopold
Rutgers University Press

Leopold, who specializes in writing about the politics of health, describes how nearly every aspect of our understanding and discussion of cancer bears the imprint of its Cold War entanglement. She writes about the current biases toward individual rather than corporate responsibility for rising cancer incidence rates, research that promotes treatment rather than prevention, and therapies the can be patented and marketed. Taking into account a wide array of disciplines, her book challenges the understanding of cancer and how we approach its treatment.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Dennis Schatz
Silver Dolphin

Science educator Dennis Schatz has written for children a biography of Thomas Edison. In this 40-page book, Schatz describes Edison's life and his world-changing inventions: the phonograph, electric lighting, movie projectors, and more. The book includes a hand-crank-powered kinetoscope, filmstrip images to view, and blank strips to make simple moving pictures. Schatz is senior vice president for strategic programs at Pacific Science Center, in Seattle. A research solar astronomer prior to his career in science education, he worked at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Jack Williams with Forewords by Rick Anthes and Stephanie Abrams
The University of Chicago Press

The former USA Today weather editor, Williams explores the science behind the weather, stories of people coping with severe weather, and those who devote their lives to understanding the atmosphere, oceans, and climate. The book's historic discussions and profiles illustrate how meteorology and the related sciences are interwoven throughout our lives. Williams had previously authored the highly successful USA TODAY Weather Book, but by 2004 the book was out of date. "USA TODAY wasn't interested in doing a third edition, but the American Meteorological Society was interested in a book for the general public," he said. Williams retired from USA TODAY in 2005 and went to work for the AMS with the main job of writing The AMS Weather Book.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Reto U. Schneider
Quercus (UK)

Schneider says his work on mad-science experiments originated as a by-product of his time as the head of the science section of a now-defunct Swiss news magazine. "I accumulated a stack of research studies about weird experiments. Unfortunately, my editor had no desire to see these appear in print, because they violated all the basic journalistic criteria. They were utterly inconsequential, hopelessly ancient, or both." Schneider decided to hold on to his pile of clippings. Several years later, he was offered a chance to write a science column for NZZ Folio, the magazine of a major Swiss daily newspaper. The column led to a book called Science Book of the Year, which became an immediate bestseller in Germany and was later translated into nearly a dozen languages.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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David J. Tenenbaum with Terry Devitt
Penguin Books

These two NASW members have, for more than a decade, trawled the headlines to bring a deeper understand of everyday events and phenomena to the public. Their whyfiles.org is reputedly the number one science destination on the web. Their new book is formatted like a newspaper and is divided into sections including: World News, Metro, Business Life, Sports, Arts and Leisure, Travel, Style, Opinion Page, and more. The Why Files originated 13 years ago with an off-the-cuff remark by a NSF grant officer who wanted to know how people learn about science on the web, a medium then in its infancy. Today, www.whyfiles.org clocks several hundred thousand users per month and has been heralded by the AAAS, Popular Science, and The Wall Street Journal among others.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Steve Miller
Alpha

Why doesn't stomach acid dissolve the stomach itself? Why are most plants green? Why are there more tornados in the Midwest than on the coast? This volume answers these and more than 200 other questions, shedding light on the science behind them. The book addresses every major branch of science, including physics, chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology, astronomy, and cosmology. It highlights some of the big ideas that helped shape science as we know it and discusses the future of science with regards to nanotechnology, genetic modification, molecular medicine, and string theory. Miller is a freelance writer who specializes in physical science and educational writing.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Stuart Brown, M.D. and Christopher Vaughan
Avery/Putnam

Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist, clinical researcher, and the founder of the National Institute for Play, has spent his career studying animal behavior and conducting more than six thousand "play histories" of humans from all walks of life — from serial murderers to Nobel Prize winners. This book explains why play is essential to our social skills, adaptability, intelligence, creativity, ability to problem solve, and more. Co-author Christopher Vaughan, a communications officer at Stanford University, says the message of the book is that the urge to play is a basic biological drive that nature uses play to promote brain development and social integration as well as prepare for the unexpected — which is why all higher juvenile animals do it.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Marsha Freeman
Apogee Books

Krafft Ehricke (1917-1984) was a space visionary who made significant contributions to astronautics and laid the philosophical basis for space exploration. Marsha Freeman's book benefits from a collaborative relationship she shared with Ehricke for the last few years of his life. Ehricke came to the United States as part of the German rocket team, following the end of World War II. But from the age of 12, his eyes had been fixed firmly on the stars. In his youth, he used his imagination to describe what manned trips to the moon and planets would entail, and then spent his adult career working to make those visions become a reality. The book brings back into public light Krafft Ehricke's contributions as well as papers, article, speeches, and interviews that have been unavailable to the public.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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Barbara Moran
Random House

Barbara Moran marshals a wealth of new information and recently declassified material to give the definitive account of the Cold War's biggest nuclear weapons disaster. On Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the sleepy Spanish farming village of Palomares during a routine airborne refueling. The explosion killed seven airmen and scattered the bomber's payload — four unarmed thermonuclear bombs — across miles of coastline. The book tells the riveting true story of the nuclear buildup that led to this deadly accident, the far-reaching consequences of the crash, and the massive search for the missing bombs.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2009

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David Joachim and Andrew Schloss with A. Philip Handel
Robert Rose Inc.

This book contains more than 1,600 A to Z entries from acid to wine. While demystifying the complexities of cooking, it describes the confounding phenomena of everyday eating such as why artichokes make certain foods taste sweeter and what causes some people to think cilantro tastes like soap. Topics on cooking ingredients discuss the basic molecular make-up of meats, poultry, game, fish, and other foodstuffs, as well as how these foods react to heat. The authors include chemistry principles that reveal the physical and chemical transformations that take place during cooking, explaining things like aeration, caramelization, and gelatinization.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2008-09

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Thomas Hager
Harmony Books

Fixed nitrogen is essential in agriculture. Its rarity, as science writer Hager writes, shaped the world and its politics. Hager details that in 1905 German chemist Fritz Haber discovered a process for transforming abundant air-borne nitrogen into ammonia, and Carl Bosch's engineering scaled Haber's benchtop chemistry into industrial processes to make fertilizer. Haber and Bosch earned Nobel Prizes and saved millions from starvation. By 1944, the Haber-Bosch factory at Leuna — a primary target for U.S. bombers — occupied three square miles and employed 35,000 workers. Hager not only illuminates the men's complex work, but also digs into their personal lives. Haber, a Jew, developed the chlorine gas used in World War I, sought a way to extract gold from the oceans to pay off German war reparations, and conducted research that led to the development of the Zyklon B gas used in Nazi death camps. Bosch asked Hitler to spare Jewish scientists for the sake of German chemistry and physics. The Fuhrer replied: "Then we'll just have to work 100 years without physics and chemistry."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2008-09

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Vonda Wright, M.D., and Ruth Winter, forward by Nolan Ryan
AMACOM

Dr. Wright, an orthopedist, has created a medical program specifically designed to target the fitness and performance needs of mature athletes. "No matter how fit we may have been at 20, we're very different people after 40. You have to understand your body and approach exercise and injury in a new way," according to Wright. "The good news is that not only can we retain the vigor of our youth, we can actually perform as well, if not better." Wright practices at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Sports Medicine. She's also the team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Freelance writer Winter became co-author after receiving a cold call from Wright about the book project.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2008-09

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Lorraine Jean Hopping
Silver Dolphin

Mummies are certainly tempting to touch, but that's not permitted in the museums where they're usually found. Hopping's interactive book not only allows but encourages young readers to touch — and learn all about — an Egyptian mummy. They learn how Egyptians buried and entombed their dead including the making of burial masks, giving amulets for an underworld journey, wrapping mummies from head to toe, preserving the body, and placing sacred organs in canopic jars. Hopping says: "Coming from the board-game business, I'm moth-like attracted to the concept of a toy-and-book combination product, and so ... I gladly tackled ... the history and science of mummies. One big upside to this format is instantly attracting both very young and older reluctant readers and holding their attention with cool plastic parts — a mummy model that reveals itself page by page."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2008-09

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Mark Wolverton
St. Martin’s Press

Philadelphia freelance Wolverton has written about the least-known and most enigmatic period of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life, from the public humiliation he endured after the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission's investigation into his alleged communist leanings and connections, to his death in 1967. It is a portrait of a man who was toppled from the highest echelons of politics and society, saw his honor and name blackened, but succeeded in maintaining his dignity and rebuilding a shattered life. Previously unpublished FBI files round out the picture and cast a sinister cloud over Oppenheimer's final years. The book is an exploration, not only of a prominent scientist and philosopher, but also of an unforgettable era in American history. Anthony Lewis, author of Gideon's Trumpet, says of A Life in Twilight: "We need reminding of the price this country paid for the hounding of a great man: not just for the paranoia and vindictiveness of scoundrels like J. Edgar Hoover and Lewis Strauss, Oppenheimer's chief persecutors, but for the way others — from President Eisenhower down — allowed the disaster to happen."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2008-09

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Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden
Ben Bella Books

Potts, an obstetrician and USC research scientist, and San Francisco freelance Hayden examine the biological origins of organized violence, tracing its development from ancient raids and battles to modern warfare and terrorism. Potts and Hayden relay that understanding war as part of humanity’s biological nature provides our best chance to make conflicts less likely and less brutal." Most people ... still think of moral sentiments and religious convictions as transcendental things that come from outside of us. Potts and Hayden write even the most modern warfare has its roots in our biological history, stemming from a behavior called team aggression — or the tendency of males to band together and intentionally kill their own species. "Team aggression and killing members of an out-group was a relatively low-risk way for the males who evolved the behavior to increase their access to territory and resources," Potts and Hayden explain, "and those who exhibited this behavior were more likely to pass on their genes to succeeding generations than those who did not."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2008-09

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David Wolman
Smithsonian Books

Oregon freelance Wolman — a confessed weak speller himself — takes us on a journey into the past origins of the language and looks at the future of English as influenced by the digital age. Renaissance, millennium, diarrhea, camaraderies, feign, labyrinth, misspelling — are you able to spell them without a mistake? [Right now, this columnist is dealing with the harmonization or harmonisation of the European’s effort to list ingredients in food and cosmetics. Flavour and colour are the "English" choices.] Wolman says for centuries English spelling has frustrated and infuriated. Compared to the writing system of languages such as German, Spanish or Italian, English spelling is a mess. After a spelling-themed road trip starting with the monks of King Alfred’s Wessex, Wolman has produced a book of history, pop culture, and humor that explores how English spelling came to be, traces efforts to mend the code, and imagines the shape of tomorrow’s words.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2008-09

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Alison Bass
Algonquin Books

Bass, a freelance writer and adjunct professor at Boston University, has written a book that tells the true story of a groundbreaking court case and the personal drama that surrounded the making and unmasking of a best-selling drug. It chronicles the lives of two women — a prosecutor and a whistleblower — who exposed the pattern of deception in the research and marketing of Paxil, an antidepressant prescribed to millions of children and adults.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2008

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Various
Ecco/Harper

One NASW member is included in this anthology: Carl Zimmer, a freelance from Guilford, Conn., for "Evolved for Cancer?" (Scientific American, January 2007). He wrote that natural selection is not natural perfection. "Living creatures have evolved some remarkably complex adaptations, but we are still very vulnerable to disease. Among the most tragic of those ills — and perhaps most enigmatic — is cancer."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2008

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Jerome Levine MD and Irene Levine PhD
Wiley

Jerome and Irene Levine are professors of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. The Levines believe that despite major breakthroughs that have taken place in research, practice, and public policy over the past two decades, the lives of individuals and families directly affected by serious mental illnesses have improved only marginally because of limited mental health literacy — until the disease hits home. Using the time-tested Dummies format, the book is simple enough to be read and understood, not only by the one in 10 Americans who grapple with serious mental illnesses in their own families, but also by members of the general public who one day may come face-to-face with schizophrenia in a friend, neighbor, or colleague.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2008

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Carol Moberg
ASM Press

Moberg, a faculty member of Rockefeller University, assisted Dubos in the last decades of his career while he wrote his major works on the environment. She has written a biography of his life from his birth in 1901 to his death in 1982. She presents his science in the context of 20th century biology, medicine, and ecology. She describes the ecological approach that led to his discovery of the first antibiotic and was the foundation for his career as a medical scientist and environmentalist.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Faye Flam
Penguin Group

Beginning with a "boot camp" for wannabe pickup artists.where men pay thousands of dollars for three days of classroom seminars on how to get women into bed.Flam's quest for a deeper understanding of men takes her back through the evolutionary history of the human male. By placing the human male in the context of the natural world, Flam highlights some intriguing resemblances among males of all species, but also the unique challenges that men face when courting women.whether for a lifelong partnership or a onenight stand. Flam ultimately reveals that millions of years of evolution have left the love lives of humans suspended somewhere between monogamy and promiscuity, and that it is this eons-old tension between males and females that has created the modern man.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Robert Zimmerman
Princeton University Press

After World War II, astronomer Lyman Spitzer and a handful of scientists waged a 50-year struggle to build the first space telescope capable of seeing beyond Earth's atmospheric veil. The book tells the epic and sometimes heartbreaking tale of the Hubble Space Telescope, considered by many to be one of the most successful and important scientific instrument ever put into space.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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George L. Blackburn, M.D., Ph.D. and Julie Corliss
Collins

The book offers science-based explanations — and solutions — to the two biggest problems dieters face: hitting a weight-loss plateau and regaining lost weight. Losing just 10 percent of your original body weight, followed by a six-month period of holding steady at your new weight, can help reset your set point, or typical body weight. The advice draws from experts and the 30- year career of co-author Dr. Blackburn, associate director of the division of nutrition, Harvard Medical School. The result is a lifestyle plan that extends beyond recommendations about eating and exercising.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Jorge Chavarro, Ph.D., Walter C. Willett, M.D., Patrick J. Skerrett
McGraw-Hill

Based on the findings from the landmark longterm Nurses' Health Study, the authors report on the effects of diet and other lifestyle changes on fertility among nearly 18,000 female nurses whose diets were evaluated during a time when they were trying to become pregnant. Over eight years of follow-up, most of them did conceive. About one in six women, though, had some trouble getting pregnant, including hundreds who experienced ovulatory infertility — a problem related to the maturation or release of a mature egg each month. The project scrutinized everything from alcohol to vitamins.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Charles Davenport, Jan A. Witkowski, Ph.D. and John R. Inglis (editors)
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

In 1898, Charles Davenport came to Cold Spring Harbor as director of the Biological Laboratory. He was one of the first American biologists to take up Mendel's work and published several papers on human genetics in the early years of the 20th century. In 1911, Davenport published Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, describing what was then known about the inheritance of human physical and behavioral traits. However, as the leading scientific force of the American eugenics movement, Davenport devoted most of the book to how the new science of heredity would lead to a deeper understanding of human nature and the causes of social problems.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Pamela S. Turner
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

For more than 50 years, George Schaller has been on a mission to save the world's great wild beasts and their environments. In this biography, Turner examines the life and groundbreaking work of the man International Wildlife calls "the world's foremost field biologist." Schaller's landmark research demonstrated it is possible to study dangerous animals in their own habitats: mountain gorillas in Central Africa, predatory tigers in India, mysterious snow leopards in the Himalayas, and many others. His insights about species and environment led him to successfully advocate for the protection of over 190,000 square miles of wilderness around the world — an area the size of Spain.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Pamela S. Turner
Charlesbridge Publishing

NASA astrobiologist Christopher McKay has searched the earth's most extreme environments in his quest to understand what factors are necessary to sustain life. Author Pamela Turner offers readers an inside look at McKay's research, explaining his findings and his hopes for future exploration both on Earth and beyond. Behind-the-scenes photos capture McKay, his expeditions, and the amazing microbes that survive against all odds.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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P. Murali Doraiswamy, Lisa P. Gwyther, Tina Adler
St. Martin's Press

Five million Americans have Alzheimer's disease with a new diagnosis being made every 72 seconds, and millions more are worried (due to mild memory loss) or at risk (due to family history). Although experts agree that early diagnosis and treatment are essential, many people — and even their doctors — don't know where to turn for authoritative, stateof- the-art advice and answers to their questions. The authors provide pertinent information including: The best tests to determine if this is — or is not — Alzheimer's disease; the most (and least) effective medical treatments; coping with behavioral and emotional changes through the early and middle stages; gaining access to the latest clinical trials; Understanding the future of Alzheimer's.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Carl Zimmer
Random House

Are there rules that all living things must obey? Is death inevitable? If we rewound the tape of life and let evolution run a second time, would it end up like the original? To explore these questions, Zimmer says he wrote "an (un)natural history of E. coli." Scientists have been earning Nobel Prizes for decades by poking and prodding this microbe, and their work is coalescing into an extraordinary portrait of a living thing. Today, with engineered E. coli spewing out everything from insulin to jet fuel, the microbe is redefining the boundaries of life itself.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Pamela C. Ronald and Raoul W. Adamchak
Oxford University Press

Revealing common principles and "leveling the playing field," this book roughly chronicles one year in the lives of the Ronald-Adamchack family. Through dialogue with friends and family, the authors explore the use of genetically engineered (GE) agriculture and the concerns expressed by consumers. They discuss the contents of their own largely organic pantry, what they choose to feed their children, and how over the last 10 years of their marriage, they have developed a specific criteria for the use of GE in agriculture. Ronald and Adamchack explain what geneticists and organic farmers actually do and help readers distinguish between fact and fiction in the debate about crop genetic engineering.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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George Musser
Alpha Books

Pretty much everyone feels like an idiot when confronted with string theory — and that includes physicists. Author George Musser writes: "String theory is the leading, if controversial, candidate for a fully unified theory of physics. Despite what the title says, this book surveys not only this one theory but a broad range of ideas for a unified theory, picks a way through the minefield of claims and counterclaims for them, describes what such a theory would mean not just for physics but for the wider world, and explains how it might be tested experimentally."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2008

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Sidney Perkowitz
Columbia University Press

Sidney Perkowitz is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University. He is also a dedicated film enthusiast. In this entertaining book, he discusses the portrayal of science in more than 100 films, including scientific biographies and documentaries.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Shar Levine and Leslie Johnstone
Sterling

Levine is an award-winning author of children's science books and science toys/kits; Johnstone is head of a high school science department. The two Canadians have written more than 50 books. This book describes how to buy and use a microscope. Each step is illustrated and explained.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Patricia Barnes-Svarney
Thunder Mountain Press

A freelance Endicott, NY writer/photographer, Barnes-Svarney says the concept for the book started with about 500 scientists — a group of geophysicists who crunched a bunch of data and developed a global seismic hazard map. When the Earth Moves is an account of everything you wanted to know about the fault line that runs through Manhattan's Upper West Side, tsunamis, and sea volcanoes — and how to prepare yourself for the earthquake that just might be waiting in your own backyard.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Jack Henningfield, Patricia Santora, and Warren Bickel, Ph.D., eds.
Johns Hopkins University Press

Two of the editors are clients of Dennis Tartaglia (NASW). The book features two dozen provocative original essays by leading scientists, policymakers, advocates, and artists. Tartaglia says the text provides material for anyone covering drug addiction and its treatment: "It will stimulate new thinking and perhaps provoke some readers — but it will never bore."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Alison Bass
Algonquin Books

As the mental health reporter for the Boston Globe, Bass's front-page reporting on conflicts of interest in medical research, and her series on sexual misconduct among psychiatrists earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination. In this book she turns her investigative skills to a controversial case that exposed the increased suicide rates among adolescents taking antidepressants such as Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft. Side Effects tells the tale of a gutsy assistant attorney general who, along with an unlikely whistle-blower at an Ivy League university, uncovered evidence of deception behind one of the most successful drug campaigns in history.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Dana Desonie, Ph.D.
Chelsea House

An Arizona freelance, Desonie writes "I have been an NASW member for over a decade and finally now have something to report. I have a set of eight reference books on environmental issues aimed at grades 6 to 13 coming out. They are being published by Chelsea House/Facts on File. The first are already out and I just found out this morning that Booklist has named Oceans: How We Use the Seas one of the top 10 environmental books for youth!"

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph.D. and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
Bantam

We all notice things about our bodies that don't seem quite right. But when are these simply harmless physical quirks and when are they signs that a visit to the doctor is in order? Liebmann-Smith, a New York City freelance, produced this comprehensive guide which covers every body part from head to toe — and everything in between — to help you decode the often mysterious messages your body sends you.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Jerry Guo
SuperCollege LLP

A scholarship and college guide for aspiring scientists, the Science Whiz shows you how to take your interest in science to the next level while still in high school by developing powerful independent research projects, win competitions and scholarships, land a coveted research internship, get published, spend summers traveling the world on scientific expeditions, and more. Guo, a freelancer for Science, Nature, The Scientist, and Smithsonian, is a student at Yale who has won more than $120,000 in unrestricted scholarships.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2008

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Peter G. Aitken and Maxine M. Okazaki
Piedmont Medical Writers LLC

The authors, both on the Duke University faculty, write that Word can be particularly problematic because the creation of long, complex documents puts unusual demands on the program. Sitken and Okazaki say they have developed techniques to avoid, minimize, or work around most of them. Aitken has been working in scientific and technical fields for his entire career and Okazaki is a pharmacologist. They can be reached at www.piedmontmedicalwriters.com.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Abigail Foerstner
University of Iowa Press

James Van Allen, astrophysicist and space pioneer for whom the Van Allen radiation belts are named, was among the principal scientific investigators for 24 space missions. Foerstner, who teaches science writing in the graduate program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a former science reporter for the Chicago Tribune, drew on the astrophysicist's correspondence and publications, as well as interviews with more than 100 other scientists, for this biography.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Paul Hoffman
Hyperion

Editor and chief of Discover, Hoffman's book is part memoir (the story of his childhood in Greenwich Village with a brilliant, bohemian, Ping-Pong-hustling dad, and his escape into chess to avoid facing unpleasant truths about his father) and part an insightful look at the crazy world of championship chess, including the stereotypical lunatic Russian grandmasters (one asked that his chair be x-rayed and dismantled to make sure Bobby Fischer hadn't implanted a harmful radiation emitter inside it).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Kevin R. Grazier
BenBella Books

Several NASW members (Sibylle Hechtel, Carol Hart, Sergio Pistoi, and David M. Lawrence) contributed chapters to this exploration of science-fiction author Frank Herbert's world in his popular Dune series. Hechtel contributed the chapter on "The Biology of the Sandworm" after received an unexpected e-mail asking if she'd tackle such an assignment. She was more than interested. "I'd first read Dune in high school and later read all the sequels," she said.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Linley Erin Hall
Seal Press

Women comprise 51 percent of the work force but hold only 26 percent of all IT jobs, and they are underrepresented by a 2-to-1 ratio in physical science fields such as chemistry and physics. Hall, a Berkeley, Calif., freelance uncovers the subtle and not-so-subtle gender bias that begins in early childhood and continues through the hiring process and in the workplace environment.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Rick Schwartz
Blue Diamond Books

The first book-length reference that examines the 400-year recorded tropical cyclone history of the region. It offers chronological profiles of significant storms, from Jamestown to the present. Schwartz says he wrote the book to fill a vital need for accurate historical information concerning mid-Atlantic states' hurricanes. His book contains a collection of dramatic encounters — tales gleaned from articles and books, private journals, and interviews.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Karyn B. Purvis, David R. Cross and Wendy Lyons Sunshine
McGraw-Hill

Adopted children bring great joy to a family, but they can also present unique parenting challenges. How has the past affected my child? What is the real message behind the challenging behavior? How can we build more joyful family relationships? Wendy Sunshine met her co-authors while reporting on them for a Texas newspaper. "They felt I 'got' their work and invited me to co-author a book," she said.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Daniel Greenberg
University of Chicago Press

In recent years, the news media have been awash in stories about increasingly close ties between college campuses and multimillion-dollar corporations. Our nation's universities, the story goes, reap enormous windfalls patenting products of scientific research that have been primarily funded by taxpayers. Meanwhile, hoping for new streams of revenue from their innovations, the same universities are allowing their research — and their very principles — to become compromised by quests for profit. "But is that really the case?" Greenberg questions. "Is money really hopelessly corrupting science?"

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Edward Ricciuti
Smithsonian/Collins

Forensics deals with subjects as varied as the timing of a rainfall and the trajectory of a bullet. Its practitioners use tools as uncomplicated as a simple envelope to hold a fragment of evidence to a complicated scanning electron microscope to probe the molecular structure of a piece of evidence. In his history of forensics Edward Ricciuti, a Connecticut freelance, describes what is believed to be its first use.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2007-08

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Richard K. Bernstein
Little, Brown and Co.

In his newly revised and updated book, Bernstein provides an accessible, detailed guide to his approach to controlling blood sugars. He offers the most up-to-date information on new products, medications, and supplements. He explains the connection between obesity and type 2 diabetes, describes how to interrupt the cycle of obesity and insulin resistance, and reveals a new method for losing weight quickly and easily. He also explains the most recent breakthrough science and potential cures.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2007

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Jennifer Freeman
HarperCollins

A general interest introduction to the field of ecology, the book's topics range from carbon basics to environmental ethics. "My aim is to help readers understand how ecology — unraveling the mysteries of the Earth's intricate and interconnected processes — can help chart a sustainable course for humans and other life on Earth," Freeman says. In the past, she's written on ecology and environmental topics for The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, and other informed audiences with a strong, often professional interest in the topics.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2007

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Megan Sullivan
NSTA Press

Sullivan says this, her first book, is aimed at giving students of all ages a taste of the diversity of careers in which science is used. The book profiles 34 people who use science in their daily work and provides readers with a glimpse of what it is like to actually apply science in the real world. The careers range from the expected — high school science teacher, microbiologist, and forensics technician — to the perhaps unexpected — firefighter, landscape architect, and historical archaeologist — to the adventurous — astronaut, deep-cave explorer, and oceanographer — to the offbeat — roller coaster designer, perfumer, and sports biomechanist.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2007

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Nancy Marie Brown
Harcourt

This 20-volume set is written by more than 5,000 international leaders in science and technology, including 35 Nobel Prize laureates, all selected and invited to contribute by McGraw-Hill's board of consulting editors. Readers will find over 7,000 articles covering nearly 100 fields of science, more than 1,700 new and updated articles, and 12,000 illustrations. The encyclopedia spans 97 subject areas, covering major disciplines in science and technology.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2007

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Various authors
McGraw-Hill

This 20-volume set is written by more than 5,000 international leaders in science and technology, including 35 Nobel Prize laureates, all selected and invited to contribute by McGraw-Hill's board of consulting editors. Readers will find over 7,000 articles covering nearly 100 fields of science, more than 1,700 new and updated articles, and 12,000 illustrations. The encyclopedia spans 97 subject areas, covering major disciplines in science and technology.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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John D. Kirschmann
McGraw-Hill

When first published 30 years ago, this was one of the first books to address "nutrition in practice" and sold millions of copies through the years. Among the topics in this fully revised, updated edition are "how what you eat can affect more than 100 ailments (and) what science can tell us about dietary supplements."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Karen Kedrowski and Marilyn Stine Sarow
University of Illinois Press

The authors analyze the efforts of breast cancer and prostate cancer activist groups over a 20-year period to show how these groups continue to be successful in sustaining or increasing federal spending on genderrelated cancers. In tracing the rise of each movement, the book explores how discussions about the diseases appeared in the media and as part of public and government agendas and how those agendas affected one another.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Lucy Kavaler
Author's Guild Back-in-Print Books

When Lucy Kavaler first sent her manuscript to her agent, the receptionist called to say she thought fungi had to be boring, but she read a few pages and was so caught up, she took it home and read it through the night. When the galleys went out to reviewers, Time magazine sent a photographer to Kavaler's house, she went on tour, and the book was a tremendous success. But alas, after many years, the publisher let it go out of print. Despite that, Kavaler kept getting contacted by people discovering it in libraries and a Cornell professor based an entire course on the book. She wanted new readers to think of fungi in a new way. Since the last paperback was falling apart, the Author's Guild was able to get the printer to scan the hard cover.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Karen Romano Young
Green Willow

When Karen Romano Young was growing up, she and her sisters and brother spent most of their time exploring the wetlands down the road. The mill there was home to a woman who taught her about the wetlands and only once yelled at her for destroying frog eggs by stepping on them. These days the author lives near a marsh full of frogs in Bethel, Conn., with her husband, three children, two guinea pigs, a dog, and a cat. As part of her research for this colorful book, she went to sea for a month on the research vessel Atlantis and dived to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the submarine Alvin to see hydrothermal vents. She says the ocean is "our unknown territory close to home."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Philip F. Schewe
Joseph Henry Press

Philip Schewe, chief science writer for the American Institute of Physics, says he was writing a book about the forces of nature, but it became too sprawling. "I decided I needed to write a more focused, more practical book," he said. At that point, Schewe was preparing to write about how electricity came to be an applied technology. "The backdrop was to be the massive blackout in the Northeast in November 1965 — then the largest electrical failure in history. That became the topic of my book."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Terra Ziporyn
iUniverse

Terra Ziporyn, a Maryland freelance, former associate editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and author of a number of science books including The New Harvard Guide to Women's Health, uses a novel to delve into the mind of a serial murder. Ziporyn's atypical childhood, she says, sparked her interest in mass murderers and the psychology behind their crimes. Her father was the chief psychiatrist at Cook County Jail.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Harvey M. Kramer, M.D., Charlotte Libov
M. Evans

This book is aimed at helping heart-attack survivors empower themselves by learning as much as they can about their hearts, heart-attack treatments, recuperation, and what to do in the event of another heart attack. Chapters on high blood pressure, diabetes, weight control, diet, and exercise address these specific issues.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Steve Mirsky
The Lyons Press.

John Rennie, editor in chief of Scientific American says in the books' foreword, "Inside the walls of Scientific American's laboratory offices in the Fortress of Sullenness, at the North Pole, the editors toil endlessly — leaving them little time for merriment. Steve Mirsky is the exception. He rolls into our office bursting with good humor and wrath at political outrages."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Amy S. Hansen
Publications International

This is the book for any child (or grown-up) who has ever asked, "How does it do that?" Race cars and MP3s, cell phones and traffic signals, roller coasters, and bridges: It's all in this book with full-color photographs; screens that pull out, push in, and twirl.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Dr. Dorree Lynn and Florence Isaacs
Marlowe & Company

This book deals with the emotional and practical problems that occur when your mate falls seriously ill. In author Florence Isaacs' case, her husband had been ill on and off since his midforties. "We learned a lot along the way about ourselves and about the medical establishment," she said. Isaacs knew she had a lot to say to other women about how to get through serious illness together and not only survive, but even emerge stronger.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2007

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Elisa Zied with Ruth Winter
Wiley

Zied is a registered dietitian, a national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, and the co-author (with Winter) of So What Can I Eat?! Feed Your Family Right contains nutritional guidelines and recipes designed to make family meals simple, healthy, and delicious. It shows how to make a nutrition plan for each member of the family, set realistic goals, and achieve, and maintain a healthy weight.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2007

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Suzanne Loebl
ASJA/ iUniverse

Loebl, a Brooklyn, N.Y., freelance, writes about AIDS not only as a science writer but as a mother who lost a son to the disease. She says that in 1983 many parents turned their backs on their children with AIDS, while a few rallied to their side. When the virus infected Loebl's son, David, she jointed a support group that came to be known as the Mothers' Group. Her book chronicles the lives of the members who fiercely and tenderly stood by their children.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2007

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Robert L. Koenig
PublicAffairs/Perseus Books Group

The Fourth Horseman tells the story of the 20th century's first foray into biological warfare, a World War I German Army sabotage campaign that featured a "germ factory" in the basement of a cottage in Washington, D.C. The book's main character is a Virginia-born doctor and German spy, Anton Dilger, who studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg and Johns Hopkins University, and was the descendant of a great German physiologist.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2007

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Ann Parker
Poisoned Pen Press

Parker's book is the sequel to her first historical mystery, Silver Lies. She says she originally became interested in Leadville, Colo. in the late 1990s when she first learned her paternal grandmother had been raised there — something she learned about long after her grandmother's death.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2007

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Jeffrey J. Byrd and Tabitha M. Powledge
Alpha

Like all the Complete Idiot's Guides, this paperback is a primer. It explains the basics on bacteria, viruses, and the lesser-known microbes (protozoa, algae, fungi, prions, and the brand-new archaea). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Microbiology concentrates on infectious diseases but also explains other features of the invisible world that governs all life on earth.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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Andrew Holtz
Berkley Publishing Group

Holtz, chief of the HoltzReport and former CNN medical correspondent, takes readers into the science behind the FOX TV drama, "House M.D.," starring Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House, a diagnostician who unravels medical mysteries in each episode.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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Sally Squires
St. Martin's Press

Squires, a health reporter and columnist for the Washington Post, presents an eight-week program. Each week, readers find two new goals — one for food and one for activity. Weight Watchers International, Inc. says of the book: "Sally Squires shows her stuff — expert knowledge about what it takes to lose weight successfully, understanding of the trials and tribulations that people struggling with weight issues face, and conviction that lasting weight loss is possible."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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Geeta Anand
Regan Books

Anand, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has written the story of one father's race against time to found a business that would cure his sick children. John and Aileen Crowley were on top of the world. With a brand-new Harvard Business School degree, three beautiful children, a new house, and a great job, they thought that they had just entered the best years of life. Then doctors diagnosed their two youngest children with Pompe disease, a degenerative disease so rare that no company had bothered spending the money needed to sponsor research.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Three Rivers Press

Hobbs is a licensed, registered dietitian with a doctorate in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is a clinical assistant professor, registered dietitian, and columnist. She has written a guidebook on how to create a healthier, trans fat-free diet while keeping taste and pleasure alive in the foods we eat.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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Tom Hager
Harmony Books

Hager, an Oregon freelance, says he wrote the book to help readers understand modern medicine. Kirkus Reviews wrote that The Demon Under The Microscope described "the fascinating story of the world's first antibiotic ... A rousing, valuable contribution to the history of medicine" and Library Journal recommends it highly.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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Robert Henson
Rough Guides

Henson, a writer for The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), has written a book about a subject we almost always mention in conversation — the weather. Henson maintains weather has become a polarized subject and yet, he maintains, the basic science behind global climate change is rock-solid and accepted by virtually all parties.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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William Sweet
Columbia University Press

Sweet is senior news editor of IEEE Spectrum. From the mid-70s through the 80s, he worked as a journalist specializing in nuclear arms control and all related matters. Publisher's Weekly wrote of the book: "Polar icecaps are melting, ocean levels are rising, greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating — and, says Sweet, the villain of catastrophic climate change is coal, whose sooty carbon emissions make it the single worst energy source."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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Melissa Stewart
Peachtree

Stewart has written more than 70 science books for young people. A Massachusetts freelance, she says this book, aimed at 5 to 8 year olds, was definitely a labor of love: "It is my hope that the book's stunning illustrations and clear, simple language will inform young readers and inspire them to take action. Butterflies have lived on Earth for more than 140 million years."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2006-07

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John Moir
The Lyons Press

The book tells the story of the race to save our largest bird from extinction. The storyline transports readers deep into the world of the California condor and describes how the condor symbolizes the extinction crisis facing our planet. Moir says he had been writing articles about the condor recovery program for newspapers and magazines for several years. "In 2004, I was asked to do a feature story on the recovery effort for Birding magazine. Researching this article took me deeper into the world of the condor and the biologists who are trying to save it, and I realized that the story of this iconic bird would make a great book. I've spent the past year and half researching, traveling, and writing the book." Moir can be reached at John@Jmoir.com. The press representative is Theresa Eldredge at 203-458-4539 and theresa.eldredge@globepequot.com.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Kathy Sawyer
Random House

Sawyer, a former science writer for the Washington Post, tells the story of the passionate scientific dispute that engulfed a rock from Mars that landed in Antarctica 13 millennia ago. At the core of the drama is one team's 1996 claim that the rock might harbor the first known signs of extraterrestrial life, but the narrative encompasses broader themes: How scientists think and work and feel, how journalists and politicians — all the way to the White House — interact with science, and how the controversy ultimately changed scientists' approach to such mysteries as how life begins on any planet, including Earth. Sawyer can be reached at kathy@kathysawyer.com. Publicist is Jennifer Jones is at jmjones@randomhouse.com.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Richard Hayes and Daniel Grossman
Rutgers University Press.

This book may help us as much as it helps the scientists. Hayes is the media director of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Grossman is a science journalist, radio, and Web producer. They advise, for example, "Preparing for a Press Conference. In advance of the event, create your compass of main messages and talking points. If more than one person will be speaking, each person should choose one or two of the messages as their main focus of discussion. Brain storm all the possible questions reporters may ask you, and have your answers ready, always aiming to bridge back to your talking points. If possible, try to schedule your press conference at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. That will give newspapers and television reporters plenty of time to put their stories together for the evening news or the next day's paper." Among the other subjects are "Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst" and "Do You Hear What You Are Saying?" NASW's Deborah Blum has a quote on the back of the book: " ... now more than ever we need an improved public understanding of science and the way it affects our lives." The press representative is Aaron Huertas at 202-331-5458 and ahertas@ucsusa.org.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Diana Somerville
Beechworth Press

Somerville lived for a year in rural Australia and writes that ancient rocks and warbling birds taught her to listen in new ways. Seeking her own "songlines," she found powerful teachings in the spiritual links between Australian Aborigines and Earth's oldest continent and traditional ways that echo Native American cultures while contrasting vividly with the rugged individualism of the American West. She writes, "Approaching 50, that midlife milestone, I overflowed with questions. Undertaking a physical journey can be not only a metaphor for the spiritual journey but embody it." A freelance from Washington State, she says the book began as an assignment for the late Earth magazine but it became mainly her "own spiritual seeking to go 'inside out' spiritually by going 'down under geographically.'" The book is a mixture of her perceptions, surprises, wanderings, and encounters with the culture, the personalities, the landscape of Oz, and herself. She writes being a science writer gave her lots of practice delving into a completely unfamiliar topic, following her nose, trying to figure out whether or not it was interesting enough to write about. You can share her journey and take note of "new ways to some of the world's ancient truths." Somerville can be contacted at 360-452-1212 or writer@olypen.com. The press representative is Elizabeth West at 360-670-5491.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Susan Okie M.D.
Joseph Henry Press

Harvard-trained family physician Okie writes, "Carefully limiting your child's 'screen time' is one of the most effective things you can do as a parent to reduce your children's obesity risk. This isn't just speculation. A double-blind, randomized trial by Stanford University researchers found that reducing the amount of time that kids spent weekly watching TV was associated with lower obesity rates." The problem, Okie points out, is serious. "Today's kids may be the first generation of children to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. The cause for that startling fact is obesity." She points out, according to the TV Turnoff Network, on average, children in the U.S. will spend more time in front of the television (1,023 hours) than in school (900 hours) this year. In her new book, FED UP!, Okie goes into detail about how reducing your child's screen time — which includes their time in front of a computer — can help fight the obesity epidemic. "Turning off the TV probably works in multiple ways to protect kids from unhealthy weight gain," Okie explains. "It makes them more likely to be physically active. It may help to limit the kind of unconscious snacking that many kids do while watching TV. And it reduces their exposure to commercials for high-calorie food and drink products." She calls on more parents to employ television monitors, devices that can be hooked up to your television or computer and set to allow the device to be on only for a certain number of hours per week. Once the time runs out, the child is prevented from watching additional television. Another important strategy for parents looking to limit their child's TV time? According to Okie, "Never put a television set in a child's bedroom!" In the end, FED UP! advocates a combination of healthy eating and healthy living and presents the obesity epidemic in terms that parents can understand and do something about. Okie can be reached at 202-223-3032 or susan.okie@verizon.net. The publicity representative is Robin Pinnel at 202 334-1902 and rpinnel@nas.edu.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Rebecca G. Rogers, Janet Yagoda Shagam, Ph.D. and Shelley Kleinschmidt
Prometheus Books

Shagam is an Albuquerque, N.M. freelance writer; Rogers is director of the Division of Urogynecology, at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center; and Kleinschmidt, also of Albuquerque, is a proposal manager for Tier Technologies. There are more than 15 million women in America who experience chronic bladder-control problems. The authors say that the good news is that eight out of 10 women can improve their continence with simple exercises and dietary changes detailed in the book. Regaining Bladder Control includes work sheets, self-assessment questionnaires, a glossary, and frequently asked questions to help readers evaluate and discuss their condition with their doctors. Shagam can be reached at 505-298-2163 or janetyagooda@ nasw.org. The press representative is Lynn Pasquale at 800-853-7545 and lpasquale@prometheusbooks.com.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Vincent Kiernan
University of Illinois Press

Those of us who have suffered embargos on hot stories will find Kiernan's book of great interest. A senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, he writes that the popular notion of a lone scientist privately toiling long hours in a laboratory, striking upon a great discovery, and announcing to the world is romanticized fiction. Kiernan offers insight into how embargo's impact on public knowledge of science and medical issues. He points out that members of the general public aren't the only readers of newspapers and watchers of TV. Scientists, he says, often learn about new research through the mass media, long before the journal article describing the research arrives in the mail. "Thus," he writes, "the distorted picture of science that can be blamed on the embargo may also skew the understanding of scientific developments by scientists and physicians." Kiernan can be be reached at 202-466-1061 or kiernan@nasw.org. The press representative is Michael Roux at 217-244-4689 or mroux@uillinois.edu.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Alan Caruba
Merril Press

Alan Caruba's book is on topics ranging from Islam to immigration and environmentalism to education. He maintains the text is "documented, attributed, and opinionated!" The book emanates from The National Anxiety Center (NAC), which he founded in 1990. The NAC is, he says, a "clearing house for information about 'scare campaigns' designed to influence public opinion and policy." In the book he takes on "food cops," advocates of technophobia, environmental corruption, global warming, and the green agenda. "Whether you agree with him or not, you will find his opinions thought provoking and fun and often quoted in the media. He says he didn't start out to become a pundit or a conservative but became disillusioned with the United Nation's peace efforts, the United States' educational system, government funding of social security and Medicare as well as the supreme court's ability to protect the inherent rights of citizens and property rights. Caruba can be reached at acaruba@aol.com or 973-763-6392. More information on NAC at www.anxietycenter.com.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Steele Hill and Michael Carlowicz
Harry N. Abrams Books

Michael Carlowicz, a science writer/editor affiliated with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has a photo-essay book focused on the only star we can study up close and the only one that has a real impact on our lives on Earth. He says: "Our voyage to The Sun began nine years ago when Steele (Hill) and I shared an office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Day after day, we traded ideas and images that could engage and educate the public about our nearest star. We watched the Sun and the aurora alongside the scientists and investigators of SOHO and the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics program, learning as they learned. It was a rare privilege for a couple of liberal arts majors to be part of the greatest solar-terrestrial observing campaign in history. We collaborated with scientists on posters, Web sites, press conferences, and educational products, but none of them did justice to the amazing new (and archival) views of the Sun we found. Hence this book, which attempts to bring together the full breadth of solar imagery from ancient cultural sites to satellite-era close-ups." Carlowicz can be reached at 508-477-1450 or mikewicz@nasw.org. The book's publicist is Lisa Sherman-Cohen at 212 519-1202 or lsherman@hnabooks.com.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2006

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Peter Friederici
Island Press/Shearwater Books

Peter Friederici, a Flagstaff, Ariz. freelance, profiles some of the dedicated citizens working to return sizable tracts of the American landscape to nature, and to health. He believes a restoration movement is sweeping North America and that it offers a new way for people to coexist with nature — one that is neither domineering nor simplistic, but rather both difficult and deeply rewarding.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2006

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Deborah Blum
Penguin Press

Pulitzer Prize winner Blum, professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin, has written about what she is says is actually a "cool story" for a science writer. She starts out with the question: "What if a world-renowned professor of psychology at Harvard University, a doctor and scientist acclaimed as one of the leading intellects of the time, suddenly announced that he believes in ghosts?" Blum writes that William James and two other outstanding thinkers, Richard Hodgson and James Hysop, staked their reputations, their careers, even their sanity on one of the most extraordinary (and entertaining) psychological quests ever undertaken.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2006

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Trevor Norton
Da Capo Press

Trevor Norton is a professor of marine biology at the University of Liverpool. From a starred Publisher's Weekly review: "This delightfully wry account of a lifetime enchanted by the sea should enshrine marine biologist Norton in the pantheon of sea-struck pioneers he brilliantly profiled in his earlier Stars Beneath the Sea."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2006

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Milton Golin
ASJA Press

A decorated U.S. Air Force transoceanic navigator, and certified meteorologist for his flights across the Himalayan "Hump" in World War II, Golin in his book, runs the gamut of perilous war-and-peace events, from the dynamiting of an airliner to the heroism of 40 physicians in a deadly hurricane.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2006

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Hal Hellman
John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

This is Hal Hellman's 13th book and the fourth in his Great Feuds series. Aimed squarely at those who think math is an exact and staid field of endeavor, he writes "When my editor at Wiley suggested that I do a book on Great Feuds in Mathematics, I was not excited by the idea ... Mathematics, I felt, is a cold, logical discipline where questions can be decided, if not quickly, at least objectively and decisively ... How could there be feuds in mathematics? But my editor persisted. So I did it. It was tough, and took a full two and a half years, but it was an eye-opener."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2006

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Vicky Cullen
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Cullen, a 32-year veteran of the organization's communications staff, has written an abundantly illustrated 184-page book that chronicles pivotal moments in the formation and history of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2006

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Victor D. Chase
Johns Hopkins University Press

Victor Chase takes the reader on a journey into a new medical frontier, where a category of implants known as neural prosthetics returns sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and movement to the paralyzed. These devices which replace damaged circuitry in the nervous system, also hold the potential to resolve psychiatric illnesses, restore the ability to form memories in damaged brains, and even to endow the able-bodied with superhuman powers by increasing learning capacity and extending the visible and audible wavelengths.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2006

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Elisa Zied and Ruth Winter
Wiley

NASW member (and ScienceWriters columnist) Ruth Winter has published her 35th book. Co-authored with Elisa Zied, a registered dietitian and highly visible spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, the book is a blueprint for developing a nutritious, balanced eating plan for life.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Mark Burnett
Syngress Publishing, Inc.

Traditional security policies for passwords may work against you, resulting in greater insecurity, warns security researcher and author Mark Burnett. According to Burnett, users find password policies too restrictive and respond with patterns of weak and predictable passwords.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Mike Magee
Spencer Books

You may find this a good reference book. Designed as a classroom resource, it contains 76 essays grouped in nine categories with references at the end of each essay. The subjects are "the megatrends that are rapidly transforming our health care system."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Meyer Rosen, editor
William Andrew Publishing

Meyer Rosen, president of Interactive Consulting, says this 1,000-page book "creates a foundation text for technology to improve skin and teaches readers about techniques called delivery systems for providing consumer products with anti-wrinkle and other skin needs."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Bernice Schacter
Praeger

Bernice Schacter, a Wilmington, Del. freelance, says her book is intended to demystify for a general audience the process of getting prescription drugs from the lab to the drug store. Schacter has over 20 years of biomedical research experience in both academia and industry.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Ellen Prager
iUniverse

Ellen Prager, president of Earth2 Ocean, Inc., in Tierra Verde, Fla. wrote this book that is both fiction and fact about dolphins "as a new way to engage young readers (and their parents) in learning about the ocean and to engage them to want to learn more."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Sandra Cusack and Wendy Thompson
Bull Publishing Company

Sandra Cusack is Guttman-Gee Research Fellow and adjunct professor in Educational Gerontology at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada. She is a member of the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging. Thompson is an educational gerontologist and the author of five books. A former Olympic speed skater, she has encouraged thousands as a speaker and trainer. The authors insist that by establishing and continually pursuing mental clarity throughout life you can actually help prevent degenerative brain diseases further down the road.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Ann Gibbons
Doubleday

Ann Gibbons, a contributing correspondent for Science, has written a chronicle of the race to find the missing links between humans and apes involving the highly competitive world of fossil hunting and the lives of the ambitious scientists intent on pinpointing the dawn of humankind. Her book tells the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Peter Friederici
Island Press

Peter Friederici, a Flagstaff, Ariz. freelance, wrote this book about people who really care and put their efforts into restoration of ailing Mother Nature. He writes that from the Hawaiian Islands to Appalachia's forests ordinary citizens are changing the way we think about nature. In Chicago and its suburbs, for example, legions of volunteers replant prairies in the shadow of freeways. On a deserted Bermudan island, a man has spent 40 years single-handedly restoring the nesting habitat of a rare seabird.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Joel N. Shurkin
Macmillan Science

Joel Shurkin, a Baltimore, Md. freelance, has written the first biography of William Shockley, founding father of Silicon Valley, whom he labels "one of the most significant and reviled scientists of the 20th century." Shockley won a Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor, upon which almost everything that makes the modern world is based. Shurkin maintains little has affected history as much as this device, developed along with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories in the mid-1940s. "Shockley," Shurkin says, "is remembered more for one of the most vicious controversies in modern science. His campaigning about race, intelligence and genetics saw him donating to the Nobel Prize sperm bank, being vilified on national TV, and ultimately destroyed his reputation."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Nigel Hey
Potomac Books

Nigel Hey, an Albuquerque, N.M., freelance, has written a book that explores President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), including the possibility that it was the greatest bluff in history. Hey started researching the book in 1999 with encouragement from Adm. James Watkins, who was an important voice in encouraging Reagan to endorse strategic defense, and Gerold Yonas, a Sandia labs colleague (and neighbor) who was SDI's first chief scientist. Both, for quite different reasons, said they thought the SDI story should be told for what it was, in understandable prose.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2006

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Sharon Guynup, Editor
Island Press

Sharon Guynup, a Hoboken, N.J., freelance, says the Wildlife Conservation Society hired her to create, sell, and launch a State of the Wild book series. Why preach only to the choir? Thus she chose hunting and the wildlife trade as the cover topic for this first volume, which focuses about one-third of content on issues such as the trade in animals for the traditional Asian medicine trade, bycatch, and diseases that could come with a bushmeat dinner (or your new, exotic pet).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2005-06

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Julie Wakefield
Joseph Henry Press

Julie Wakefield, a Virginia freelance, said she wrote the book because she found it fascinating that Edmond Halley, although famed for his comet work, undertook the first mission funded by a government for the sake of science, and for the most part, his adventures 300 years ago aboard the Paramore represented an untold story. Moreover, his role as the founder of geophysics was not widely appreciated.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2005-06

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Jan Yager, Ph.D.
Hannacroix Creek Books

Time management and relationships consultant Jan Yager says she noticed something important about the weight challenge: "Too many approached it in a haphazard way or failed to apply — to the goal, losing weight, and maintaining the weight loss — the business that were working." That idea led her to create the motivational guide intended to be read and used alongside any healthy diet being monitored by a physician, nutritionist, or weight loss specialist.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2005-06

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Jennifer Ouellette
Penguin

Jennifer Ouellette traces key developments in the field, setting descriptions of the fundamentals of physics in their historical context, as well as against a broad cultural backdrop. For example, Newton's laws as found in the film "Addams Family Values," and the finer points of relativity in "Back to the Future." Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter" serves to illuminate the mysterious nature of neutrinos, and Jeanette Winterson's novel Gut Symmetries provides an elegant metaphorical framework for string theory.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2005-06

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Maia Szalavitz
Riverhead Books

Maia Szalavitz, a New York freelance specializing in neuroscience, brings unique credentials to the writing of this book. Her research included hundreds of interviews with teens, their parents, program employees, and former employees — as well as psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and attorneys. The book covers tough-love residential treatment for disturbed teens and shows how, despite a complete lack of evidence for efficacy or safety, a billion-dollar industry has grown to sell such programs to desperate and vulnerable parents.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2005-06

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Geoffrey Dobson, PhD
Equinox Publishing

Geoffrey Dobson, associate professor of molecular science, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia, has to be admired for taking on a comprehensive tour into the succession of ways human beings have constructed order and meaning about the world and their place in it. Dobson says the book was conceived when he was working at NIH and his neighbors asked him what he did during the day and why science was important.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2005-06

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Christopher Wanjek
International Labor Organization

This book addresses a simple question: "How do workers eat while at work?" This question is not always given much thought, despite the obvious fact that food is the fuel that powers production. Christopher Wanjek makes a case for subsidized workplace meal programs to curb obesity and chronic diseases (in wealthy countries) and malnutrition (in poor countries).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2005

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David Wolman
Da Capo Press

Wolman, a Portland, Ore. freelance, committed a year of his life to traveling the world in order to explore left-handedness — specifically, what causes it and how left-handers might differ from the right-handed majority. Lefties are about 10-12 percent of the population. Wolman's travels took him to see neuroscientists in Berkeley, lefty golf enthusiasts in Japan, psychologists in London, a double amputee in Illinois, palm readers in Quebec, and centuries-old brains in Paris.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2005

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Ray Villard and Lynette R. Cook
University of California Press

Merely a decade ago there were no known planets orbiting sun-like stars outside our solar system. In the past ten years, however, fast-paced developments in astronomy have revealed over 140 extrasolar planets — with more discoveries surely on the way. Though it will be years before we have direct images of these far-flung worlds, this lavishly illustrated book gives us an idea of what they might look like.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2005

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Douglas Beason, PhD
Da Capo Press

In the introduction to the book, Beason, a key architect of directed-energy research who has worked as an advisor to both the Clinton and Bush administration, describes a scenario in the introduction. Called Active Denial, it is one of the many non-lethal directed-energy weapons being tested today. Beason, a retired colonel, says had the funding for it not been cut in the late 1990s, it could have been used to quell the urban warfare in Baghdad and Fallujah — and hundreds of lives could have been saved.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2005

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Suzanne Bohan and Glenn Thompson
Sourcebooks

Bohan, a correspondent for the Sacramento Bee and a winner of the David Perlman Award for Excellence in Medical Journalism for coverage of ER overcrowding, has written an anti-aging book with her husband, lawyer Glenn Thompson. Each chapter contains a different way to extend life. Advice includes skipping meals, socializing, drinking tea, and making your legs stronger.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2005

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Robert Kanigel
MIT Press

Kanigel, professor of Science Writing and Director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at MIT, wrote this book about Taylor who was the first efficiency expert and the father of scientific management. Kanigel shows that Taylor bequeathed to us a clockwork world of tasks time to the hundredth of a minute. He writes that the subject of this biography helped instill in us the obsession with time, order, productivity, and efficiency that marks our age.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2005

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Marcia Bartusiak
Pantheon Books

For her fourth book, Marcia Bartusiak, a visiting professor in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing, chronicles the history of astronomy through excerpts of 100 primary documents, from Aristotle's proof that the Earth is round to the papers that revealed that cosmic expansion is accelerating.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2005

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Miriam Shuchman
Random House

In August 1998, a story about a doctor named Nancy Olivieri grabbed headlines in Toronto. The articles stated that Olivieri had discovered serious problems with an experimental drug manufactured by Canada's largest pharmaceutical company, a Toronto-based generics manufacturer called Apotex. The drug at the center of the scandal is a white tablet called L1, or deferiprone, intended for use by patients with the inherited blood disorder thalassemia. Olivieri planned to tell patients about the problems, as required by her hospital. But Apotex ejected her from its research program, canceling the study she was running to test the drug, and threatening her with court action if she went public.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2005

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Simson Garfinkel and Beth Rosenberg
Addison Wesley

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is rapidly becoming ubiquitous as businesses seek to streamline supply chains and respond to mandates from key customers. But RFID and other new wireless ID technologies raise unprecedented privacy issues. Garfinkel, a computer security researcher, brings together contributions from the stakeholder community — from RFID suppliers to privacy advocates. His contributors introduce today's leading wireless ID technologies, trace their evolution, explain their promise, assess their privacy risks, and evaluate proposed solutions — technical, business, and political.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2005

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Dr. Fred Watson
DaCapo Press

Watson is astronomer-in-charge of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in central New South Wales. His book traces the history of the telescope, from its origins with Tycho Brahe, whose king gave him an island on which he could pursue his scientific investigations, to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has shown new galaxies.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2005

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Nutan Sharma, M.D. and Elaine Richman, Ph.D.
Harvard University Press

Richman, president of Richman Associates, LLC, in Baltimore, M.D. and her co-author, Dr. Sharma, an assistant in neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, have written about a movement disorder that is diagnosed in 500,000 people in the United States. They have written not only for those with the diagnosis, they say, but also for their loved ones.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2005

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Dr. Michael Strober and Meg Schneider
DaCapo Press

The aim of the book is to help parents recognize if their teenager's desire to be thin is a simple quest for a smaller skirt size or something that is mutating into a struggle to feel good. It is not a book about anorexia, but rather about those who have a problem with food because of deep emotional battles.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2005

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Christine Horner, MD
Basic Health Publications

Horner presents a 30-step program to help women incorporate healthy lifestyle changes to prevent and fight breast cancer naturally. She points out that the incidence of breast cancer has risen 21 percent in the last four years, which she believes is related to "greater cultural affluence.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2005

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Dr. Marcia Bjornerud
Perseus/Basic/Westlaw

Over more than four billion years the planet has unintentionally kept a rich and idiosyncratic journal of its past — written, very literally, in stone. It is a story that all earthlings, and not just geologists, should know how to read.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2005

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Ruth Winter
Three Rivers Press/Crown

Cosmetics have always been a low priority at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but now the agency's regulatory powers have been weakened to the point where they are almost nonexistent. The author points out that if a cosmetic has a systemic effect — and many do — then they are really drugs, not cosmetics and therefore should have to be proven safe and effective.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2005

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Richard K. Bernstein, MD
Little, Brown & Company

Bernstein, a Type 1 diabetic, says he would have been dead by now if he had continued the high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet prescribed for him in his youth. His book focuses on protein, fat, and slow-acting carbohydrate, such as leafy and whole-plant vegetables and some kinds of root vegetables, which tend to be broken down more slowly and continuously, creating a satisfied feeling for a longer time after eating.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2004-05

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Fred Yager and Jan Yager
Facts on File, Inc.

An extensive guide to 86 careers in the publishing industry including newspapers, magazines, and books covering editorial, writer, marketing, art, production, management, and related jobs. Each profile includes an overview of that position as well as salary range, employment and advancement prospects, educational and training, experience, special skills and personality traits, a career ladder, and tips for entry.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2004-05

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Ruth Winter
Three Rivers Press/Crown

Expanded and updated, the book describes the relative safety and side effects of more than 12,000 ingredients that end up in our food. This includes new dangers such as bioterrorism and old problems such as antibiotic and hormone residues used in raising farm animals and crops.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2004-05

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Shirley Camper Soman
iUniverse

This updated book, first published in 1974, is even more pertinent today as busy, working parents often do not take time to predict perils to their children such as inadequate caregivers and lurking predators. Soman, a social worker, maintains that "Many of America's severe problems — crime, discontent, family breakdown, drug addiction — would have been considerably far less severe (and ameliorated to a large extent) if our society chose to put its money where its mouth is with the programs and plans that most directly affect the well-being of the population group known as the young.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2004-05

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Josie Glausiusz with photographs by Volker Steger
Chronicle Books

Glausiusz says she and Volker first came to know one another as a result of the article "Dining on the Fly" that appeared in Discover magazine (Feb. 1998). Volker had sent the magazine an extraordinary set of never-before-published electron micrographs that showed various insects in the act of eating one another. "The then editor of Discover, Marc Zabludoff, liked the pictures so much that he decided to print them and asked me to write the accompanying text. I did so, and found the experience of working with Volker a highly rewarding one. Later, when Volker decided to publish an entire book of his insect shots, he asked me to compose the text."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2004

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Peter Limburg
ECW Press

Limburg, a Bedford, N.Y., freelance specializing in oceanography and marine science, has written about the art, science, and technology of locating the wreckage of ships and aircraft — and their unfortunate passengers. In the past, wrecks have often sunk in waters too deep for conventional divers to gather evidence that could be used for interpretation in shore-side labs. Behind each wreck, Limburg writes, is the human tragedy, and behind that lies all too often corporate greed, official corruption, and individual villainy.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2004

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Paul Raeburn
Broadway Books

Raeburn says he began Acquainted with the Night thinking it would be a science writer's account of mental illness in children. He begins the story with a prologue relating his own experiences with his children, one of whom has bipolar disorder and one of whom has depression. When he finished the prologue, he says, "I felt I had more to say about the personal story before I moved to the journalism." Eventually, he discovered he could not let go of the personal story — it took over the book. Among the many issues raised in the book are the ways in which schools, psychiatrists, therapists, hospitals, the insurance industry, and the research establishment are failing our mentally ill children.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2004

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Laura S. Woodmansee
Apogee Books

Laura Woodmansee, author of Women Astronauts, continues her exploration of what it's like to be women in space. She introduces readers to more than 100 females who explore space in different ways, and the challenges they had to overcome. Among her subjects are Mars Pathfinder Engineer Donna Shirley, Director of the Center for SETI Research Jill Tarter, Astrophysicist Celestial Musician Fiorella Terenzi, Astronomer Sandra Faber, and Space Artist Lynette Cook.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2004

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Hal Hellman
John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Who really invented the telegraph, the automobile, the airplane, television? Conflicting claims over the answers have led to some of the longest and bitterest battles in the history of technology. For example, why Thomas Edison lost the biggest battle of his career, which may explain why we have regional blackouts today, and how one small, rude, and brilliant admiral flogged the United States into creating a nuclear navy.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2004

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Barbara Ravage
DaCapo Press

If you like TV's ER, you'll love Ravage's book about the riveting inside look at the burn unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the outstanding facilities in the world. She describes everyday heroes and their incredible but punishing work. She quotes a senior nurse who tells her, "I cry all the time. That's what I do. I don't blubber, but I'll just tear, and a long time ago I stopped trying to even — I'm going to cry, it's part of me, it's who I am.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2004

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Carolyn Collins Petersen and John C. Brandt
Cambridge University Press

This illustrated book is a comprehensive exploration of astronomy through the eyes of the world's observatories and spacecraft missions. Featuring stunning images, it provides a picture of the beauty of the cosmos. The accompanying text is an accessible guide to the science behind the wonders and includes clear explanations of all the major themes in astronomy.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2004

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Robin Marantz Henig
Houghton Mifflin

Robin Henig finds parallels between the controversy over in vitro fertilization (IVF) when it began more than 25 years ago and today's debates over human cloning and germ-line engineering. She points out opponents of IVF argued it posed significant threats to society, including the risk of chromosomally damaged babies, the derangement of family relationships, and the incursion of science into matters of procreation best left to nature and God. IVF was feared as the precursor to surrogate mothers, frozen embryos, genetic engineering of babies, and human cloning.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2004

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Ivan Amato
Harry N. Abrams

This book's more than 200 images range from the realm of subatomic particles to the entire universe. Amato, a Maryland freelance specializing in technology, says he has always been smitten by the stunning visual appeal of scientific data: "In the 15 years since I have been writing about science, the aesthetic values of imagery emanating from almost any particular field has multiplied manyfold. To leaf through the covers of Science and Nature is to experience what amounts to an art gallery distributed over time."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2003-04

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Bettyann Kevles
Basic Books

Kevles, who recently held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and now teaches at Yale University, describes many of the obstacles faced by the 40 women who have been in space as well as the excitement associated with space travel.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2003-04

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Robert Zimmerman
Joseph Henry Press

Zimmerman, a Maryland freelance specializing in space and astronomy, tells the story of how far-sighted dreamers in both the United States and Russia struggled to assemble the first interplanetary spaceships. For many political reasons, they called them space stations, pretending that their sole function was to orbit the earth and perform scientific research in space.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2003-04

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Steven N. Koppes
Discovery

This book is not about astronauts or space technology but about dinosaurs. Koppes, a science writer at the University of Chicago News Office, describes the sudden and mysterious extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. He says scientists primarily believe that dinosaurs' disappearance was due to a huge cosmic bomb — a comet or asteroid approximately six miles in diameter that blasted into the surface of the planet.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2003-04

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Edward R. Ricciuti
The Lyons Press

Ricciuti, a Connecticut freelance, has evidently anticipated recent headlines such as a man who kept an alligator and lion in his New York apartment and the woman who collected tigers in New Jersey. In his book, he not only describes the battles between beasts and humans, he laments wild pets taken into the home means less animals in the wild.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2003-04

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Ed R. Ricciuti
The Lyons Press

In this book, Ricciuti focuses on the hypocrisy, sentimentalism, and commercialization that pervade today's animal "industry," and he comments on the evolutionary and environmental factors that make animals behave as they do — especially when humans enter and usurp their habitats. Ricciuti ultimately concludes that the darker side of these creatures is something we often bring upon ourselves.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2003-04

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Ann Parker
Poisoned Pen Press

Would you like to write a novel? Many science writers think about it, but Ann Parker has done it. The book takes place as 1879 draws to a close. Like today's headlines, her tale involves corruption, love, and blackmail.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2003

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Marilyn Chase
Random House Trade

"Here's another story behind the story. Marilyn Chase is a medical reporter at the Wall Street Journal and a longtime NASW member. In this, her first book, she writes about the 1900 outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco, caused by ship-borne rats. The plague was denied by local politicians and the business community. The protracted cover-up allowed the infection to spread beyond the city into the rural West.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2003

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Barbara Seaman
Hyperion

For almost a century, women have been taking some form of estrogen to combat the effects of menopause and aging, and, more recently, to prevent a whole host of diseases including osteoporosis, tooth loss, Alzheimer's disease, heart ills, and breast cancer. Add to that the birth control pill and millions of women have been exposed to significant doses of this powerful female hormone.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2003

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John Inglis, Joe Sambrook, and Jan Witkowski, eds.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

Watson, of course, is one of the most famous contemporary scientists. Known not only for his role in the discovery of the DNA double helix and his leadership of the Human Genome Project and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, but also for his outspokenness. This book of 43 essays has been published to celebrate Watson's 35 years at Cold Spring Harbor.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2003

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Maurice Bleifeld
Barron's Educational Series

A retired high school principal and biology teacher at the Bronx High School of Science, Maurice Bleifeld first wrote this book in 1963. The latest edition is based on the modern emphasis of the test on ecology (E) and molecular biology (M).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2003

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Andrew Parker
Perseus Publishing

Half a billion years ago after a long dark era, there was a sudden and great flourishing of life. During this blink of an eye in history, all the major animal groups found today evolved hard parts and became distinct shapes, simultaneously and for the first time. This become known as the "Cambrian Explosion." But what lit the Cambrian fuse?

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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David Baron
Norton

A cautionary tale and a parable for our times, The Beast in the Garden is the true story of what transpired when a large, predatory species descended on a town to reclaim its ancestral home. The time: the late 1980s. The place: Boulder, Colorado.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Sharman Apt Russell
Perseus Publishing

From Hindu mythology to Aztec sacrifices, butterflies have served as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation. Even during World War II, children in a Polish death camp scratched hundreds of butterflies onto the walls of their barracks. But as Sharman Apt Russell, a teacher of writing at Western New Mexico University and at Antioch University in Los Angeles, writes in her book, butterflies are above all objects of obsession.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Mark Pendergrast
Basic Books

You won't take your mirror for granted after reading Pendergrast's book. He maintains that mirrors are the first technology for contemplation of self and that its invention is arguably as important as that of the wheel. He describes the 2,500-year history of the mirror including the bloodthirsty smoking gods of the Toltecs to the mirrored rooms of wealthy Romans created for their orgies to the mirror's key role in the use and understanding of light.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Richard Maurer
Roaring Brook Press

Probably the only person ever to win both the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award and the Western Writers of America Spur Award, Maurer ventures into a new field with this young-adult book telling the bittersweet story of Katharine Wright, little sister to the Wright brothers. She was the only member of the family to attend college, where she excelled in Latin and Greek, but found her adult life constrained by a domineering widower father and two flight-obsessed bachelor brothers.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Simson Garfinkel, Gene Spafford, and Alan Schwartz
O'Reilly

The first edition quickly became a classic among Unix system administrators. Garfinkel, a New England freelance, and his colleagues have produced a 1,000-page book for techies and those seriously interested in computer security.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Marc Abrahams
Dutton

The editor and cofounder of the science-humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), Abrahams holds an annual IG Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard University. His book contains many examples of research called "breakthroughs" including: The happiness of clams, the physics professor who determined that toast does indeed fall buttered side down, and the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama which won the prize in mathematics for devising a formula to determine how many Alabamans will go to Hell.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Philip Yam
Copernicus Books

Philip Yam, Scientific American's news editor, chronicles the emergence of prion diseases. These illnesses, which can be both inherited and transmitted, seem to result from misfolded proteins that attack the brain, often puncturing it with spongy holes.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Gavin Weightman
Da Capo Press

Marconi was one of the first to win the Nobel Prize in physics. He had rigged up two wooden boxes containing a device to transmit messages "through the ether." It was the birth of the radio, and no scientist in Europe or America, not even Marconi, could at first explain how it worked.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Gloria Beim, M.D., and Ruth Winter
McGraw-Hill

Today's emphasis on health and fitness has encouraged women of all ages to participate in sports. Yet there has never been a book on sports injury and health specific to a female athlete's needs. Until now. Gloria Beim, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon and a physician for the U.S. National Track Cycling Team, and ScienceWriters columnist Ruth Winter have teamed-up to produce an authoritative guide for keeping female athletes — from elite competitors to women trying to fit in a workout — healthy and injury free.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2003

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Rita Baron-Faust and Jill P. Buyon, MD
Contemporary Books

As if the immune system weren't complicated itself, the diseases caused by its misfiring can affect every organ and tissue in the body, spanning just about every medical discipline. Understanding the more than 80 diverse illnesses termed autoimmune can be difficult, even for scientists and clinicians. But for the millions of people diagnosed with these illnesses (some of whom have more than one disease), it can be daunting.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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William Sargent
University Press of New England

Surviving almost unmolested for 300 million years, the horseshoe crab is now the object of an intense legal and ethical struggle involving marine biologists, environmentalists, U.S. government officials, biotechnologists, and international corporations. The source of this friction is the discovery 25 years ago that horseshoe crab blood provides the basis for the most reliable test for the deadly and ubiquitous gram-negative bacteria.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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Wil McCarthy
Basic Books

Programmable matter is probably not the next technological revolution, nor even perhaps the one after that. But it's coming, and when it does, it will change our lives as much as any invention ever has. Programmable matter research is supported by companies ranging from Levi Strauss to IBM to the Defense Department, and the research is taking place in laboratories at MIT, Harvard, Sun Microsystems, and elsewhere.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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Alan Caruba
Merrill Press

Caruba, a New Jersey freelance writer, is founder of the media spoof The Boring Institute, (best known for its annual list "The Most Boring Celebrities of the Year") and of The National Anxiety Center, a clearing house for information about scare campaigns designed to influence public opinion and policy. The theme of his book, a collection of his columns, is "The good news is that the bad news is wrong."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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James D. Watson and Andrew Berry, with contributions by Jan Witkowski
Alfred A. Knopf

Witkowski, co-author with Jim Watson of the textbook Recombinant DNA, helped Watson with this book, published to coincide with this year's 50th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix. The book is loosely associated with a series of television programs Watson recorded to be shown on PBS here and Channel 4 in the UK.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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Dana Mackenzie
John Wiley & Sons

Mackenzie, a freelance mathematics and science writer, describes the current scientific consensus on the moon's origin, the "giant impact" theory or, as she calls it, "the Big Splat." She believes that the scientific mysteries, that we went to the moon to solve, have now been solved — at least in their broad outlines — with many details yet to be filled in.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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Jack Repcheck
Perseus Publishing

Why did Hutton not become famous for his discovery that the earth had been around for millions of years? Repcheck argues that Hutton's work was lost to history because his writings were impenetrable. An acquiring editor at W.W. Norton, Repcheck did what great editors are supposed to do — he took an important but unreadable manuscript and turned it into an easily understood, fascinating book.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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Norman Sperling
Everything in the Universe

Norman Sperling, a northern California freelance, has taught introductory astronomy to thousands of college students. This book was written as a supplement to conventional astronomy textbooks. The book flags out-dated paradigms, clarifies astronomy's confusing terminology (especially its oxymorons), presents perspectives that most texts leave out, provides supplemental information to help students, suggests fresh term-paper topics for students to research, and is laced with boners committed by Sperling's least-attentive students.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2003

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Jonathan A Slater, M.D., and Mark L. Fuerst
Adams Media

Mark Fuerst, a New York freelancer, and his co-author, pediatric psychiatrist Jonathan Slater, aim to teach parents how to read their children's physical symptoms and assess them from both an emotional and a medical standpoint. The book helps parents understand warning signs and take action even before a child gets sick.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Robert E. Adler
John Wiley & Sons

Robert Adler, a California freelancer, says that throughout the history of science, there have been men and women whose curiosity and intellect led them to seek new explanations for the way the universe works. Among those are the privileged few who were the first to glimpse new ideas, break new ground, and make unprecedented discoveries-many of which changed the course of history.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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David M. Lawrence
Rutgers University Press

In 1996, David Lawrence, a Virginia freelancer, was urged to write about Marie Tharp, the woman who mapped the ocean floor and discovered the mid-ocean rift. In time, Lawrence says, the book developed into a narrative about how ocean exploration fueled the scientific upheaval that forced scientists to acknowledge that large portions of the Earth's crust can move great distances over time.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Christopher Wanjek
John Wiley & Sons

Christopher Wanjek, who writes about cosmology for NASA and is also a frequent contributor to the Washington Post health section, debunks a lot of what he calls "outrageous nonsense being heaped on a gullible public in the name of science and medicine."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Victor K. McElheny
Perseus Publishing

James Watson, one of the men responsible for what many consider the greatest scientific achievement of our time has, until now, blocked would-be biographers with his own memoirs — The Double Helix and Genes, Girls, and Gamow. Victor McElheny — who worked with Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for four years and who has known him for 40 years — has written a book that sheds light on this complicated, mercurial man.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Lonny J. Brown, Ph.D.
BookLocker.com

Lonny Brown is a holistic health counselor, educator, and writer who says his expertise in mind/body healing grew out of his personal meditation practice and self-healing experiences. While his first book, Self-Actuated Healing, explored the curative effects of auto-regulatory modalities, he says his latest work "extends to contemporary spirituality and the ultimate discovery of enlightenment."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Joseph Carey, ed, and Leah Ariniello, science writer
The Society for Neuroscience

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system. Brain Fact is a beautifully illustrated book, which not only includes brain anatomy but describes the effects of strokes, Alzheimer's, and many other ailments that affect the structure of the brain.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Erich Hoyt and Ted Schultz
Harvard University Press

The book is a collection of unusual, dramatic, and revealing writings about the unseen world of insects, ranging from the Bible to Darwin and from Harvard's E.O. Wilson to Wired magazine founder Kevin Kelly. Whether scientific, poetic, or funny, each piece helps the reader discover the hidden lives of these much-misunderstood creatures.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Kenneth Goodman
Cambridge University Press

Kenneth Goodman, director of the bioethics program at the University of Miami, writes that the growth of evidence-based medicine is one of the hottest topics in health-care practice, policy, and education in a generation and has occurred against a backdrop of healthcare reform, managed care, cost containment, and quality improvement.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Ingrid Wickelgren
Henry Holt & Co.

Ingrid Wickelgren, a contributing correspondent for Science magazine, has written about how a group of wildly ambitious scientists competed to win one of the most competitive races in the history of science — the mapping of the human genome.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Nigel Hey
Weidenfeld & Nicholson

Nigel Hey's book on the marvels of the solar system is filled with spectacular color illustrations. A freelancer who lives in Albuquerque, British-born Hey has interspersed his text with 12 short essays written by space experts from Arthur C. Clarke to David Morrison and Donald Gray.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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J.G. Anderson and Kenneth Goodman
Springer-Verlag

Kenneth Goodman, director of the bioethics program at the University of Miami, and his co-author, J.G. Anderson from Purdue University, present 130 case studies illustrating ethical and social issues that arise from the increasing use of computers in medicine, nursing, psychology, pharmacy, and the allied health professions.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2002-03

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Deborah Blum
Perseus Books (US); Wiley (UK)

Deborah Blum, a freelancer and journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin, has written a biography of Harry Harlow. He was, according to Blum, a frustrated poet — sarcastic, work-obsessed, and alcoholic — and yet he was a brilliant psychologist who helped lead a revolution in the understanding of relationships and connections.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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Tom Siegfried
Joseph Henry Press

Tom Siegfried is longtime science editor of the Dallas Morning News. Strange Matters, his second book, explores the strange ideas about how the universe works that percolate in the minds of imaginative theoretical physicists — ideas that may someday be proven correct if the experimental technology can catch up with them.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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Yvonne Baskin
Island Press/Shearwater Books

Yvonne Baskin, a freelance ecology and environmental writer from Bozeman, Mont., has written about the degradation of the world's unique plant and animal communities by invasive species. She explores the extent of the problems and investigates the solutions that will help preserve the natural heritage, health, and productivity of working lands and waters.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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David Ropeik and George Gray
Houghton Mifflin

David Ropeik is director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. George Gray is a New Jersey freelancer. The authors say their aim is to empower readers to make educated decisions about 50 topics commonly regarded as potential perils, including biological weapons, radon, hazardous waste, breast implants, genetically modified foods, and solar radiation.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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Laura S. Woodmansee
Apogee Books/C.G. Publishing

Laura Woodmansee is a southern California freelance science writer who specializes in space exploration. Women Astronauts, her new book and video CD set, includes biographies of every woman who has flown in space, as well as those of female astronauts currently waiting to be assigned to a space mission.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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Ellen Ruppel Shell
Atlantic Monthly Press

Ellen Ruppel Shell, associate professor and co-director of the Knight Center for Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University, takes a look at the spreading obesity pandemic. She guides readers through the ongoing quest to unravel the genetic and behavioral bases of this vexing scientific mystery.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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B. Blake Levitt
SafeGoods/New Century Publishing 2000

B. Blake Levitt, a Connecticut freelancer, writes, "Cell towers and hidden 'stealth' antennas are cropping all over, despite vehement objections from community members." She maintains that health and safety questions arise, and are often dismissed by the very people entrusted to protect community welfare — planners and zoners.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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Joan R. Callahan
Greenwood Press

Joan Callahan, a San Diego biologist and epidemiologist, has written a reference that covers major infectious diseases, naturally occurring toxins, predators, and other categories of living threats to human life. Topics include human pathogens in water, food, and air, and how they are transmitted by contact.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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Natalie Angier
Houghton Mifflin

This is the third-annual volume of The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and contains articles by several NASW members. These include, "Ripe for Controversy," by Robert Kunzig, European editor of Discover; Steve Mirsky, science writer at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, contributed "Dumb, Dumb, Duh, Dumb" from Scientific American; Dennis Overbye is represented by "How Islam Won, and Lost, the Lead in Science," from The New York Times; and Karen White, a New Hampshire freelancer contributed "Very Dark Energy" from Discover.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2002

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Robert Henson
Rough Guides/Penguin

Robert Henson says his goal was to combine a primer on how weather works with a travelers' reference to the climates of about 200 cities and dozens of countries across the globe. The book is written in the distinctively irreverent, yet informed, style of the Rough Guides.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Lucille Lang Day
Cedar Hill Publications

In her poems, Lucille Lang Day, a California freelancer, celebrates the natural world and explores the connection among science, nature, and human experience. She is the author of a number of books including the prize-winning Self-Portrait With Hand Microscope, published by Berkeley Poets' Workshop and Press.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Deborah Cramer
WW Norton

In this natural history of the Atlantic, Deborah Cramer weaves together the most recent research about the Atlantic into a biography. Structured around a sailing voyage Cramer made from Woods Hole, Mass., to Barbados, Great Waters charts the migration of whales, bluefin tuna, sea turtles, and eels around the Atlantic.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Hill Williams
Washington State University Press

Hill Williams, who retired from the Seattle Times, has not been resting on his laurels. In his new book, he presents an overview of the geologic processes that shaped the Northwest region. He describes its varied terrain, from the volcanic Cascade Range in the west to the flood-scoured scablands of eastern Washington and eroded peaks of the northern Rockies.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Karen C. Fox
Wiley

Washington, D.C., freelance writer Fox provides an overview of the big bang theory. Hers is the first book in a Wiley series on the major theories of science. She describes how the theory arose, how it evolved, and why it is the best one to explain the state of the universe.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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John Galbraith Simmons
Houghton Mifflin Books

Centuries of research have gone into developing the fundamental principles that dictate current medical and medical research practices. John Galbraith Simmons, a Brooklyn freelance writer and novelist, profiles key figures in the history of medicine, past to present, chosen for their relevance to medicine as it is practiced today.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Jan Yager
Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books

For everyone who has ever wondered why friends hurt or reject them, Jan Yager's book provides insights and advice to help them understand and cope with problematic friendships. Based on her extensive original research, Yager, a sociologist and friendship expert, tells why, when, and how to let go of bad friends as well as how to develop enriching and rewarding friendships.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Sandy Sommer, Robin Warekois, and Richard Robinson
WB Saunders

This 414-page textbook provides complete coverage of the art and science of drawing blood. Designed for health professionals in training, it illustrates all the major procedures of phlebotomy, from washing hands to preparing a blood culture specimen, in a full-color, storyboard format.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Richard Robinson, ed.
MacMillan Reference USA

A four-volume encyclopedia for high school students. Its 432 entries, ranging from Active Transport to Zoology Researcher, were written by professional biologists and by science writers.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish
Anchor Books

Everyone knows the difficulty of things that are exquisite and well done," the Renaissance philosopher Baldassare Castiglione once remarked. "So to have facility in such things gives rise to the greatest wonder." Italians call that artful facility sprezzatura, a term Mary Desmond Pinkowish, a senior editor at Patient Care, and her co-author maintain well describes the nation's genius.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Hasia R. Diner and Beryl Lieff Benderly
Basic Books

The story of Jewish women in America begins in September 1654, and continues, unbroken, to today. In those three-and-a-half centuries, millions of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters have helped build and nourish families, businesses, charitable institutions, synagogues, schools, labor unions, and many other things that enrich and define life in America.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2002

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Steve Olson
Houghton Mifflin Co.

Steve Olson, a Bethesda, Md., freelance writer describes how migrations of the human race can be traced through genetics. Olson notes that until a few years ago, the only way to learn about our ancient ancestors was through the scattered bones and stone tools they left behind, but bones and stones are not the only records of our past. Each of us, he notes, carries around another record in almost every cell of our bodies.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Terra Ziporyn
XLIBRIS

Terra Ziporyn, another Maryland freelance writer, has taken her scientific knowledge about genetics and turned it into intriguing fiction. Her main character, Galton Morrow, is a progressive doctor, venereal disease expert and social climber. He is the product of a scientific-breeding experiment conducted by utopian visionaries at the Oneida Colony in Upstate New York.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Harmon J. Eyre, M.D., Dianne Partie Lange, and Lois B. Morris, eds.
The American Cancer Society

This award-winning, 768-page paperback book has been updated to reflect recent developments in cancer diagnosis, care, and prevention. Harmon Eyre is the ACS chief medical officer and executive vice president for research and cancer control. Dianne Lange is a contributing editor of Allure Magazine and is a freelance writer living in Shelter Island Heights, N.Y.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Stephen A. Paget, M.D., Michael D. Lockshin, M.D., and Suzanne Loebl
Wiley

Since self-care is so important in controlling rheumatoid arthritis, the authors have written this book in plain English to demystify this crippling disease — its causes, progression, and effects on the human body.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Simson Garfinkel with Gene Spafford
O'Reilly

According to the authors, having a presence on the Web now seems to be a fundamental requirement for businesses, governments, and other organizations. Understanding how to minimize and neutralize the destructive power of security threats has become a high priority for users, administrators, and organizations. This book is about how to enhance security, privacy, and commerce on the World Wide Web.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Michael J. Carlowicz and Ramon E. Lopez
Joseph Henry Press

A science writer and education manager at NASA's Goddard Space Center, Michael Carlowicz writes: "If you read most textbooks or look with the unaided human eye, you would be convinced that the space between Sun and Earth is a vast, dark void, and the Sun is a static, unblemished fireball. But in reality, our nearest star is roiling with activity, changing on every time scale from seconds to geologic eras.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Vivien Marx
Free Association Books, London

Yes, this book is about male physiology-in particular, as it pertains to male reproductive and sexual health. Vivien Marx, a Boston-based freelance science journalist who has written for The Economist, Science Magazine, Red Herring and others, became intrigued by this topic when a debate started about a supposed global drop in sperm quality.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Fred Jerome
St. Martin's Press

Fred Jerome, who writes a column on science and media for Technology Review, enlisted the aid of The Litigation Group to help him obtain the 1500-page FBI file for this book. From Einstein's arrival in the U.S. in 1933 until his death in 1955, Jerome writes, the FBI, with the help of several other federal agencies, collected "derogatory information," in an effort to undermine Einstein's influence and destroy his prestige.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Lee B. Reichman with Janice Hopkins Tanne
McGraw-Hill

Breathe in. Breathe out. In that brief moment, you can contract tuberculosis. Many science writers who fly are well aware of that possibility and the other germs that can be inhaled from fellow passengers during the trip. Reichman and Tanne point out that tuberculosis is an airborne disease that will infect 8.4 million people this year, and kill 2 million. TB, they say, has never gone away and now it is bigger threat than ever before in history.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Cathy Cobb and Harold Goldwhite
Persesus Publishing

Cathy Cobb, assistant professor of chemistry at Augusta State University in Georgia, and Harold Goldwhite, a professor of chemistry at California State University, Los Angeles, have written a book that contains stories of comical or death-defying antics of famous chemists. They reveal, for example, what happened when Alfred Nobel read his own obituary in the newspaper and what prompted Michael Faraday to wash Humphrey Davy's socks.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Anthony R. Michaelis
Universitatsverlag C. Winter

This book is a collection of stories science writer Anthony Michaelis has published over a span of 40 years with his anecdota. He also drew the illustrations. Michaelis provides background to his assignments.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Trent Stephens and Rock Brynner
Perseus Publishing

Rock Brynner, a historian and former road manager for The Band and for Bob Dylan, and Trent Stephens, professor of anatomy and embryology at Idaho State University, teamed up to present the past and the present of the powerful drug thalidomide. They ask and answer the question, "Could a substance that killed and deformed thousands be the next miracle drug?"

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Scott Witt
Reward Books

Scott Witt is a business journalist and market researcher who has filled this book with hints to aid memorization. For example, he advises quiz cards that help you when you need to learn a lot of information fast and "want all of it on the tip of your tongue ready to be used at an instant's notice."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Susan Shay
Kiplinger

A typical American uses and pays for at least 10 services a month, according to Susan Shay, which are at various times intimately involved with physical, mental, financial, and social well-being. She gives information on how to assess what kinds of education, certification, licensing, and experience are required or desirable in each trade or profession.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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Jon Christensen
Graphic Arts Center Publishing Co.

Jon Christensen, a Carson City, Nev., freelance writer, has crisscrossed Nevada's outback as an independent environmental reporter and science writer for newspapers and magazines from the Nevada Appeal to the New York Times. This, his first book, is a series of essays about people and the land, natural history, and the role of prospects and chance in the Silver State.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2002

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J. Madeleine Nash
Warner Books

Scientists are now starting to talk about the possibility that there will be a new El Nino next year. Madeleine Nash says her book has many levels: "It's an adventure story, it's a scientific detective story, and it's an exploration of the eternally complicated relationship between humans and nature."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Joann Ellison Rodgers
W.H. Freeman/Times Books/Henry Holt & Co.

Former NASW president Joann Rodgers, deputy director of public affairs at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution, has chosen a subject that is of immense interest but is probably one of the most difficult to write about — sex. She describes a wide range of evidence from the laboratory to the natural world that demystifies the entire process of how we mate.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Michael Thorpy, M.D. and Jan Yager, Ph.D.
Checkmark Books/ Facts On File

Among the topics the authors cover are drowsy driving, excessive daytime sleepiness, insomnia, jet lag, sleep and traveling, juvenile health issues, over-the-counter and home remedies, and recommended amounts of sleep for various age groups.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Michael Thorpy, M.D. and Jan Yager, Ph.D.
Facts On File Library of Healthy Living

Sleep and Sleep Disorders describes everything from "nocturnal eating (drinking) syndrome" to uvulopalatopharyngoplasty. The book also lists accredited sleep-disorder centers and laboratories as well as provides other sources of information about sleep problems.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Robert K. Otterbourg
Kiplinger Books

Robert Otterbourg, who decided in his mid-50s to switch from public relations to writing about what really interested him, is now a columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer on career-related topics and the author of three books. Among the career-changers he describes in his newest book is an abstract painter who became a physician, a newspaper editor who became a corporate lawyer, and a librarian who became a rabbi.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Daniel Charles
Perseus Publishing

Raised on a farm and planted as a technology reporter at National Public Radio and New Scientist, Dan Charles has covered everything from the misadventures of the Mir Space Station to earthquakes in India, and nuclear smuggling in Germany. He says he wrote this biotechnology book because he discovered "amazing tales of invention, cutthroat business dealings, blood feuds between arrogant companies, and public interest groups that were willing to twist the truth as much as any corporate public relations official.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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M. Mitchell Waldrop
Viking

This is the story of the unsung visionary who not only helped develop the concept of personal computing, but who then set in motion the revolution that would change our lives. M. Mitchell Waldrop, author of the critically acclaimed Complexity and formerly a senior writer at Science magazine, brings to life the story of J.C.R. Licklider (or "Lick" as he was generally known) — a gifted MIT psychologist with a proficiency in subjects ranging from electrical engineering to mathematics.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Erich Hoyt
Firefly Books Ltd.

Whether you think sharks are scary or beautiful, Hoyt has a book for you. Weaving together details from the latest scientific research about sharks, giant squid, dragonfish, and the huge tube worms, clams and tiny microbes of the deep-sea vents, he describes how the bottom of the sea is inhabited not by vicious monsters but by diverse species of pale starfish and mud-eating sea cucumbers.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Leslie Mertz, Ph.D.
Oryx Press

Mertz, a Michigan freelance, provides an easy-to-read, yet comprehensive survey of recent research findings, current trends, and controversies in the biological sciences.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Dana Wechsler Linden, Emma Trenti Paroli and Mia Wechsler Doron, M.D.
Pocket Books

This book is intended to be a baby and childcare bible for parents of premature babies. The authors point out that the likelihood of giving birth prematurely is on the rise, due in part to the growing number of older mothers and the increasing frequency of multiple births.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Jeff Schmidt, Ph.D.
Rowman & Littlefield

Schmidt, a physicist, was an editor at Physics Today magazine for 19 years — until his supervisors saw this book and fired him (see http://www.disciplined-minds.com). The book is about the politics of work and uses physicists as its main example.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Mary-Jane Schneider
Aspen Publishers

Schneider, assistant dean for academic affairs and interim director of professional education at the School of Public Health of the University at Albany, SUNY, wrote this textbook for an undergraduate course she teaches. She is on a mission to educate the uninformed about the importance of public health as a societal effort, based on science, to prevent disease and promote the health of its members.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
Tarcher/Putnam

Rampton, associate editor, PR Watch Center for Media and Democracy, and his co-author, founder and director of the organization, have written a book with which most science writers will identify. They point out that public relations firms and corporations know well how to exploit our trust to get us to buy what they have to sell: Let us hear it from a neutral third party, like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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John Fripp, Michael Fripp, and Deborah Fripp
LLH Technology Publishing

When you need a lead or an ending, you may find this book useful. It has such quotes as: "The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry, and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers." — Lewis Thomas in The Medusa and the Snail, 1979.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Rob Kaplan
W.H. Freeman & Co.

This is another book of use to science writers who need a quote or an anecdote to liven up an article. A literary agent, Kaplan has organized text thematically with topics including: "Science, Spirit and Religion;" "Chaos and Order;" "Where Did We Come From and Where Are We Headed;" "Ambition;" and "Success and Failure."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Simson Garfinkel
O'Reilly and Associates.

The newly revised update of the hardcover edition is the account of how invasive technologies will affect our lives in the coming years.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Winter 2001-02

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Jessica Snyder Sachs
Perseus Publishing

An Alpharetta, Ga., freelance, Snyder Sachs describes the array of new high-tech devices and tests forensic pathologists are doing to answer the question that has always plagued the justice system in the absence of credible witnesses — when did the victim die? Sachs reveals how the hot new science of "forensic ecology" is able to solve some crimes.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Barbara Gastel, M.D.
Iowa State University

An associate professor of journalism at Texas A&M University, Barbara Gastel offers this guide for current and prospective health writers. She suggests ways of gathering and evaluating information and explains the mechanics of crafting a piece. She addresses questions about technique, genres, sensitivity and style as well as presents information on risk and ethical issues.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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William C. Breuer
SPRF Inc.

This book is aimed at hypnotherapy predominately for physical conditions. It is a practical, how-to guide for hypnotherapists who want to work with the general medical community and for healthcare practitioners who wish to incorporate hypnotherapy into their daily medical practices.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Dr. Ragnar Levi
Iowa State University Press

This book explores the concept of critical medical reporting, explaining how to improve stories by asking sharper questions and tapping more informative sources. Dr. Ragnar Levi, who has a background in both medicine and journalism, has been the executive editor of Science & Practice since 1992.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Kevin Krajick
Times Books

Author Kevin Krajick relates the 20-year tale of two fanatic geologists who set out in the late 1970s to find the chimera of 16th-century explorers, Wild-West prospectors and the top modern scientific minds of the De Beers cartel: the great North American diamond mine.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Dona Z. Meilach
Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.

This is Dona Meilach's 80th book, and her fourth on contemporary ironwork. This illustrated book showcases a vast array of ironwork commissioned for new commercial and residential building projects. Traditional styles in modern settings and designs that reach for new visual impact help to redefine ironwork's status in our current society.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Mark Pendergrast
Basic Books

This is the updated, revised edition of Mark Pendergrast's history of Coca-Cola, a drink that began as a patent medicine containing a small amount of cocaine and a large amount of caffeine. The book contains 600 pages of research material, second only to his previous book, Uncommon Grounds (a history of coffee).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Patricia Thomas
Public Affairs

Patricia Thomas is an Arlington, Mass., freelance, who as a young medical reporter wrote about AIDS as a fatal disease without treatment whose only hope was a preventive vaccine. More than 20 years later, she has written a 500-page book describing the perseverance, heroism and weaknesses of the scientists in search of an AIDS vaccine.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Richard Stone
Perseus Publishing

If you've ever wondered what it's like to be in a Siberian cave trying to defrost a long-extinct giant beast with a hair-dryer, Richard Stone, deputy news editor of Science magazine, describes it. Stone chronicles these efforts in all their icy glory and introduces readers to the intrepid explorer-scientists who have made the woolly mammoth their life's work.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Ronald Lawrence M.D., Ph.D., and Martin Zucker
Berkley Publishing Group

Dr. Lawrence, a founding member of the International Association of the Study of Pain, reveals a holistic plan to head osteoarthritis off at the pass with a regimen of diet, supplements, non-traumatic exercise, and specific yoga and self-massage techniques. He identifies the kinds of daily habits that cause structural stresses in the body and even explains how sex can protect joints.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Ann Melugin Williams
Clarkson Potter

The second edition of this book brings additional zest to low-salt meals. The 232 diverse recipes feature many foods that are difficult to buy in low-salt form, including bread, soups, condiments, and even pickles. Favorite dishes range from the comfort of meat loaf through the adventure of spicy chicken satay with peanut dipping sauce to buffalo baked in pumpkin.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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Luba Vikhanski
Joseph Henry Press

Israeli freelance Luba Vikhanski profiles the rapidly developing field of spinal-cord injury research. She points out that a disease once thought to be a death sentence by ancient Egyptian physicians is now the research focus of hundreds of scientists around the world.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2001

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William Dietrich
Warner Books

Set at the American Amundsen-Scott base at the South Pole, this psychological thriller turns one of the National Science Foundation's premier research stations into a trap of paranoia and murder for its idealistic complement of twenty-six "winterovers."

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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Lucy Kavale
iUniverse

Reprinted as a trade paperback in the Authors Guild/iUniverse program, the book has been cited as a "Staff Recommendation" in the iuniverse.com bookstore. Kavaler says the Antarctic has held a fascination for her since a cousin fell down an icy slope to his death in the Antarctic while conducting important space research (a search for primitive forms of life).

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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Nancy Marie Brown
Stackpole Books

Brown, director of research publications at Penn State University writes that according to Icelandic poetry, a good horse can make its rider "king for awhile." But finding a good horse requires a keen and practiced eye. One must see beyond the obvious attributes — appearance, color, and size — to discern a horse's true personality and temperament.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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Wayne A. Wickelgren, Ph.D. and Ingrid Wickelgren
Berkeley Books

Math Coach features Dr. Wickelgren's winning strategies for teaching children arithmetic, fractions, word problems, and algebra — and shows how any child can conquer algebra by eighth grade. It also helps parents evaluate school math programs, decipher the math education debate, and find study aids, teams, camps, and other ways to enhance and expand a child's understanding of math.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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William Allen
Oxford University Press

Allen, a science writer with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tells the 14-year story of the landmark Guanacaste National Park project, begun in 1986 in northwestern Costa Rica. Envisioned by Costa Rican and U.S. scientists and driven to fruition by the maverick University of Pennsylvania ecologist Daniel Janzen, the project evolved into the world's first large-scale restoration of a tropical forest from its tattered remnants.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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Jon Zonderman and Ronald S. Vender, M.D.
University of Mississippi Press

Zonderman, a Connecticut freelance, has been under the care for many years of his co-author, Dr. Vender, chief of gastroenterology at the Hospital of St. Raphael, New Haven, CT. The book is written from a patient's perspective. Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis — together known as inflammatory bowel disease — are chronic illnesses of unknown origin.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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David Helvarg
W. H. Freeman

Helvarg, a scuba diver, bodysurfer, and contributing editor to National Public Radio, writes that oceans are in peril like never before, plagued by over fishing, reckless development, and pollution. "Our ocean frontier has a greater biodiversity of life than the richest terrestrial habitats on earth, including the rain forests," he notes.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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Verne Varona
Reward Books

Varona is a nutritional consultant to celebrities in LA including Sting and Cyndi Lauper. He explains the kind of nourishment that works best to enhance immunity and restore vitality — without sacrificing the enjoyment of food.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Summer 2001

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Frederic J. Pashkow, MD, and Charlotte Libov
Hyperion

The book is the result of a unique collaboration between Libov, a Bethlehem, CT, freelance, who underwent open heart surgery, and her doctor, the medical director of the Queens Medical Center Heart Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the former medical director of Cardiac Rehabilitation at the Cleveland Clinic.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2001

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Neeraja Sankaran
Oryx Press

Sankaran is a science writer and a Ph.D. student in the history of medicine and science at Yale University. She has written a reference guide designed to help users find their way in the vast — and sometimes bewildering — world of living things too small to be discerned with the naked eye.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2001

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John Long
John Henry Press

A first-person account of paleontologist John Long who went fossil-hunting in the coldest place on earth-the Transantarctic Mountains of Antartica. A researcher at the Australian National University and the University of Tasmania, his objective was to find specimens of fossilized fish from the Devonian period, when fish were the dominant form of life in the ocean.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2001

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E.A. Butler
King of Hearts Publishing Co.

This is the story of an intelligent, inquisitive man who develops an irregularity of heart rhythm. It details his diagnosis and treatment, his interface with his health care providers and his feelings about being a heart patient.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2001

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Robert Cooke
Random House

Veteran Newsday science writer Robert Cooke chronicles the story and scientific achievements of Judah Folkman, M.D., who turned his back on a golden career in surgery to embark on a lifelong pursuit of a cure for cancer.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Spring 2001

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Marsha Freeman
Springer Praxis

Freeman, associate editor of 21st Century Science & Technology, writes about the untold story of the triumphs of the Shuttle-Mir program. For most people, she notes, the MIR space station is synonymous with calamity — a fire, collision with an unmanned Progress M-34 supply vehicle, and countless less life-threatening technical failures and harrowing moments in orbit.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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Steve Tally
HarperCollins

Tally, who is a science writer at Purdue University specializing in biotechnology and genomics, veers from the serious to the humorous in his other speciality-pop history. In the book he presents the "what ifs" of the United States' past: What if George Washington had chosen not to cross the Delaware River? What if Neil Armstrong had chosen to abort the moon landing when his computers indicated that he was about to crash?

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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Rudolph E. Tanzi and Ann B. Parson
Perseus Publishing

Parson is a Cambridge, MA, freelance. Tanzi is professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Genetics and Aging Unit at Mass General Hospital. By the year 2050, 14 million Americans will die of Alzheimer's. The book chronicles the search for the genetic causes of this incurable brain disease and illuminates one promising theory — the amyloid hypothesis — that could hold the key to effective medications.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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Marcia Bartusiak
Joseph Henry Press

Bartusiak says that she first was formally introduced to the science of gravity waves nearly two decades ago while on an assignment for the late magazine Science 85. She became intrigued with laser interferometry and its promise for astronomy. She asks: "What if we could hear the heavens?" "What if the cosmic display we've observed over the years had a sound track?"

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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Red Anton
W.H. Freeman & Co.

Anton, Chicago freelance science writer and professor at DePaul University, maintains we live in an era of science triumph as we move from three centuries of discovery to a new age of mastery. But the architects of the new science do not fit the mold of the past — they are often from small teams, frequently women, and often multidisciplinary and opportunistic.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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Anne S. Harding
Oryx

Harding, a New York freelance, has included 500 entries in her book describing the advances in the treatment of disease and the understanding of human health. The developments she cites cover a wide range. For example, she notes that the first ovariotomy was the removal of a 22-pound tumor from the ovary of Jane Todd Crawford by Dr. Ephraim McDowell in 1809, before the days of antisepsis or anesthesia.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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John Troan
Neworks Press

Troan, a veteran of a 44-year career with the Pittsburgh Press and other Scripps-Howard newspapers, has written his autobiography. The son of an immigrant coal miner and an illiterate mother, he describes his Depression-era childhood and his struggle to get through Penn State.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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David Quammen, ed.
Houghton Mifflin Co.

The newest addition to the Houghton Mifflin successful Best American Series. Collected by guest editor David Quammen and Best American Series editor Burkhard Bilger, this anthology showcases some of the finest literary nonfiction writing on scientific and natural history topics published in 1999.

Reviewed in ScienceWriters: Fall 2000

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