Advance Copy: Backstories on books by NASW members

Parents of children with rare, potentially fatal, disorders, building on activism by people with breast cancer and HIV, have spurred the burgeoning citizen-science movement. Their efforts, Amy Dockser Marcus reports in We the Scientists: How a Daring Team of Parents and Doctors Forged a New Path for Medicine, have improved both national health policy and social and political equality.

Climate disruption occurs almost too slowly to fear, Dennis Meredith asserts in The Climate Pandemic: How Climate Disruption Threatens Human Survival. The innate human “optimism bias” thwarts efforts to halt rising global temperatures, acidifying oceans, disappearing forests, and increasing wildfires. With 1700 references, “this book is not a wake-up call,” he insists. “It may well be taps.”

Would charts and other visuals enhance your articles, press releases, blog, social media posts, book, and talks? Learn DIY tactics from Jen Christiansen’s book, Building Science Graphics: An Illustrated Guide to Communicating Science through Diagrams and Visualizations. Christiansen includes worksheets and case studies to help journalists, editors, students, and teachers improve their messaging.

When we see coyotes in the street, rats in our trash can, or squirrels in the attic, we feel helpless, Bethany Brookshire writes in Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. We want them to go away. It would be better, she suggests, to emulate Indigenous cultures and learn to coexist with—and not feed—wildlife in our midst, protecting our homes and ourselves with safe methods of biocontrol.