For this column, NASW book editor Lynne Lamberg asks NASW authors to tell how they came up with the idea for their book, developed a proposal, found an agent and publisher, funded and conducted research, and put the book together. She also asks what they wish they had known before they began working on their book, what they might do differently the next time, and what tips they can offer aspiring authors. She then edits the A part of that Q&A to produce the author reports you see here.
NASW members: Will your book be published soon? Visit www.nasw.org/advance-copy-submission-guidelines to submit your report.
Publication of NASW members' reports in Advance Copy does not constitute NASW's endorsement of their books. NASW welcomes your comments and hopes this column stimulates productive discussions.
“Animals are motion masters. They skitter, scuttle, grip, glide, spring, cling, & more,” Linda Zajac reports in Robo-Motion: Robots That Move Like Animals, an illustrated book for 4-9 year-olds. Robots that mimic animal motion help surgeons reach into tight spaces, explore the seafloor, aid in search & rescue missions, and perhaps soon may serve as first responders for wildfires & other dangers.
A strong cyclone hit Madagascar in 2017, ruining 30% of the world’s annual vanilla supply. Vanilla prices rose 350%. ”Climate change is impairing the entire food system,” Carrie Koplinka-Loehr & colleagues assert in Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need. Personal and societal actions from curbing food waste to cutting greenhouse gas emissions may help stem the damage.
In 1989, Alison Bass reported for The Boston Globe on psychiatrists who had sex with their patients. In 1992, she reported for The Globe on pedophile priests, a decade before The Globe launched its Spotlight investigation. Later she documented sex workers’ lives, a topic she expanded into a book. Brassy Broad: How one journalist helped pave the way to #MeToo is her memoir.
Scientists and journalists seeking to explain scientific research findings, implications, and applications need a variety of tools and techniques from jargon-free language to social media skills. Audiences still filter information through their own values. In Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work, 2nd Ed., Dennis Meredith aims to help readers get messages across.
Nearly 4.6 million people worldwide have died to date from Covid-19, 640,000 of them in the US alone. Other viruses, notably smallpox, the first virus to be nearly eradicated, are even more lethal. Scientists estimate a trillion viruses may exist on earth, many capable of producing new human diseases. “There will be more Covids,” Carl Zimmer warns in A Planet of Viruses, now in its 3rd edition.
Not including Esther Lederberg in the 1958 Nobel Prize awarded to Joshua Lederberg—Esther’s research partner and husband—and George Beadle and Edward Tatum for discoveries in genetics blatantly exemplifies sexism in science, Thomas E. Schindler asserts. In A Hidden Legacy: The Life and Work of Esther Zimmer Lederberg, Schindler reports Esther’s original contributions to the prize-winning findings.
DNA tests in 2017 showed a high-status Viking warrior buried between 913 and 980 in Birka, Sweden, was a woman. The full set of sturdy weapons and two horses in her grave upended scholars’ assumptions about the role of Viking women. Who was she? For The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women, Nancy Marie Brown drew on science, history, and legends to imagine her life story.
Astronomer Vera Rubin provided evidence for the existence of dark matter, the invisible material comprising more than 90% of the universe’s mass. As a pioneering woman, she faced slights & skepticism, Ashley Yeager reports in Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond. Rubin died in 2016 at age 88. She is the 1st woman to have a national observatory named for her, Tucson’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you’ve seen torrents of sweat. Elite athletes sweat sooner and more copiously than couch-potatoes, Sarah Everts reports in The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration. Their bodies anticipate and compensate for exercise-induced high core temperatures. Though “sticky, stinky, and gross,” Everts says, “sweat is among our most fascinating secretions.”