Advance copy: Backstories on books by NASW members

In 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter became the 1st non-native women known to transverse the Grand Canyon by boat. In their 43-day, 600-mile trip down the perilous Colorado River, they collected diverse plant specimens and took notes that set botanical benchmarks, Melissa Sevigny reports in Brave the Wild River, The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon.

Brain abnormalities make some dogs act in such unsafe ways distraught owners may be forced to end their pet’s life. In The Most Painful Choice: A Dog Owner’s Story of Behavioral Euthanasia, Beth Miller describes her futile 6-year struggle to help her beloved but aggressive and anxious rescue dog Champ. She also addresses treatment of canine behavioral disorders and offers advice on managing grief.

Jean-Henri Fabre likened a glowworm to “a spark fallen from the full moon.” He is one of 25 scientists from around the world who advanced knowledge of how living organisms interact with each other and their physical environments. In Ecology for Kids, Liz Heinecke introduces young readers to these pioneers and provides step-by-step photo-illustrated guides to home experiments based on their work.

A nun, Sister Fidelia, opened a 12-bed hospital in Tucson in 1880. Botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon identified and painted 100s of Southwest plants. In 1912, educator Louise Boehringer became the first woman elected to public office in Arizona; she also edited and published Arizona Teacher. They are among 17 pioneering women born before 1900 whom Wynne Brown portrays in Remarkable Arizona Women.

Yes, some chickens can fly! Some sing after laying eggs. Some purr when happy. Chickens make and keep friends, too, and grieve when pals die, Tove Danovich reports in Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them. While industrial farms prompt concerns about animal welfare, 3500 years of chicken history, she asserts, offer much to crow about.

“All matter—everything around and within us—has an ultimate birthday: the day the universe was born,” Dan Levitt writes in What's Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner. In reporting how we became who we are, Levitt illuminates the lives and struggles of the scientists who discovered how the past remains alive in the present.

In thousands of hours of manned spaceflight, all dependent on computers, the Apollo Guidance Computer never failed. In an era when men dominated computers and spaceflight, Margaret Hamilton and her team wrote AGC’s software. Richard Maurer interviewed Hamilton and tells her story for readers age 10-14 in The Woman in the Moon: How Margaret Hamilton Helped Fly the First Astronauts to the Moon.

Where do birds go when seasons change? A 17th-century theory posited they flew to the moon. Researchers today use radar, satellites, light-level geolocation, DNA, data from community bird-watchers, and more to track and understand migration patterns, as Rebecca Heisman details in Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration.

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.

From the 1890s to the 1920s, reporter/photographer Eliza Scidmore covered Alaska’s Klondike gold rush, Japan’s emergence as a modern world power, and other world events for National Geographic and other publications. She also orchestrated Japan’s 1912 gift of 3000 cherry trees to Washington, DC, Diana Parsell recounts in Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees.