A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman

January 1, 2022

Leading paleontologist Brusatte follows up the New York Times best-selling The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs with The Rise and Fall of the Mammals, summing up a next act that includes humans, whose world dominance has caused an extinction event costing an estimated 80 percent of wild mammals in the last century alone (75,000-copy first printing). In A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman, Elkins-Tanton--principal investigator of NASA's $800 million Psyche mission--tells her story and that of the nearly all-metal protoplanet 16 Psyche, located in an asteroid belt 589 million kilometers from Earth and optimum not just for mining but more crucially for imparting the story of how planets like ours were formed (50,000-copy first printing). In What Your Food Ate, MacArthur-honored geologist Montgomery joins with biologist Bikl� to argue that good health starts with good soil and good farming practices. A National Book Award finalist for The Soul of an Octopus and New York Times best-selling author of The Good Good Pig, Montgomery returns with The Hawk's Way to describe her work with Jazz, a bright-eyed female Harris's hawk with a four-foot-plus wingspan and decidedly a predator rather than a pet (60,000-copy printing). Award-winning theoretical physicist and cosmologist Padilla explains Fantastic Numbers and Where To Find Them, plumbing nine numbers explaining how the universe works, from the impossibly large Graham's number to 10^{-120}, which measures the unlikely balance of energy needed to allow the universe to exist for more than a blink of the eye (100,000-copy first printing). By detailing the discovery of Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Montana wilderness, the New York Times best-selling Randall explains the triumphant emergence of New York's American Museum of Natural History while also showing how The Monster's Bones inspired an ongoing fascination with dinosaurs and their role in shaping Earth. Multi-award-winning sf author Robinson recounts everything he's learned in the more than 100 trips he has taken to The High Sierra since his first, life-changing sojourn in 1973 (50,000-copy first printing). From a theoretical physicist whose international best sellers have gracefully explained to lay readers how the universe works, Rovelli's There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness offers essays embracing not just science but literature, philosophy, and politics.

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April 11, 2022
Planetary scientist Elkins-Tanton traces her path from MIT geology student to principal investigator of NASA’s Psyche mission in this often poetic memoir. After graduating from MIT with a bachelor’s in geology, a master’s in geochemistry, and eventually a Ph.D. in geology, Elkins-tanton performed field studies in Siberia that helped her develop a theory for the cause of a Permian-era extinction event, and worked on NASA’s Psyche mission, set to launch in August 2022 with a mission to explore an asteroid that “may be a piece of one of the first metal cores to form in our solar system.” Interspersed with her account of her professional accomplishments are personal stories of challenges the author faced, including her divorce, periods of profound depression, and the sexism she’s faced: “All of us women were told at one point or another that we were at MIT on sufferance, that we were not really good enough.” Elkins-Tanton shines in her ability to render the process of scientific discovery in eloquent prose: “I wish with all my heart that every person could, in at least one discipline, pursue and come to know through a long path traveled all that has been discovered, right to the edge of human understanding.” This is a wonderful paean to the beauty of scientific exploration.

May 15, 2022
How do planets form? NASA's Psyche Asteroid Mission, poised to launch in August 2022 and led by one of only two women ever to head up a NASA space exploration mission, hopes to find out. The scientific career of Lindy Elkins-Tanton is impressive, even inspiring, but as her memoir reveals, her road into the world of science was a rocky one. After a childhood that saw both privilege and abuse, she sought refuge in science, only to discover again and again that her presence in the scientific world would often be seen, sometimes even by her closest colleagues, as unearned, temporary, and conditional. Rightly aware that the sciences are as much about people as data, A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman covers its author's prodigious scientific work alongside her traumatic background and her struggles to convince her institution to address the behavior of an abusive faculty member. The book's honesty is not cynical, but rather sincerely optimistic, as Elkins-Tanton explores ways to create better, more inclusive disciplines through curiosity, generosity, and collaboration.

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May 6, 2022

Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator of the NASA Psyche Mission and ASU vice president for the Interplanetary Initiative, has written an engaging and candid memoir of her path to a career in science. Professor Elkins-Tanton traces her journey from experiencing childhood trauma to earning a PhD from MIT, conducting research in Siberia, getting elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and being only the second woman awarded a major NASA space exploration project. The $800 million NASA space mission to asteroid Psyche will launch in August 2022. Elkins-Tanton's memoir spotlights the challenges and successes of being a woman in a male-dominated field. It also provides an opportunity for her to share her philosophy of life: always ask questions, but more importantly, listen to the answers. VERDICT With wide appeal to a wide audience, this work provides a closer look at the human side of science.--Diane Fulkerson

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2022
The principal investigator of NASA's Psyche mission lays bare the challenges and rewards of succeeding as a woman in a male-dominated field and how the sublime beauty of the universe brought her strength and solace. Winning a major NASA space exploration contract is an accolade that only two women in history have received--and one of them is Elkins-Tanton. In this enthralling and inspiring book, the author, a renowned geophysicist, shares her experience ascending the field, from her training at MIT to her current position leading the mission to explore the asteroid Psyche. In August 2022, she and her team are scheduled to launch a rocket to begin its 3.4-year trip to Psyche, which may be a piece of one of the first metal cores to form in our solar system and could provide never-before-seen data about how the Earth's metal core formed. Elkins-Tanton describes the harrowing personal obstacles she overcame, from childhood abuse to cancer, and the sexism she encountered in each of her increasingly high-powered roles--a stark reminder that despite advances in equity, in the eyes of male colleagues, women are often "nothing but a symbol for sex" rather than being seen as "a whole person." Of course, misogyny is not news; what makes the author's story so compelling is her unrelenting effort to "make a change in culture, a change in expectation, that causes a change in our subconscious reactions and thus in our implicit bias." Elkins-Tanton does not limit her scope to harassment, though that is a central concern. She innovated classroom learning and team building to create space for every person to contribute and thrive, an approach that was recognized by NASA's review board and played a role in the success of the Psyche proposal. Ultimately, she created a matrix to allow for every voice and therefore space to "drive human knowledge farther." A fearless, riveting, and galvanizing book from a star in the U.S. space program.

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