Material World
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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * AN ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * Finalist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations and fed our ingenuity and our greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grid, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information--what Ed Conway calls "the ethereal world"--our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material. In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood tometal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth--traveling from the sweltering depths ofthe deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates. Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new perspective: the ground up.
Uncharted
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People with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM fields, and all too often, they face isolation and ableism in academia. Uncharted is a collection of powerful first-person stories by current and former scientists with disabilities or chronic conditions who have faced changes in their careers, including both successes and challenges, because of their health.
The Exceptions
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A New York Times Notable Book As late as 1999, women who succeeded in science were called "exceptional" as if it were unusual for them to be so bright. They were exceptional, not because they could succeed at science but because of all they accomplished despite the hurdles. "Gripping...one puts down the book inspired by the women's grit, tenacity, and brilliance." --Science "Riveting." --Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene In 1963, a female student was attending a lecture given by Nobel Prize winner James Watson, then tenured at Harvard. At nineteen, she was struggling to define her future. She had given herself just ten years to fulfill her professional ambitions before starting the family she was expected to have. For women at that time, a future on the usual path of academic science was unimaginable--but during that lecture, young Nancy Hopkins fell in love with the promise of genetics. Confidently believing science to be a pure meritocracy, she embarked on a career. In 1999, Hopkins, now a noted molecular geneticist and cancer researcher at MIT, divorced and childless, found herself underpaid and denied the credit and resources given to men of lesser rank. Galvanized by the flagrant favoritism, Hopkins led a group of sixteen women on the faculty in a campaign that prompted MIT to make the historic admission that it had long discriminated against its female scientists. The sixteen women were a formidable group: their work has advanced our understanding of everything from cancer to geology, from fossil fuels to the inner workings of the human brain. And their work to highlight what they called "21st-century discrimination"--a subtle, stubborn, often unconscious bias--set off a national reckoning with the pervasive sexism in science. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the story, The Exceptions chronicles groundbreaking science and a history-making fight for equal opportunity. It is the "excellent and infuriating" (The New York Times) story of how this group of determined, brilliant women used the power of the collective and the tools of science to inspire ongoing radical change. And it offers an intimate look at the passion that drives discovery, and a rare glimpse into the competitive, hierarchical world of elite science--and the women who dared to challenge it.
Women in Science Now
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Women working in the sciences face obstacles at virtually every step along their career paths. From subtle slights to blatant biases, deep systemic problems block women from advancing or push them out of science and technology entirely. Women in Science Now examines solutions to this persistent gender gap, offering new perspectives on how to make science more equitable and inclusive for all. This book shares stories and insights of women from a range of backgrounds working in various disciplines, illustrating the journeys that brought them to the sciences, the challenges they faced along the way, and the important contributions they have made to their fields. Lisa M. P. Munoz combines these narratives with a wealth of data to illuminate the size and scope of the challenges women scientists face, while highlighting research-based solutions to help overcome these obstacles. She presents groundbreaking studies in social psychology and organizational behavior that are informing novel approaches for combating historic and ongoing inequities. Through a combined focus on personal experiences and social-science research, this timely book provides both a path toward greater gender equity and an inspiring vision of science and scientists.
The Beauty of Chemistry
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Images and text capture the astonishing beauty of the chemical processes that create snowflakes, bubbles, flames, and other wonders of nature.
It's Elemental
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Have you ever wondered what makes dough rise? Or how your morning coffee gives you that energy boost? Or why your shampoo is making your hair look greasy? The answer is chemistry. From the moment we wake up until the time we go to sleep, chemistry is at work--and it doesn't take a PhD in science to understand it.
The Journal of Chemical Education calls for papers that leverage theories of diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect (DEIR) to increase engagement of individuals from groups underrepresented in the chemistry enterprise, and decrease barriers experienced by these individuals in the discipline.
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