Here is a list of some of the stories and books I have assigned to students over the years in my class, “Writing about Science, Medicine, and the Environment.” I picked them for examples of story-telling, explanation, and bringing humanity to complex subjects.
ARTICLES:
Ross Anderson, “Pleistocene Park”
Burkhart Bilger, “Nature’s Spoils”
Eric Boodman, “In the Dark of Night, a Hunt for a Deadly Bug in the Name of Science”
Rebecca Boyle, “Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Snowflakes”
Peter Brannen, “The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record”
Jimmy Breslin, “A Death in Emergency Room One.”
John Colapinto, “The Interpreter”
Gareth Cook, “Autism, Inc.”
Helene Cooper, “They Helped Erase Ebola in Liberia. Now Liberia Is Erasing Them”
David Dobbs, “The Science of Success”
Gretel Ehrlich, “Rotten Ice”
Douglas Fox, “Firestorm”
Rivka Galchen, “The Dream Machine”
Atul Gawande, “Letting Go” (Paired with Ed Yong’s unpacking)
Amanda Gefter,“The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic”
Gabrielle Glaser, “The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous”
Ben Goldfarb, “The Endling”
Barbara Bradly Hagerty, “When Your Child Is a Psychopath”
Katherine Harmon, “How Ralph Steinman Raced to Develop a Cancer Vaccine — And Save His Life”
Tim Heffernan,“The New Bronze Age”
Antonia Juhasz,“Thirty Million Gallons Under the Sea”
Maggie Koerth, “The Complicated Legacy Of A Panda Who Was Really Good At Sex”
Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Siege of Miami”
Maria Konnikova, “Altered Tastes”
Robert Kunzig, “Between Home and the Abyss”
Seth Mnookin, “One of a Kind”
Sy Montgomery, “Deep Intellect.”
Jon Mooallem, “Who Would Kill A Monk Seal?”
Michael Moyer, “Is Space Digital?”
Annie Murphy Paul, “The First Ache”
David Quammen, “Out of the Wild”
Oliver Sacks, “Altered States”
Kathryn Schultz “The Really Big One”
Matthew Shaer, “Scientists Are Giving Dead Brains New Life. What Could Go Wrong?”
Christopher Solomon, “The Detective of Northern Oddities”
Michael Specter, “A Life of Its Own”
Gary Taubes, “What If It’s All A Big Fat Lie?”
Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling, “Altered Oceans”
Katie Worth, “Telescope Wars” (pdf at Katieworth.com)
Katherin Wu, “Covid Combat Fatigue”
Ed Yong, “The Last of Its Kind”
Paul Zimmerman, “Talk to Me”
BOOKS:
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein
Vicki Hearne, Calling Animals By Name
John McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Florence Williams, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
Ed Yong, I Contain Multitudes