Hannibal, an award-winning writer and emerging emissary from scientists to the public, sets out to become a citizen scientist herself. In search of vanishing species, she wades into tide pools, follows hawks, and scours mountains. The data she collects will help environmental research—but her most precious discovery might be her fellow citizen scientists: a heroic cast of volunteers devoting long hours to helping scientists measure—and even slow—today’s unprecedented mass extinction.
A consummate reporter, Hannibal digs into the origins of the tech-savvy citizen science movement—tracing it back through centuries of amateur observation by writers and naturalists. Prompted by her novelist father’s sudden death, she also examines her own past and discovers a family legacy of looking closely at the world. Her personal loss only fuels her quest to bear witness to life, and so she ultimately returns her gaze to the wealth of species still left to fight for.
Combining research and memoir in impassioned prose, Citizen Scientist is a literary event, a blueprint for action, and the story of how one woman rescues herself from an odyssey of loss—with a new kind of science.
423 pages (September 2016)
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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
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Mary Ellen Hannibal TEDx Talk:
Title Read-alikes: The Nature of Nature by Enric Sala; Unstoppable Global Warming by S. Fred Singer; Wild Things, Wild Places by Jane Alexander; Earth in Human Hands by David Harry Grinspoon; Seeds of Hope by Jane Goodall; A World for My Daughter by Alejandro Frid; The Edge of Extinction by Jules N. Pretty; The Human Age by Diane Ackerman; The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers; What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz; The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio; Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie; and Weather by Jenny Offill.
I love that you include non-fiction titles in your book club collection that I haven't heard or considered before. We also really appreciate that you bring all the book information together in one place so we don't have to go looking for our own guides (as well as related information.)
ReplyDeleteI especially like the video, I haven't seen that before.
This title looks like a great one for our club.