Beloved Beasts: A Q&A with LWON’s Michelle Nijhuis

Our Michelle wrote a book! It’s called Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, and it has already become beloved by the many readers and reviewers who have been talking about it even before the book came out March 9. The book chronicles the history of conservation and conservationists in the U.S., […]

Life Lessons From the Animal Penis

When I was in college my department offered a course in comparative anatomy. The idea was that you could learn a lot by comparing and contrasting different species. I was reminded of that course while reading Emily Willingham’s new book, Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis, which is published tomorrow. The book offers a […]

A Loss for Words

I dream about books. Not about reading them, or even writing them. I dream, while still partly awake, about stacks of old books being carted off before I’ve had the chance to scour their titles or flip through their pages. I want to know what I’m losing, but there’s no time. I’m grieving. We’d talked […]

Thanks, Kids

The girl sits on the edge of the chair with her knees pressed together, hands twisting in her lap and chin jutting out slightly. Her braids are tight and smooth, hanging just past her shoulders and secured with matching red bands. A little comic strip kid, neatly drawn, eyes big and sparkling. “I can’t believe […]

Rust, Beer and Burritos: Interview with Jonathan Waldman

I met Jonathan Waldman when we were both magazine interns. We had a lot in common–we both got really into working on the magazine’s science column, and we were both really big fans of burritos. (He later sold me a shirt that featured a burrito-powered bike). When I ran into him at a conference a few […]

The Last Word, Dec 22-26

The People of LWON began a brief period of holiday rest by telling you what TV shows and movies you might binge-watch on your winter break, from the TV spinoff of a series of comic book movies to Scandinavian drama. A lot of Scandinavian drama. What do you like to read during the dark winter […]

My love-hate relationship with e-books

Ever since I read a New York Times article about the possibility of bedbugs spreading through library books, I’ve been too paranoid to check out a book from my local library. (Yes, I know people have argued that the article was way overblown. What can I say? I have an irrational fear of the bedbug.) […]

The Last Word on The Science Writers’ Handbook

LWON is a group blog run semi-anarchically by 12 science writers. If you think that sounds like a recipe for chaos, just contemplate SciLance, an even more anarchic group of 35 science writers. Usually, SciLance is just a discussion group, so the chaos is relatively subdued. But last week, the writers of SciLance published their […]