For Betsy Mason (’16), the past five years have basically been one long deep dive into the world of maps. And now she has a gorgeous new book to show for it.
Last fall, Mason and her writing partner Greg Miller published All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey, a beautifully illustrated, large-format book about maps, mapmakers, and cartography. Mason says she discovered several of the book’s more than 200 maps while exploring Harvard’s map collection during her KSJ fellowship year. The compendium has earned plaudits from CityLab’s Laura Bliss, who wrote that “with an eye for splendor, Mason and Miller dredge up stories of the past through the medium of maps, often with something to say about the present. Their new book binds hundreds of evocative maps into one volume, stitched with approachable, illuminating prose.”
Meanwhile, Mason’s online writing has also been generating buzz: Her recent story about common geographic misconceptions, “Why Your Mental Map of the World is Probably Wrong,” was highlighted as one of National Geographic’s best stories of 2018.
The prolific Steve Nadis (‘98) has added yet another book to his lengthy resume. This month, he published The Shape of a Life (Yale University Press), coauthored with Harvard University mathematician Shing-Tung Yau. The book, an autobiography of Yau, charts how the Harvard professor rose from impoverished childhood beginnings in China and Hong Kong to become a Fields medalist and one of the world’s foremost experts on differential geometry. Novelist Gish Jen calls it “candid, deep, and truly inspiring… an extraordinary story about an extraordinary person.”
Nadis and Yau will hold a book talk and signing at the Harvard Book Store on Tuesday, February 26th at 7pm.
Although Gary Taubes (’97) still writes the occasional book and article about health and nutrition science, he’s also doing more than just covering those issues from the sidelines. In 2011, Taubes co-founded the Nutrition Science Initiative—or NuSI—a nonprofit that funds targeted nutrition research, which Taubes says has been woefully neglected by NIH and other government funding agencies.
Last month, a NuSI-funded study on nutritional guidelines for children with fatty liver disease, published in JAMA, was the subject of a write-up in the New York Times. It was the second time in a matter of months that NuSI’s work caught the attention of the Gray Lady: In November, the Times picked up a NuSI-funded study exploring the weight-loss effects of low-carb diets, which had been published in BMJ.
Over the past several years, KSJ’s founding director, Victor McElheny, has written more than a dozen “Milestone of Innovation” columns for the business, science, and tech site Xconomy.com, in which he celebrates anniversaries of important dates in science history. His latest installment, “Holding the Mirror Up to Our Planet”, concerned the 50th anniversary of the famous Apollo 8 flight into, and back from, orbit around the moon—the same mission that resulted in the iconic “earth rise” photo by astronaut Bill Anders.
Says McElheny, “When I covered the flight for the Boston Globe I wrote that the moon had been converted in the human imagination from a decorative lamp in the evening sky to a place for explorers to visit.” 50 years later, those words still ring true.
And in other alumni news…
Ellen Shell (’85) continues to make a splash with her latest book, The Job. The former fellow was featured on a recent episode of the podcast Recode Decode, where she “explained why some of the conventional wisdom about the future of work is misguided and offered pragmatic advice for people entering an increasingly automated job market.”
Angela Posada-Swafford (‘01) published a captivating photoessay in Nature called “A voyage to map Earth’s polar ice from the sky—in pictures,” which chronicles her flight over Antarctica with NASA’s IceBridge Mission.
Sujata Gupta (’18) has a new job on a very exciting beat: She recently joined Science News as their social sciences reporter. Congrats!
January 18, 2019
Mark Wolverton (‘17) published his fourth book, Burning the Sky (Overlook Press), a gripping tale about a secret Cold-War program to perform Nuclear Tests in Outer Space, known as Operation Argus.
A glowing review in Nature calls Burning the Sky “informative and balanced in [its] attention to diplomacy, science and biography,” and says that Wolverton provides “much to ponder concerning the state of play now, from the nuclearization of North Korea to the unkown future of the Iran nuclear deal.”
Congratulations Mark!
Here’s what other alumni are writing: a compendium from Federico Kukso (’16).
Courtney Humphries (‘16): “Digital immortality: How your life’s data means a version of you could live forever,” MIT Technology Review.
Pablo Correa (‘13): “A Colombian in the big leagues of mathematics,” El Espectador (in Spanish).
Aleszu Bajak (‘14): “Science in Colombia on the cusp of change,” Nature.
Jeff Tollefson (‘05): “‘Tropical Trump’ victory in Brazil stuns scientists,” Nature.
Federico Kukso (‘16): “The first great plague in history (that we know of),” Tangible/El Universal (in Spanish).
Marcin Rotkiewicz (‘09): “Is Europe Lost for GMOs?,” Aspen Review.
Iván Carrillo (‘17): “No gasoline?: Given the shortage in Mexico City, efficiency in consumption,” Tangible/El Universal (in Spanish).
Debbie Ponchner (‘04): “How Many Manatees Are There? There’s an Algorithm for That,” Scientific American.
Zack Colman (‘16): “Question for Democrats: What is a ‘Green New Deal’?” Politico.
Daniela Hirschfeld (‘10): “A year of shocks in regional scientific policy,” SciDev (in Spanish).
Adam Rogers (‘03): “Is ’Oumuamua an Alien spaceship? Sure! Except, No,” Wired.
Steve Mirsky (‘04): “Ravenmaster Christopher Skaife Tells of His Relationships with the Tower of London’s Resident Birds,” Scientific American.
Valeria Román (‘05): “Rewilding: the challenge of repopulating the world,” Tangible/El Universal (in Spanish).
Susan Phillips (‘14): “How the Clean Water Act fixed the Delaware River’s pollution problem,” WHYY.
Cynthia Graber (‘13) and Nicola Twilley: “Sweet and Low (Calorie): The Story of Artificial Sweeteners,” Gastropod.
Justin Gillis (‘05): “Forget the Carbon Tax for Now,” The New York Times.
Esther Nakkazi (‘08): “No redress likely for 45 sacked Makere University staff,” University World News.
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