Books I Read in 2020

1. She Came to Slay:  The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman (Erica Armstrong Dunbar; audiobook, read by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Robin Miles)
2. Dread Locks (Neal Shusterman)
3. The Women of a State University:  An Illustration of the Working of Coeducation in the Middle West (Helen R. Olin)
4. The Princess Diarist (Carrie Fisher; audiobook, read by Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd)
5. The Magician's Elephant (Kate DiCamillo)
6. Chi's Sweet Home, Volume 1 (Konami Kanata)
7. The Fiddler in the Subway:  The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts...and Other Virtuoso Performances by America's Foremost Feature Writer (Gene Weingarten)
8. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)
9. David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall (David Sedaris; audiobook, read by David Sedaris)
10. Chi's Sweet Home, Volume 2 (Konami Kanata)
11. David Sedaris:  Live For Your Listening Pleasure (David Sedaris; audiobook, read by David Sedaris)
12. A Prairie Home Companion:  Live From the Hollywood Bowl (Garrison Keillor; audiobook, performed by Garrison Keillor, Royal Academy of Radio Actors, etc.)
13. Chi's Sweet Home, Volume 3 (Konami Kanata)
14. God Help the Child (Toni Morrison)
15. Oklahoma's Atticus:  An Innocent Man and the Lawyer Who Fought for Him (Hunter Howe Cates)
16. Counting Americans:  How the U.S. Census Classified the Nation (Paul Schor; translated by Lys Ann Weiss)
17. *Knucklehead:  Tall Tales and Mostly True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka (Jon Scieszka)
18. The View From the Cheap Seats:  Selected Nonfiction (Neil Gaiman; audiobook, read by Neil Gaiman)
19. The BFG (Roald Dahl)
20. The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros)
21. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson; audiobook, narrated by Bill Bryson)
22. *American Born Chinese (Gene Luen Yang)
23. Tales of the Talented Tenth:  Bass Reeves (Joel Christian Gill)
24. i:  six nonlectures (e.e. cummings)
25. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Charlie Mackesy)
26. Tales of the Talented Tenth:  Bessie Stringfield (Joel Christian Gill)
27. Bad Feminist:  Essays (Roxane Gay)
28. Monsters & Other Stories (Gustavo Duarte)
29. Born to Fly:  The First Women's Air Race Across America (Steve Sheinkin; illustrated by Bijou Karman)
30. A Private War:  Marie Colvin and Other Tales of Heroes, Scoundrels, and Renegades (Marie Brenner; audiobook, read by Marie Brenner)
31. Bossypants (Tina Fey; audiobook, read by Tina Fey)
32. Savage Appetites:  Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (Rachel Monroe)
33. Medallion Status:  True Stories from Secret Rooms (John Hodgman; audiobook, read by John Hodgman)
34. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie; ebook)
35. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie; audiobook, read by Phoebe Judge)
36. A Black Women's History of the United States (Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross)
37. The Great Influenza:  The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (John M. Barry)
38. *At Home:  A Short History of Private Life (Bill Bryson; audiobook, read by Bill Bryson)
39. How To:  Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems (Randall Munroe; audiobook, read by Randall Munroe)
40. In the Dream House:  A Memoir (Carmen Maria Machado)
41. *A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson; audiobook, abridged, read by Bill Bryson)
42. Sula (Toni Morrison)
43. Bill Bryson's African Diary (Bill Bryson; ebook)
44. *In a Sunburned Country (Bill Bryson; audiobook, read by Bill Bryson)
45. *One Summer:  America, 1927 (Bill Bryson; audiobook, read by Bill Bryson)
46. Why Fish Don't Exist:  A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (Lulu Miller)
47. This Brilliant Darkness:  A Book of Strangers (Jeff Sharlet)
48. Comet in Moominland (Tove Jansson)
49. The Warmth of Other Suns:  The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (Isabel Wilkerson)
50. Say Nothing:  A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (Patrick Radden Keefe)
51. Flora & Ulysses:  The Illuminated Adventures (Kate DiCamillo; illustrated by K.G. Campbell)
52. Be Prepared (Vera Brosgol)
53. Snapdragon (Kat Leyh)
54. Jane, the Fox, and Me (Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, translated by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou)
55. El Deafo (Cece Bell; David Lasky, colorist)
56. Anya's Ghost (Vera Brosgol)
57. Roller Girl (Victoria Jamieson)
58. Losing the War (Lee Sandlin; ebook version)
59. Navigate Your Stars (Jesmyn Ward; illustrated by Gina Triplett)
60. Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents (Isabel Wilkerson)
61. Becoming Duchess Goldblatt:  A Memoir (Anonymous)
62. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask (Anton Treuer)
63. Essex County, Volume 1:  Tales from the Farm (Jeff Lemire)
64. Essex County, Volume 2:  Ghost Stories (Jeff Lemire)
65. The Chancellor and the Citadel (Maria Capelle Frantz)
66. Press Enter to Continue (Ana Galvan)
67. Failure is an Option:  An Attempted Memoir (H. Jon Benjamin; audiobook, read by H. Jon Benjamin)
68. The Fearless Benjamin Lay:  The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Marcus Rediker)
69. The Boardinghouse in Nineteenth-Century America (Wendy Gamber)
70. Beyond the Trees:  A Journey Alone Across Canada's Arctic (Adam Shoalts)
71. Essex County, Volume 3:  The Country Nurse (Jeff Lemire)
72. Counting Descent (Clint Smith)
73. The Tradition (Jericho Brown)
74. Life Before Legend:  Stories of the Criminal and the Prodigy (Marie Lu)
75. The Female Economy:  The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860 - 1930 (Wendy Gamber)
76. How Long 'til Black Future Month (N.K. Jemisin)
77. Bloodchild and Other Stories (Octavia Butler)
78. Solutions and Other Problems (Allie Brosh)
79. Intimations (Zadie Smith)
80. Before the Ever After (Jacqueline Woodson)
81. The Lady is a Spy:  Virginia Hall, WWII Hero of the French Resistance (Don Mitchell)
82. In the Dark Streets Shineth:  A 1941 Christmas Eve Story (David McCullough)
83. Conundrum (Jan Morris)

*indicates a reread

titles in bold were favorites

Books I Read in 2019

1. Emancipation's Diaspora:  Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (Leslie A. Schwalm)
2. The Onts: Secrets of the Dripping Fang, Book One (Dan Greenburg)
3. Booked (Kwame Alexander)
4. Stardust (Neil Gaiman)
5. Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor (Jon Scieszka; illustrated by Brian Biggs)
6. Women in Science:  50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World (Rachel Ignotofsky)
7. She Has Her Mother's Laugh:  The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity (Carl Zimmer)
8. The Library Book (Susan Orlean)
9. The Devil and Dave Chappelle: And Other Essays (William Jelani Cobb)
10. Buried Lives:  The Enslaved People of George Washington's Mount Vernon (Carla Killough McClafferty)
11. Bronx Masquerade (Nikki Grimes)
12. Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
13. Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography (Andrew Helfer and Randy DuBurke)
14. Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorps (edited by Bill Aguado and Richard Newirth)
15. Good And Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (Rebecca Traister; audiobook, read by the author)
16. A Man Without a Country (Kurt Vonnegut)
17. *Booked (Kwame Alexander)
18. Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Vine Deloria Jr.)
19. March: Book One (John Lewis and Andrew Ayedin; art by Nate Powell)
20. March: Book Two (John Lewis and Andrew Ayedin; art by Nate Powell)
21. Love That Dog (Sharon Creech)
22. March: Book Three (John Lewis and Andrew Ayedin; art by Nate Powell)
23. The 57 Bus:  A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives (Dashka Slater)
24. Lu (Jason Reynolds)
25. Einstein's Refrigerator:  And Other Stories From the Flip Side of History (Steve Silverman)
26. Animus (Antoine Revoy)
27. Shout (Laurie Halse Anderson)
28. Dragons in a Bag (Zetta Elliott)
29. Rhyme Schemer (K.A. Holt)
30. Fake Blood (Whitney Gardner)
31. Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic (Eugenie Tsai and Connie Choi)
32. The Poisoner: The Life and Crimes of Victorian England's Most Notorious Doctor (Stephen Bates)
33. Writing Radar:  Using Your Journal to Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories (Jack Gantos)
34. Extraordinary Lives:  The Art and Craft of American Biography (William Zinsser, editor)
35. Bloody Times:  The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Manhunt for Jefferson Davis (James Swanson)
36. Stop Pretending:  What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy (Sonya Sones)
37. Working:  Researching, Interviewing, Writing (Robert Caro)
38. *Arsenic and Old Lace (Donald Kesselring)
39. Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights:  From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment (Deborah Kops)
40. *Orbiting Jupiter (Gary Schmidt)
41. The Handmaid's Tale:  Graphic Novel Version (Margaret Atwood; illustrated by Renee Nault)
42. Furious Hours:  Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Casey Cep)
43. Thick: And Other Essays (Tressie McMillan Cottom)
44. Dying of Whiteness:  How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland (Jonathan W. Metzl)
45. Stark Mad Abolitionists:  Lawrence, Kansas, and the Battle Over Slavery in the Civil War Era (Robert K. Sutton)
46. The Impeachers:  The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (Brenda Wineapple)
47. Are Prisons Obsolete? (Angela Y. Davis)
48. Soulless:  The Case Against R. Kelly (Jim DeRogatis)
49. Operation Mincemeat:  How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (Ben MacIntyre)
50. The Butchering Art:  Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine (Lindsey Fitzharris)
51. Last Witnesses:  An Oral History of the Children of World War II (Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
52. Lost and Found: Helping Behaviorally Challenging Students (Ross W. Greene)
53. Negroland: A Memoir (Margo Jefferson; ebook)
54. Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; ebook)
55. Becoming (Michelle Obama; audiobook, narrated by Michelle Obama)
56. The Season of Styx Malone (Kekla Magoon)
57. Sisters (Raina Telgemeier)
58. Smile (Raina Telgemeier)
59. Ada Blackjack:  A True Story of Survival in the Arctic (Jennifer Niven)
60. I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir (Malaka Gharib)
61. Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories About Mental Illness (Darryl Cunningham)
62. The Poet X (Elizabeth Acevedo)
63. The Undefeated (Kwame Alexander; illustrated by Kadir Nelson)
64. The Body: A Guide for Occupants (Bill Bryson)
65. Look Both Ways:  A Tale Told in Ten Blocks (Jason Reynolds)
66. House Arrest (K.A. Holt)
67. How We Fight For Our Lives:  A Memoir (Saeed Jones)
68. Guts (Raina Telgemeier)
69. Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered:  the Definitive How-To Guide (Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark; audiobook, narrated by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark)
70. Dreamland:  The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, A Young Adult Adaptation (Sam Quinones)
71. For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem (Ntozake Shange)
72. For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem (Ntozake Shange; audiobook, narrated by Thandie Newton)
73. My Beloved World (Sonia Sotomayor; audiobook, narrated by Sonia Sotomayor and Rita Moreno)
74. Elevation (Stephen King; audiobook, narrated by Stephen King)
75. The Borden Murders:  Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century (Sarah Miller)
76. The Rise of the Public Normal School System in Wisconsin (William Harold Herrmann)
77. Born a Crime:  Stories from a South African Childhood (Trevor Noah)
78. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference (Greta Thunberg)
79. One Day:  The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America (Gene Weingarten)
80. Catch and Kill:  Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (Ronan Farrow)

Books I Read in 2018

1. Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman)
2. The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)
3. The Gashlycrumb Tinies: or, After the Outing (Edward Gorey)
4. Radiance (Alyson Noel)
5. Long Way Down (Jason Reynolds)
6. The History of Monroe County Rural Schools (Julia E. Middleman, editor)
7. How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace (Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan)
8. William Freeman Vilas: Doctrinaire Democrat (Horace Samuel Merrill)
9. When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)
10. Orbiting Jupiter (Gary D. Schmidt)
11. Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case (Patricia Hruby Powell; artwork by Shadra Strickland)
12. The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die (April Henry)
13. Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches (John Hodgman; audiobook, unabridged, narrated by John Hodgman)
14. The Lovings: An Intimate Portrait (Grey Villet, photographer; Barbara Villet and Stephen Crowley, contributors)
15. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Lynne Truss)
16. Bayou, Volume 1 (Jeremy Love; colors by Peter Morgan)
17. Pedestrianism:  When Watching People Walk Was America's Favorite Spectator Sport (Matthew Algeo)
18. Frederick & Anna Douglass in Rochester, New York: Their Home Was Open to All (Rose O'Keefe)
19. The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement (Teri Kanefield)
20. Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Phillip Hoose)
21. Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America (Wil Haygood)
22. The Abduction (Gordon Korman)
23. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer (Michelle McNamara)
24. Role Models (John Waters; audiobook, unabridged, narrated by John Waters)
25. Bad Boy: A Memoir (Walter Dean Myers)
26. Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal'd (Mary Losure)
27. Nancy Wake (Peter Fitzsimons)
28. The Search (Gordon Korman)
29. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus (Dusti Bowling)
30. The Worst Hard Time:  The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Timothy Egan)
31. The Pedestriennes: America's Forgotten Superstars (Harry Hall)
32. Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian (Mountain Wolf Woman; Nancy Oestreich Lurie, editor)
33. Library: An Unquiet History (Matthew Battles)
34. The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards)
35. An Hour Before Daylight:  Memories of a Rural Boyhood (Jimmy Carter)
36. The Book That Changed My Life:  71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them (Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen, editors)
37. Trial by Fire (Jeff Probst and Chris Tebbetts)
38. I'm Just No Good at Rhyming: And Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups (Chris Harris; illustrated by Lane Smith)
39. Bitter Nemesis:  The Intimate History of Strychnine (John Buckingham)
40. Barracoon:  The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" (Zora Neale Hurston; edited by Deborah G. Plant)
41. The Rescue (Gordon Korman)
42. The Taming of the Shrew (William Shakespeare; parallel text written by Beth Obermiller)
43. Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (Erik Larson)
44. *Long Way Down (Jason Reynolds)
45. Calypso (David Sedaris)
46. Black Klansman:  Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime (Ron Stallworth)
47. If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (Tim O'Brien)
48. After Fifteen Years (Leon Jaworski)
49. We Should All Be Feminists (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
50. Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (Maxine Hong Kingston)
51. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (James McBride)
52. Women & Power: A Manifesto (Mary Beard)
53. Soul on Ice (Eldridge Cleaver)
54. George's Marvelous Medicine (Roald Dahl; narrated by Derek Jakobi)
55. The Twits (Roald Dahl; narrated by Richard Ayoade)
56. You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain (Phoebe Robinson; audiobook, narrated by Phoebe Robinson, with Jessica Williams and John Hodgeman)
57. Meditations from a Movable Chair (Andre Dubus)
58. The Light on Synanon: How a Country Weekly Exposed a Corporate Cult--and Won the Pulitzer Prize (Dave Mitchell, Cathy Mitchell, and Richard Ofshe)
59. I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (Austin Channing Brown)
60. Decision (Richard Harris)
61. They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays (Hanif Abdurraqib)
62. Don't Call Us Dead: Poems (Danez Smith)
63. Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II (Thomas Childers)
64. The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)
65. The Unwomanly Face of War:  An Oral History of Women in World War II (Svetlana Alexievich; translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
66. Garvey's Choice (Nikki Grimes)
67. Helium (Rudy Francisco)
68. Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago (Max Allan Collins and Brad A. Schwartz)
69. The First Part Last (Angela Johnson)
70. For Every One (Jason Reynolds)
71. World War II Heroes (Allan Zullo)
72. Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty (G. Neri; illustrated by Randy DuBurke)
73. Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)
74. Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (James Baldwin; illustrated by Yoran Cazac)
75. Lighter Than My Shadow (Katie Green)
76. Illegal (Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin; illustrated by Giovanni Rigano)
77. Bad Island (Doug TenNapel)
78. Ghost Boys (Jewell Parker Rhodes)
79. Well-Read Black Girl:  Finding Our Stories, Discovering Outselves (Glory Edim, editor)
80. Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi)
81. Patina (Jason Reynolds)
82. The Incomplete Book of Running (Peter Sagal)
83. The Hazel Wood (Melissa Albert)
84. If They Come For Us (Fatimah Asghar)
85. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (Kathryn Kolbert)
86. Free Climb (Jake Maddox)
87. The Pregnancy Project: A Memoir (Gaby Rodriguez, with Jenna Glatzer)
88. Harbor Me (Jacqueline Woodson)
89. Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda (J.P. Stassen)
90. The White Darkness (David Grann)
91. Hey, Kiddo:  How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction (Jarrett J. Krosoczka)
92. Ghosts (Raina Telgemeier)
93. Sunny (Jason Reynolds)
94. *The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die (April Henry)
95. And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer (Fredrik Backman; Alice Menzies, translator)
96. The Tales of Beedle the Bard (J.K. Rowling)
97. Odd and the Frost Giants (Neil Gaiman)
98. Henry Dodge (Louis Pelzer)
99. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou)
100. The Movement for Statehood, 1845-1846 (Milo Milton Quaife, editor)

Science ("Caesar's Last Breath" by Sam Kean)

I was not a particularly enthusiastic student, at least where science was concerned. Every class I took on the subject, from middle school through college, left me completely uninterested, and I soon mastered the art of daydreaming while maintaining eye contact with my teachers, always with a notebook and pen seemingly at the ready. (In college, a required class on soil science, held at 9 a.m., was almost too much to bear. To keep myself awake, I sat beside the same student every Tuesday and Thursday, a soccer player with an active night life, and nudged him every time his head drooped to one side or the other. This self-appointed task kept me alert enough that I never fell victim to the same fate.)

Needless to say, upon the completion of my last required science class as an undergrad--and, as I was well aware, the last science class I would ever have to take--I felt a sense of overwhelming joy. I had endured years of droning lectures, filled notebooks with equations and diagrams that I would never fully understand, and devoted hours of study to textbooks that described science as though it were a piece of furniture in need of assembly. Even dissection, something I did only once, revealed itself to be lacking any real interest for me, as we spent most of our time looking over the photocopied carcass of a splayed piglet in preparation for yet another quiz. (In retrospect, I should have claimed moral objections and skipped the entire ordeal, as another one of my classmates did; my grade would have been the same regardless, I'm sure.)

And yet...buried deep in a box somewhere in my parents' basement are science books. Dozens and dozens of them. Many of them are picture books--on dinosaurs, weather patterns, birds, volcanoes, and so on. As a child, I adored anything related to science, especially if it taught me something about the strange, wild, and fascinating world I had been born into. I watched episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy with such hunger that even today, twenty years later, I can recite certain moments verbatim. The house in which I grew up was surrounded on all sides by lush forest, and I whiled away hours collecting a leaves, studying anthills, and investigating dens dug by small animals. (That I escaped childhood without once being attacked by a badger is a miracle.) Like many young boys, the effects of fire left me spellbound:  aluminum soda cans would weaken if left in a fire long enough, I noticed, but metal soup cans would not, and from these simple experiments I could make endless deductions. And at some point, around the age of ten or eleven, I became obsessed with Alfred Wegener, the man who first proposed continental drift. The thought of a fifth-grade boy becoming enamored with a long-dead German geophysicists while his classmates filled their lunchtime conversations with thoughts on their favorite football players is a little tough to imagine; for me, I couldn't imagine anything else at that age, especially the allure of football when compared to the puzzle-piece continents of our world.

My interest may have been narrow and eccentric, maybe even parochial, but they were not unusual. My hunch is that many boys and girls experience a similar baptism:  a parent or teacher introduces them to an enchanting aspect of the world, and they are hooked. As time passes, however, those interests disappear. Blame is easy to assign--we abandon many of our childhood interests over time, and adolescence makes us self-conscious about ourselves, especially if we enjoy something considered "geeky" or "weird"--but I have no hesitancy in doing so. At some point, science became less about the world around me and more about the world as it was depicted on paper. The science lessons I remember fondly from my pre-teen years--raising butterflies, making alum crystals, dissecting owl pellets, creating an electrical grid from desk to desk--slowly gave way to tedious chapters in decades-old textbooks. Hands-on experiments became fewer and fewer, replaced by thick packets and endless tests.

Even today, I shudder at what has become standard in science curricula across the country. Once, while tutoring a student after school, he handed me the packet he was required to complete for his science class, which reduced a compelling topic--volcanoes--to a series of multiple-choice questions and short-answer problems, all derived from long, droning paragraphs in his textbook. The boy I was tutoring was eleven years old. In more capable hands, he would be learning about volcanoes by building his own out of paper mache, or by studying pictures of Pompeii, or by tracing every step of an eruption with props and sound effects and destructible scenery. Instead, his study of volcanoes required him to sit at a table and search for bold vocabulary words.

Which is, of course, a travesty. Our world is endlessly fascinating, and it's only been in the last five years or so--since graduating from college and becoming a teacher myself, albeit of English--that my interest in science has been rekindled, thanks almost exclusively to writers like Bill Bryson, Mary Roach, and Sam Kean.* The first wrote what is perhaps my favorite science book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, which explores the planet Earth from its earliest moments. What makes the book such a treasure is that Bryson, who has no formal training in science, devotes an equal amount of ink to both scientists and their discoveries. He tells their stories as though writing a novel--sometimes comedic, sometimes tragic, often inspiring but just as easily dispiriting--and employs creative analogies and contemporary examples in order to simplify complicated (but important) milestones reached centuries ago.

The same can be said of Mary Roach, who writes about serious topics--the utility of dead bodies, the science of human sexuality, the preparation needed to undertake a mission to Mars--with biting honesty and a dark sense of humor, both of which help lay readers connect with subjects that might otherwise be seen as too obtuse or irrelevant. And Sam Kean takes broad scientific concepts--elements, genetics, the brain--and weaves together dozens of fascinating stories in order to convey how rich and complicated each subject truly is. In other words, he takes topics that have become stodgy textbook chapters and rewrites them to reveal the human faces behind each.

Kean's most recent book, Caesar's Last Breath, explains the air around us:  what it is comprised of, how long we've known this, and who made these discoveries. Along the way, we are introduced to the first men to successfully fly a hot-air balloon; a crotchety old widower in Washington who defies a volcano and loses; a pig that miraculously survives a nuclear blast; an aristocrat whose house is set on fire by those who see his scientific experiments as proof of his decadence; the world's worst poet, writing an ode to one of the world's worst bridges; a man who hopes to defeat hurricanes with chemicals; and so on. Each of these stories offers us a glimpse into our attempts at understanding, utilizing, and even changing our atmosphere. Most importantly, Kean knows that every respiration is a story in itself--a remixing of the same air breathed by men and women who lived centuries ago, as well as the same air that will be still be breathed centuries from now. In other words, every inhale is a communication with the past, and every exhale is a communication with the future.

This is one aspect of science that is almost always lost in textbooks:  why the past matters to those of us living in the present. It's very easy to ignore the life of Einstein when all we're asked to do is understand his theories. But learning about where our famous scientists came from, as well as how they came to be scientists, is just as important as memorizing their formulas, identifying their discoveries on the Periodic Table, or using modern versions of the instruments they designed and built. We see the situations that propelled them into asking questions, making observations, and filling pages with calculations, until they arrived at a conclusion. This gives our modern world a depth that it so deeply needs, and a nuance that might serve as a warning to others. As Kean points out, not all great scientists were heroic beyond their achievements; some, like Alfred Nobel and Fritz Haber, left legacies of carnage and death that may very well overshadow their scientific accomplishments in the near future. Those who hope to one day work in the sciences must understand that not every breakthrough is universally beneficial; sometimes, the cure for one problem is the cause of another, and anyone who walks into a laboratory without that in mind is taking a great risk.

Studying the past is also a reminder to young people that those who do great things often come from humble beginnings, that they need to work hard over many years, that they often--and inevitably--struggle. Students often approach science class with a pass/fail mindset--they need to get the experiment right the first time because they will not have a second, and anything that does not achieve the prescribed outcome is meaningless. This is not how science is supposed to work. Science is built upon repetition and failure: every floundering experiment or disproven hypothesis adds to our scientific knowledge because it tells us to try again, change our approach, or move in a different direction. One of the great benefits to doing experiments with children is that it forces them to act, evaluate, and recalculate based on little more than what they've observed, all of which are vital skills. Learning that scientists of the past found success only after years, even decades, of failure gives kids permission to do the same--have an idea, conduct an experiment, and fail. As long as they see that failure as the beginning of a new path rather than the end of their only option, they will benefit much more than if they simply read about these experiments in a stuffy textbook.

There are writers with much more direct scientific knowledge and expertise than Sam Kean--Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, and Michio Kaku are only a few. And they are fine writers, not to mention excellent spokespeople for the importance of a strong science education. But it's Sam Kean and his compatriots who I enjoy the most, and whose work offers us guidance about how we can reclaim the joys of science for future generations. They remind us that science can be both terrifying and exciting; it can be time-consuming but also fun and invigorating; it can be frustratingly mysterious, almost petulant in its unwillingness to give up the solution as easily as you would like, but within those mysteries is something redemptive. To solve a mystery of this world, even a relatively small one, is to locate a missing puzzle piece, one that reveals even more of our existence once set in place. And the people who solve those mysteries, regardless of their own personal foibles and reputations, are just as worthy of our study as their most important works.



*A healthy diet of MythBusters reruns has also helped.

Hermit ("The Stranger in the Woods" by Michael Finkel)

When he was twenty years old, Christopher Knight parked his car along a rural road in central Maine, left the keys on the dashboard, and walked into the surrounding forest. He had few supplies, no food, and no plan. For the next twenty-seven years, Knight would remain there, living in a makeshift tent in a small clearing with no contact between himself and another person save for a solitary hiker, with whom he exchanged monosyllabic greetings before moving on. He survived by stealing food and other necessities from nearby homes and cabins, many of which were only occupied during the summer months, and keeping his activities limited to nighttime and non-winter excursions.

It was, he would later profess, his own personal idea of paradise.

When he finally reappeared in society, escorted there by local police after more than a thousand break-ins, he found himself even more of a loner than before he first set foot in the woods. He had never been a social person; throughout his early years, including those spent in public school, he left little impression on anyone or anything. Raised to be honest, self-sufficient, and intellectually curious, Knight had always longed for the solitude that only nature could provide. And so he followed his desires, relying on frozen meat and junk food left behind by seasonal tourists, as well as the books, soap, shampoo, and propane tanks of local residents, to keep him thriving both physically and mentally. His arrest, which brought an end to both the world's most successful--albeit monotonous--crime spree and a generation of local urban legends, also marked another milestone: at age 47, Knight had dedicated more than half his life to living alone in the woods.

In the closing pages of The Stranger in the Woods, a nonfiction account of Christopher Knight's life during and after his time in the forest, journalist Michael Finkel attempts to explain just what his subject was hoping to accomplish:

He wasn't going to leave behind a single recorded thought, not a photo, not an idea. No person would know of his experience. Nothing would ever be written about him. He would simply vanish, and no one on this teeming planet would notice. His end wouldn't create so much as a ripple on North Pond. It would have been an existence, a life, of utter perfection.

A conclusion such as this might seem strange out of context--a man willing to be forgotten, and to think of such a life as perfection--but when read at the end of such a complicated story, this seems like a fitting and appropriate summation.

What makes Finkel's conclusion problematic is not how strongly it runs counter to the narratives our society embraces--that we must be concerned with our legacy, our footprints, our need to accomplish much and accomplish often--but how Finkel's entire book undermines its own thesis. If, as Finkel believes, Knight wanted to die in his encampment and be absorbed into nature, decomposed by the very same wilderness that offered him refuge, then Finkel has made such an end impossible and rendered the perfect as unachievable. Even if Knight were to return to the forest to die, as he intimates doing at one point, his death would not erase him from the world; instead, Christopher Knight, the so-called "last hermit," would be forever preserved because of Finkel's own book, which is now a bestseller.

Rarely do we encounter those who willingly remove themselves from society and are better for it; more often than not, those who live in this world, whether they do so in large cities or rural towns, belong to a community, and their absence from this community, whether it be for days or weeks or years, causes irreparable damage. Those who do separate themselves often descend into a strange form of madness; they may not suffer from a recognized or diagnosable illness, but something about them changes, something slightly perceptible at first, then unavoidable, until they become an entirely different person. They become a stranger, as though the isolation has jolted unseen fault lines into dangerous movements, which cannot be traced back or undone. Knight, as depicted by Finkel, seems to waver between becoming one of these people--his inability to make eye contact or engage in social niceties are startling aspects to his personality, ones that don't seem to have been a part of him before his exile into the forest--and preserving that small, pulsing nucleus of his individuality, which thrived as he devoured books, honed his survival instincts, and developed an appreciation for classical music, all in the wilderness of Maine.

Finkel wants us to believe that more of us should follow Knight's lead--abandon society, even briefly, to rediscover the benefits of silence, of boredom, of self-sufficiency, of nature, of solitude--even as the very subject of his book, the soul of this thesis, refuses to play along. Given every opportunity, Knight refuses to speak the words of Thoreauvian wisdom Finkel so desperately wants and expects, even as he simultaneously acknowledges that such wisdom--if it were to be delivered--would benefit almost no one. When asked what he's learned after so much time in the wild, Knight takes a long pause and recommends we get enough sleep; he then turns and is taken back to his prison cell, his wisdom seemingly spent.

Finkel's attitude towards Knight is never consistent, despite having had more contact with him than anyone else outside of his immediate family. At first, he initiates a conversation through letters, which rarely focus on Knight's time in the woods. Eventually, he takes a further step and visits Knight in prison, where the hermit's strange mannerisms become clear. Eventually, once Knight is paroled, Finkel begins stalking the man; he schedules flights to Maine from Montana and arrives unannounced at Knight's home, despite the fact that all of Knight's family members have refused to comment on the matter. He drives around Knight's small town speaking to those in his community about him, temporarily sets up camp in Knight's old clearing, attends Knight's sentencing, hounds his brothers, teases Knight about a potential girlfriend, and continues writing letters to him, all of which make the reading experience increasingly uncomfortable. Only when Knight insists that Finkel stop and threatens him with a call to the police does the author finally--and mercifully--relent, and for the first time since his arrest chapters earlier, the "character" of Christopher Knight is given the peace he has so desperately wanted.

Perhaps Finkel believes all of this is well-intentioned:  an attempt to connect with a man who struggles to do so. Perhaps he believes he is doing a service for his readers, who--he imagines--would want to know more about someone who seems so unwilling to share anything even remotely personal. Instead, Finkel becomes the very thing Knight had spent so many years eluding:  the ever-present set of eyes that is constantly judging, constantly questioning, constantly demanding. Among other people, Knight was forced to wear a mask of society's making, one that offered up meaningless small talk with ease, exhibited the appropriate facial expressions, watched mindless television, avoided anything intellectually engaging, and scorned those who didn't do the same. Among the trees, Knight could chip away at the mask, piece by piece, until he was finally himself. Even prison offered him enough structure and solitude to keep the full mask at bay.

But a journalist who arrives unannounced and uninvited, pries into his personal life, asks unwanted questions, and initiates contact with family members is little more than those prying eyes come back with a new mask in hand. And in publishing a book devoted exclusively to Knight, whose only real desire is to be left alone and forgotten, Finkel has committed the most heinous crime of all:  he has forced Knight to remain a public figure long after he's passed away. Rather than being the subject of some long-forgotten online articles--the very kind that require refined Internet searches and hours of scrolling--Knight will be preserved as caricature and exhibit, his mask made of paper and ink and bytes, and his name synonymous with freak. Michael Finke could have used this book to explore the ways in which our society has disconnected us from one another and the world around us, and the benefits of getting those connections back; instead, he has reminded us that, no matter how we work to fix ourselves and pursue our redemptions, there will always be those who stand at the forest's edge, mask in hand, waiting for us to emerge.