Lab Girl

[magid]

I finished reading Lab Girl (Hope Jahren) over yom tov, and it's an excellent read, an engaging autobiography interspersed with short essays on how plants, especially trees, function in their environment, and how they shape it. The author also studied English literature, which is presumably where some of her story-telling skills were honed. And when I say story-telling, it's not only about the scrapes she and her researcher Bill get into, but also the story of the plants she is so wholly intrigued by, turning the learning into a narrative that sticks better than a labeled diagram, while leaving all those areas that are still unknown (unknowable? Or just not for a long while? Hard to know, especially in an era of shrinking science funding, at least for science that isn't involved in military applications) as question marks, not presuming the answers, or choosing ones that will enhance the story. I feel like I might understand just a bit more about how the physical world works.

Comments

[ruthling]

that sounds really good.