MAY 2016 - AudioFile
Starting off in a clipped monotone, Hope Jahren’s memoir of her childhood on a rather cold, hushed Minnesota homestead does not immediately engage listeners. However, her reporting on her youthful adventures in her father’s local college lab foreshadows some coming delights. Not until her own passionate engagement with trees, soil, plants, seeds, and the tedious tasks and explosive discoveries of her own lab work does the narration blossom. As Jahren recounts her journeys with her troubled yet dedicated lab partner, Bill—from California to the North Pole, Norway, and many tree-studded lands in between—she beautifully contrasts intricate details of plants and trees and the stultifying sexism of academic life. A new respect for trees is inevitable after listening to Jahren’s impassioned stories of her life among them. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Large numbers amaze; numbers of large numbers amaze even more. Cognitive neuroscience can explain why…but it takes a passionate geobiologist with the soul of a poet to make us really swoon in the face of computational amplitude. Science is in the end a love affair with numbers, and when it comes to botany, the "numbers are staggering," Hope Jahren writes in her spirited account of how she became an eminent research scientist…Jahren's literary bent renders dense material digestible, and lyrical, in fables that parallel personal history…[She] deliver[s] a gratifying and often moving chronicle of the scientist's life.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Vladimir Nabokov once observed that "a writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist." The geobiologist Hope Jahren possesses both in spades. Her engrossing new memoir, Lab Girl, is at once a thrilling account of her discovery of her vocation and a gifted teacher's road map to the secret lives of plants—a book that, at its best, does for botany what Oliver Sacks's essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould's writings did for paleontology.
Publishers Weekly
★ 02/15/2016
Jahren, a professor of geobiology at the University of Hawaii, recounts her unfolding journey to discover “what it’s like to be a plant” in this darkly humorous, emotionally raw, and exquisitely crafted memoir. In clever prose, Jahren distills what it means to be one of those researchers who “love their calling to excess.” She describes the joy of working alone at night, the “multidimensional glory” of a manic episode, scavenging jury-rigged equipment from a retiring colleague, or spontaneously road-tripping with students to a roadside monkey preserve. She likens elements of her scientific career to a plant world driven by need and instinct, comparing the academic grant cycle to the resource management of a deciduous tree and the experience of setting up her first—desperately underfunded—basement lab to ambitious vines that grow quickly wherever they can. But the most extraordinary and delightful element of her narrative is her partnership with Bill, a taciturn student who becomes both her lab partner and her sarcastic, caring best friend. It’s a rare portrait of a deep relationship in which the mutual esteem of the participants is unmarred by sexual tension. For Jahren, a life in science yields the gratification of asking, knowing, and telling; for the reader, the joy is in hearing about the process as much as the results. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography• A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Film Prize for Excellence in Science Books • Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, TIME.com, NPR, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews
“Lab Girl by Hope Jahren is a beautifully written memoir about the life of a woman in science, a brilliant friendship, and the profundity of trees. Terrific.” —President Barack Obama
“Engrossing. . . . Thrilling. . . . Does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology.” —The New York Times
“Lab Girl made me look at trees differently. It compelled me to ponder the astonishing grace and gumption of a seed. Perhaps most importantly, it introduced me to a deeply inspiring woman—a scientist so passionate about her work I felt myself vividly with her on every page. This is a smart, enthralling, and winning debut.” —Cheryl Strayed
“Brilliant. . . . Extraordinary. . . . Delightfully, wickedly funny. . . . Powerful and disarming.” —The Washington Post
“Clear, compelling and uncompromisingly honest . . . Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for.” —Nature
"Spirited. . . . Stunning. . . . Moving.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A powerful new memoir . . . Jahren is a remarkable scientist who turns out to be a remarkable writer as well. . . . Think Stephen Jay Gould or Oliver Sacks. But Hope Jahren is a woman in science, who speaks plainly to just how rugged that can be. And to the incredible machinery of life around us.” —On Point/NPR
“Lyrical . . . illuminating . . . Offers a lively glimpse into a scientifically inclined mind.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Some people are great writers, while other people live lives of adventure and importance. Almost no one does both. Hope Jahren does both. She makes me wish I’d been a scientist.” —Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder
“Lab Girl surprised, delighted, and moved me. I was drawn in from the start by the clarity and beauty of Jahren’s prose. . . . With Lab Girl, Jahren joins those talented scientists who are able to reveal to us the miracle of this world in which we live.” —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
“Revelatory. . . . A veritable jungle of ideas and sensations.” —Slate
“Warm, witty . . . Fascinating. . . . Jahren’s singular gift is her ability to convey the everyday wonder of her work: exploring the strange, beautiful universe of living things that endure and evolve and bloom all around us, if we bother to look.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Deeply affecting. . . . A totally original work, both fierce and uplifting. . . . A belletrist in the mold of Oliver Sacks, she is terrific at showing just how science is done. . . . She’s an acute observer, prickly, and funny as hell.” —Elle
“Magnificent. . . . [A] gorgeous book of life. . . . Jahren contains multitudes. Her book is love as life. Trees as truth.” —Chicago Tribune
“Mesmerizing. . . . Deft and flecked with humor . . . a scientist’s memoir of a quirky, gritty, fascinating life. . . . Like Robert Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, it delivers the zing of a beautiful mind in nature.” —Seattle Times
“Jahren's memoir [is] the beginning of a career along the lines of Annie Dillard or Diane Ackerman.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A scientific memoir that's beautifully human.” —Popular Science
“Breathtakingly honest. . . . Gorgeous. . . . At its core, Lab Girl is a book about seeing—with the eyes, but also the hands and the heart.” —American Scientist
Library Journal
★ 02/15/2016
Jahren's first book is a refreshing mix of memoir about her journey as a woman scientist and musings about plants, the central focus of her successful scientific endeavors. What's most refreshing is the author's openness about her relationship and collaboration with research partner Bill. Over the course of 20 years their field treks take them to the North Pole, the back roads of Florida, and Ireland's countryside. Meanwhile they build three labs, including their current one at the University of Hawaii. At times funny and at other points poignant, this work expresses Jahren's passion for paleobiology—her subdiscipline within environmental geology—through her insights into plant life and growth. She skillfully ties this knowledge to her own life stories and successfully conveys the dedication required to build and sustain a research agenda and the requisite lab at any major U.S. research institution. VERDICT This title should be required reading for all budding scientists, especially young women. However, being a scientist is not essential in order to savor Jahren's stories and reflections on living as well as fossil plant life. [See Prepub Alert, 10/26/15.]—Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis
MAY 2016 - AudioFile
Starting off in a clipped monotone, Hope Jahren’s memoir of her childhood on a rather cold, hushed Minnesota homestead does not immediately engage listeners. However, her reporting on her youthful adventures in her father’s local college lab foreshadows some coming delights. Not until her own passionate engagement with trees, soil, plants, seeds, and the tedious tasks and explosive discoveries of her own lab work does the narration blossom. As Jahren recounts her journeys with her troubled yet dedicated lab partner, Bill—from California to the North Pole, Norway, and many tree-studded lands in between—she beautifully contrasts intricate details of plants and trees and the stultifying sexism of academic life. A new respect for trees is inevitable after listening to Jahren’s impassioned stories of her life among them. D.P.D. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2016-01-05
Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world. The author's father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren's journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed's first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: "Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited." The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she's worked ever since. The author's tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist. Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
