Customer Reviews

A Field Guide for Science Writers: The Official Guide of the National Association of Science Writers

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The editor's note says that the primary goal of this book is "to help train a new generation of science writers." I think the key word there is "help." One is certainly not ready to go out and be a science writer after reading this slim volume, but then one shouldn't expect to be.

What I think this book does do is to give the reader some idea of what's involved in being a science writer and to provide numerous pointers along the way. This is done in several ways. The first section of the book contains half-a-dozen chapters on the different "homes" of science writers: newspapers, magazines, journals, broadcast media, etc. The second section focuses more on technique: the use of sources, handling statistics, and so on. The third section addresses science writing from a topical perspective: how to write about subjects like biology, astronomy, and technology. And the fourth section has several chapters on being a science writer at various sorts of institutions (universities, government agencies, businesses), rather than for the media.

Each chapter is written by a different person who is an expert in that area. For someone like me who knows his science writers, there are some notable names here: Julie Ann Miller, editor of Science News, has a chapter about writing for trade journals; John Noble Wilford, who covered Project Apollo for the New York Times and wrote the very first book to come out about Apollo 11, addresses writing science books; PBS personality Ira Flatow discusses doing science on television.

The book concludes with an appendix covering useful sources of information, which seems handy. I particularly want to order the chart of the fundamental particles--I've never been able to keep those straight!

So this is a very useful book for someone going into science writing and interesting, too, to anyone who wants to know what's involved in covering science from a journalistic perspective.

I'm one of the co-editors of the second edition of Field Guide, and I'd like to point out that most of the customer reviews posted here refer to the first edition. We've changed just about everything in this version, including the font size. Most importantly, we have a huge list of world-class contributors -- Tim Ferris, Phil Yam, Tom Siegfried, Lew Cope, Nancy Shute, David Everett, Carey Goldberg, Ron Seely, Lee Hotz, Janice Tanne, Colin Norman, Joe Palca, Kathryn Brown, Carl Zimmer, Alan Boyle, Tammy Powledge, Mariette DiChristina, Gareth Cook, Antonio Regalado, Rob Kunzig, George Johnson, Jamie Shreeve, Rob Kanigel, Shannon Brownlee, Marilyn Chase, Sally Squires, Paul Raeburn, Kevin Begos, Steve Hall, Ken Chang, Michael Lemonick, Andy Revkin, McCay Jenkins, Glennda Chui, Usha Lee McFarling, Cris Russell, John Toon, Earle Holland, Joann Rodgers, Colleen Henrichsen, Frank Blanchard, Mary Miller, Marion Glick, and James Gleick. We tried to get Amazon to update their information on this page, but no luck -- so you'll have to just browse in some other way. Believe me, it's a beautiful and useful book.

I am a recently retired scientist and finally have the time to do some things important to me such as science writing. So I looked for a source to guide and inspire me. The Field Guide is all I could have wanted.

The editors have selected some of the best in the field to write and update the chapters. They begin each chapter with a helpful introduction to it's author. The Field Guide has excellent, timely, and useful information. It contains 'how to' chapters, 'where to look' and 'how to interview' chapters. Strunk and White would be impressed with the many examples of good writing. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

If you're a science writer, or want to be, you need the Field Guide as a reference and inspiration.

Doing science writing without reading this is like preaching in a Baptist church without having read the Bible.

Buy it. Read it. Keep it at your elbow.

This is a good book. It has some great examples of science and nature writing. I enjoyed reading a lot of the pieces in it, especially the one on plastics in the North Pacific Gyre.

This collection of articles outlining different aspects of science writing offers a broad spectrum of the field. It covers different professions and offers practical advice great for any technical or professional writer. Its newer version is also great. They complement each other and are surprisingly well matched.

As a fairly experienced science writer - http://www.sciencebase.com/resume.html - I didn't anticipate learning any news tricks from this book, but it's well worth checking out if your journalistic beat is anything from astronomy to zoology by way of molecular architecture and quantum mechanics

Was very excited to get reading my new paperback copy of "A Field Guide for Science Writers." However, I could not read it!

The text is size 6 font and the chapter blurbs and excerpts are size 4 sans serif. Would be comical if I hadn't paid $20. Seems like a lot of people worked on this unreadable piece. I suspect the book says "consider your audience" and stuff like that, or maybe it doesn't, I will never know. I read 2 or 3 books a week, so I took a look at the last batch of things I have read to see if I was hallucinating, but alas, this book is the smallest font by about half...

Hope I can get my money back.

Seems a bit lazy to this writer and editor. Would not expect shabby design from a writer's organization.

Maybe the hardback is better?

With a foreword by Carl Sagan, this book is a treasure of "how to" information by the best writers in many fields of science writing.