By Arrabi Nandakumar
Though many have come across works such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Hidden Figures, and The Poisoner’s Handbook, few may think of “science writing” when considering these stories. So where does historical science literature fit in the scope of science writing and how does an aspiring author go about writing a book?
In this panel at the 2018 DCSWA Professional Development Day, three historical science authors discussed their experiences and advice as they navigated the process of writing their own books.
Moderator Sushma Subramaniam, journalism professor at the University of Mary Washington, first posed the question of idea generation. While the concept for a science article can be picked from a press release, the origin story of a historical science book is not so clear.
Each book had a different origin story. For Kevin Begos, author of Tasting the Past, his concept came after tasting Cremisan wine in his hotel room in Bethlehem, noting that the wine was made from indigenous ancient Israeli grapes. After his return to the United States, Begos was unable to locate the wine and found himself obsessing over it, and thus his book concept was born.
For Jason Bardi, author of The Calculus Wars and The Fifth Postulate, it was a random memory of a sidebar in his college Calculus textbook that briefly mentioned the Calculus Wars. He pitched this concept to an agent a decade later.
For Mitch Waldrop, author of Complexity and The Dream Machine, his concept came when a poster for a science conference mysteriously slipped into his mailbox. He was amazed by the content presented by every speaker at the meeting. “Every talk was just ‘Wow!’ And trust me, most conferences are not like that,” Waldrop joked.
Next, Subramaniam asked the panelists which part of their book was the most research-intensive.
Bardi noted one brief passage took him dozens of hours to research: “He could recite a hundred complicated equations by heart, converse in nine languages, including Chinese and Tibetan, and play haunting tones on the violin. As a student he was once challenged to a sword duel by thirteen different cavalry officers. He agreed to fight them, on the condition that after every match he’d be allowed to play the violin. He beat all thirteen.” Bardi admits that this was a tough task, because very little had been written about the character in the past.
Waldrop did not have a specific portion of his book that was more difficult to research than another, but shared one example. There was a crucial meeting at the Santa Fe Institute, where physicists, economists, and computer scientists came together five years before Waldrop began the research for his book. He had to attempt to reconstruct the events of the meeting through multiple phone calls, cross-checking the content he gathered from each phone call against the others.
Begos searched through the Oxford Companion to Wine, which stated that Israeli vineyards were destroyed after the spread of Islam and that Israel had no indigenous varieties of grapes. This indicated that the grapes Begos had tasted didn’t exist. Because of the Oxford Companion’s authoritative reputation, Begos questioned himself as he tried to seek and research Israeli wines. After speaking with Israeli scientists, Begos confronted editors at the Oxford Companion to Wine, who admitted that that passage was wrong and that Israeli vineyards weren’t completely wiped out.
When questioned about deciding between competing accounts in research, the panelists seemed to agree on two points. One was to distinguish between the subject and the story, “otherwise your editor will whack you in the head,” Begos quipped. The other was that people tend to embellish when discussing topics they care deeply about, so it is important to independently confirm what interviewees say.
Finally, when asked about their biggest challenges while writing, the panelists were unanimous: The end was the most difficult for all. Bardi was suddenly told to finish in two weeks, as he was moving across the country with a newborn daughter. He finished well after midnight, sitting outside an internet cafe in Silver Spring.
Waldrop struggled to orchestrate his last few chapters and get all of the moving pieces to fit together. Begos also struggled with ending his story, and chose to close with a recounting of the moment he held a 66 million year old grape seed.
To start and finish a book is a great feat, and for a historical science book the landscape is different from both article-based science writing and historical fiction. By achieving a blend of scientific concepts and research with narration and storytelling, the panelists hoped to both bring science to audiences who may not have otherwise read science works, as well as highlight notable but less well-known moments in scientific history for those within the scientific community.
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