Join us for a book talk with author and NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce, who will speak about her new book, Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life. A conversation with author Kelly Weinersmith will follow. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
About the Book: An astonishing debut from the beloved NPR science correspondent: intimate essays about the intersection of science and everyday life.
In her career as a science reporter, Nell Greenfieldboyce has reported from inside a space shuttle, the bottom of a coal mine, and the control room of a particle collider; she’s presented news on the color of dinosaur eggs, ice worms that live on mountaintop glaciers, and signs of life on Venus. In this, her debut book, she delivers a wholly original collection of powerful, emotionally raw, and unforgettable personal essays that probe the places where science touches our lives most intimately.
Expertly weaving her own experiences of motherhood and marriage with an almost devotional attention to the natural world, Greenfieldboyce grapples with the weighty dualities of life: birth and death, constancy and impermanence, memory and doubt, love and aging. She looks for a connection to the universe by embarking on a search for the otherworldly glint of a micrometeorite in the dust, consults meteorologists and storm chasers on the eerie power of tornadoes to soothe her children’s anxieties, and processes her adolescent oblivion through the startling discovery of black holes. Inspired throughout by Walt Whitman’s invocation to the “transient and strange,” she remains attuned to the wildest workings of our world, reflecting on the incredible leap of the humble flea or the echoing truth of a fetal heartbeat.
A beautiful blend of explanatory science, original reporting, and personal experience, Transient and Strange captures the ache of ordinary life, offering resonant insights into both the world around us and the worlds within us.
About the Author: Nell Greenfieldboyce is a science correspondent for National Public Radio. Before joining NPR, she was a science reporter at magazines including U.S. News & World Report and New Scientist, where she received the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award for Young Science Journalists. She lives in Washington, DC.
About the Moderator: Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is an adjunct faculty member in the BioSciences Department at Rice University. Kelly studies parasites that manipulate the behavior of their hosts, and her research has been featured in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Science, Nature, and BBC World. When she isn’t studying Nature’s creepiest wonders, Kelly is writing books with her husband, Zach Weinersmith (creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Comics). Their books, Soonish and A City on Mars, are New York Times bestsellers.
To order Transient and Strange, please see below for the New Dominion Bookshop book order form or call the shop at 434-295-2552.
"In a perfect blend of science and memoir, Nell Greenfieldboyce imbues objects of study—meteorites, tornadoes, black holes, fleas—with emotional beauty. Transient and Strange is a deeply relatable account of the pleasures and the terrors of being a woman, being a mother, and being deeply curious about the universe."
—Emma Marris
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Photo Credits: Nell Greenfieldboyce: Timothy Devine, Kelly Weinersmith: Jeff Fitlow