Science Story Writing

Stories mould who we are, from our character to our cultural identity. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions, and shape our politics and beliefs. We use them to construct our relationships, to keep order in our law courts, to interpret events in our newspapers and social media. Storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human.

Far too often, public discussion of science is carried out by journalists, voters, and politicians who have received their science secondhand. The Story of Western Science shows us the joy and importance of reading groundbreaking science writing for ourselves and guides us back to the masterpieces that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves.

In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

It's every novelist's greatest fear: pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into writing hundreds of pages only to realize that their story has no sense of urgency, no internal logic, and so is a page-one rewrite. The prevailing wisdom in the writing community is that there are just two ways around this problem: pantsing (winging it) and plotting (focusing on the external plot).

What’s it like to race across the blacktop of the nation’s most famous track? How does it feel to smash into a concrete wall while going over 200 miles per hour? This exciting, humorous, and poignant collection of tales takes listeners inside the most exciting race in America. Tales from the Indianapolis 500 captures horrific collisions and sweet victories from drivers past and present.

From the peak of Jeremy Corbyn's popularity and the shock hung parliament of 2017 to Labour's humbling in 2019 and the election of Keir Starmer, Left Out draws on unrivalled access throughout the party and to both leaders' inner circles to provide a blistering narrative exposé of the Labour Party during one of the most tumultuous and significant episodes in its history. It reveals a party riven by factionalism and at war over ideology, then incapacitated by crisis and indecision.

Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper.

On October 5, 2017, the New York Times published an article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey that helped change the world. For months Kantor and Twohey had been having confidential discussions with top actresses, former Weinstein employees and other sources, learning of disturbing, long-buried allegations. The journalists meticulously picked their way through a web of decades-old secret payouts and nondisclosure agreements, pressed some of the most famous women in the world to risk going on the record.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb outside government buildings in central Oslo, killing eight people. He then proceeded to a youth camp on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 more, most of them teenage members of Norway's governing Labour Party. In One of Us, the journalist Åsne Seierstad tells the story of this terrible day and what led up to it. What made Breivik, a gifted child from an affluent neighborhood in Oslo, become a terrorist?

Anthony Bourdain chases the fumigation truck in Bergen County, New Jersey. Dave Eggers tells it straight: Illinois is Number 1. Louise Erdrich loses her bikini top in North Dakota. Jonathan Franzen gets waylaid by New York's publicist...and personal attorney...and historian...and geologist. John Hodgman explains why there is no such thing as a "Massachusettsean."

Peter Jukes, an award-winning TV crime writer, starts at the beginning: October 2013 and the Old Bailey is gearing up for an eight-month courtroom clash. It's a showdown that will pit tabloid newspaper executives in Rupert Murdoch's News International against the British state. The journalists are accused of phone hacking, corrupting public officials, and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. After years of cover up involving News International, the Metropolitan Police, and the government, the judge tells the jury, "British justice is on trial."

Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the 17th century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes 'The Contract' and 'Assaulted and Pursued Chastity'.

In this highly anticipated follow-up to the Sunday Times bestseller THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING, acclaimed story guru Will Storr shows you how to engage and influence your audience to create irresistible pitches, build rock solid brand loyalty, motivate teams and lead with charisma and authenticity. With examples ranging from Aztec rituals to Apple's legendary advertising successes (and long-forgotten fails), A STORY IS A DEAL lays out a revolutionary new method for creating the most persuasive messaging: by harnessing the power of our storytelling brains.

After her plane crashes, a 17-year-old girl spends 11 days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?

This House of Grief is a heartbreaking audiobook by one of Australia's most admired authors. Anyone can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic plain.

Shaka Senghor was raised in a middle-class neighborhood on Detroit’s east side during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic. An honor roll student and a natural leader, he dreamed of becoming a doctor—but at age eleven, his parents’ marriage began to unravel, and beatings from his mother worsened, which sent him on a downward spiral. He ran away from home, turned to drug dealing to survive, and ended up in prison for murder at the age of nineteen, full of anger and despair.

Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year. ” The selections in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 reveal a trying year for our planet—from the Lahaina wildfire tragedy to the lush Amazon jungle slowly turning to savanna—while also celebrating the earth’s beautiful and mysterious ways—from the largest beaver dam on earth to the heroic innovation to prevent birds from crashing into Chicago’s expanse of glass buildings.

Have you ever wondered who picked your Fairtrade banana? Or why we can buy British strawberries in April? How far do you think your green beans travelled to get to your plate? And where do all the wonky carrots go? Above all, how do we stop worrying about our food choices and start making decisions that make a difference? In an effort to make sense of the complex food system we are all part of, Louise Gray decides to track the stories of our five-a-day, from farm to fruit bowl, and discover the impact that growing fruits and vegetables has on the planet.

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent - but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.