Explore the World of Science with Hope Jahren's Lab Girl: An Unreal Tournament

LikeToRead: Hope shared her mental illness, her insecurities ,and her two other people.

You will learn about how plant live with out bogging down in scientific terms.

A great read that will help you accept who you are

United States on Sep 13, 2023

Claudia: Lab Girl was captivating, it held my interest. I learned new scientific information that I can share with my students. Will highly recommend this book to up-and-coming women scientists.

United States on Aug 02, 2023

Amazon Customer: I thought this was a very well written book. Hope divides the book into interesting bit size sections about plants. These are interspersed with insights into life growing up with people who originate in Scandinavia. I grew up in a Methodist family and there are some similarities and some differences which have affected me. There are also many descriptions of life in the lab which should be read by anyone thinking of becoming a scientist. Having said all of the above, the book is entertaining with some laugh out loud bits. So would definitely recommend.

United Kingdom on May 09, 2022

Amazon Customer: Such a wonderful, beautifully written, thought provoking book. I'm going out now to plant (yet) another tree. Thank you Hope and Bill, thank you.

United Kingdom on Apr 24, 2022

hshm: This books was a really pleasant surprise for me. I was asked to find a book about a woman in STEM for a reading challenge. I browsed many, many suggestions online and this stood at to me as the best, but I wasn't sure what I would make of it. In actual fact, I loved reading this book. It was so interesting, so fascinating, and so inspiring. Seriously, please do buy this book and read it! It's awesome.

United Kingdom on Apr 04, 2021

annethereader: I spaced out especially on the scientific narrative about roots and leaves, wood and knots, and flowers and fruit. It’s not about the author’s writing. It’s more of my lack of interest in the field of scientific explanations and I need visuals to fully comprehend. Well, I’m just not a science person. But I did learn interesting bits about trees and the science life. Lab Girl is a book about trees, science, and love. I was more hooked into the ‘love’ part---- her love for her work.

I highly recommend this to people who are into sciences as I know they can relate to the lab life. Even so, I think it’s an interesting memoir that gives us a glimpse of what science people have to go through in their research, the long nights they spend in the lab, the difficulty in getting funding, etc. Back in Japan, I knew some postgrad friends who were always exhausted and going back to the dormitory in the wee hours of the morning. They complained about being tired but I didn’t know exactly what they do in their lab. In the book, I like the relationship between Hope and Bill and up until I covered 70% of the book, the tension of maybe going beyond that was there. I think Bill...

Japan on Jan 13, 2020

Bernie Gourley: This book is in part the autobiography of a female scientist with a career in a field that is both male-dominated and in which basic science is the meat and potatoes—by which I mean a discipline with few of the commercial applications at which companies, foundations, venture capitalists, and governments are willing to throw millions. Interspersed into the autobiographical chapters are short essays on trees and the ways they survive, grow, and interact with each other and their environments. So it’s a mix of biography and pop science, and was one of the most well-received science-themed books of last year (2016.)

The book is arranged into three parts. The first 11 chapters are entitled “Roots & Leaves” and these cover Jahren’s path to becoming a scientist from her childhood in an unexpressive Scandinavian family in rural Minnesota, through her college job in a hospital lab, and onto her graduate education. Part II consists of 12 chapters that cover Jahren’s years as a junior faculty member, most of which takes place at (my alma mater and former employer) Georgia Tech. The title of this chapter, “Wood & Knots,” gives one some indication of where the...

United States on May 31, 2017

Oliver Dearlove: This is a book about a girl who has made good - altho it is a bit late for all the girls and boys such as myself who havent. And it is by the girl herself so we know it must be true. I was a lab tech who never made it [Vizoso AD Br. J. exp. Path. (1975) 56, 485 and with not even an acknowlegdement to show for two years work] and so this book was obviously written for someone such as myself. And perhaps it will tell you where I went wrong.

The prose is said by others to be on a par with Oliver Sacks - who I have to say is a very fluent writer and whose biog ( that is the one where he doesnt have sex for 35 y ) is the only book of his I have read. Prof Jahen who clearly does have sex, writes, I find, less fluently. I knew she had made it but after 100 pages I still was not certain where or how. And it is isotope identification of trees in the eocene period ( 75 m y ago ) which allows her to conclude what the climate was like - to general acclaim

One of her long essays in training was on DIckens ( use of the word "heart" ) and when she quotes him, after a while I wondered why I wasnt reading a Dickens novel which I think we both agree is better written than her...

United Kingdom on May 23, 2016

B. Case: I was drawn to this book after reading a short biographical sketch of Hope Jahren in Time magazine’s special edition of “The 100 Most Influential People.” I’d never heard of this prize-winning scientist before and wanted to know more about her. In the article, she was headlined as being “science’s great communicator.” That stunning phrase sold me: I just had to buy her book. There is nothing I love better than to read brilliant science authored by an accomplished academic who also writes eloquently.

The book took me two days to finish and held my interest throughout. But in the end, the book was as equally fascinating as it was disappointing. It also left me frustrated. Let me explain.

The memoir takes up perhaps two thirds of the text, but interspersed throughout are many small chapters, each illuminating some small facet of botany. Virtually every one of these life-science essays was exquisitely written and intellectually enchanting. I loved them! In many ways they reminded me of some of the best science writing of E. O. Wilson. I would definitely buy another book by Jahren that was focused on some popular aspect of geology, chemistry, or botany....

United States on May 05, 2016