| Contents |
Introduction -- The sea they swam in -- Star power and "popular scintillation" -- Assembling a team : words, images, and markets -- On the road and in the field : Emma Reh -- Medical matters : Jane Stafford -- Social science and change : Marjorie Van de Water -- "We only live once in this world" : Reh's second act -- Networks of science strangers -- News from everywhere -- Allegiances, flattery, and pushback -- Form substance, and style -- War clouds and wartime secrecy -- Split atoms and new horizons -- The next acts in their lives -- Looking in the mirror. |
| Abstract |
"Writing for Their Lives tells the stories of women who pioneered the nascent profession of science journalism from the 1920s through the 1950s. Like the "hidden figures" of science, such as Dorothy Vaughan and Katherine Johnson, these women journalists, Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette writes, were also overlooked in traditional histories of science and journalism. But, at a time when science, medicine, and the mass media were expanding dramatically, Emma Reh, Jane Stafford, Marjorie Van de Water, and many others were explaining theories, discoveries, and medical advances to millions of readers via syndicated news stories, weekly columns, weekend features, and books--and they deserve the recognition they have long been denied. Grounded in extensive archival research and enlivened by passages of original correspondence, Writing for Their Lives addresses topics such as censorship, peer review, and news embargoes, while also providing intimate glimpses into the personal lives and adventures of mid-twentieth-century career women. They were single, married, or divorced; mothers with child-care responsibilities; daughters supporting widowed mothers; urban dwellers who lived through, and wrote about, the Great Depression, World War II, and the dawn of the Atomic Age--all the while, daring to challenge the arrogance and misogyny of the male scientific community in pursuit of information that could serve the public -- Amazon.com. |
