I am a nationally published news and features writer who has written about a wide variety of topics for TIME, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, People, Allure, Thomson Reuters, Glamour, Pregnancy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Magazine and Palm Beach Illustrated. I am also the author of two books, both about little-known feisty women who have made their mark on history. Writing about people’s lives is, quite simply, a joy of mine, and an honor I don’t take lightly.
I wrote
Overnight Code: The Life of Raye Montague, the Woman Who Revolutionized Naval Engineering
Ever since 1962, we’ve been captivated by John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, where he became the first person to orbit Earth, and, after that, a hero for his feat. Hidden Figures shines a long-overdue light on the Black female mathematicians who not only made Glenn’s journey possible, but fueled successive American achievements in space. With a history that spans from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, the book traces the stories – and struggles -- of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, all of whom made possible some of NASA’s greatest triumphs, changing their lives and their country’s future along the way.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Golden Globe-winner Taraji P. Henson and Academy Award-winners Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA's African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America's space program-and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now. Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American…
Henrietta Lacks was a Black tobacco farmer who got an aggressive form of cervical cancer. After a doctor at Johns Hopkins took a sample of her tumor, he quietly sent it down the hall to some scientists who had been trying to grow tissues in culture with little success. Lacks died, but her cells – which became known as HeLa – lived on, and became instrumental in the development of a polio vaccine, and several other scientific landmarks such as cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization. Skloot’s story is a wonderful passion project, and a quest to figure out who Lacks was in her time. In so doing, Skloot illustrates the life behind those famous cells.
With an introduction by author of The Tidal Zone, Sarah Moss
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .
Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world for ever. Balancing the beauty and drama…
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation.
I’ve long been a fan of Denise Kiernan’s work, which is as scrupulously researched as it is beautifully written. The Girls of Atomic City is about Oak Ridge, Tennessee during World War II, and how women became a central force in building community in this town that didn’t exist before the war, and among people who moved here and many times didn’t know what a crucial, but secret, project they were working on. The town may not have been on a map, but it would soon be after the uranium unknowingly mined there by female calutron operators wound up being used in the Manhattan Project’s effort to develop nuclear weaponry. Kiernan provides a fascinating look at this moment in time, proving that all Americans were involved in the country’s ultimate victory.
The New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback—an incredible true story of the top-secret World War II town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the young women brought there unknowingly to help build the atomic bomb.
“The best kind of nonfiction: marvelously reported, fluidly written, and a remarkable story...As meticulous and brilliant as it is compulsively readable.” —Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, and consumed more electricity than New York City, yet it was shrouded in such secrecy that it did not…
Anytime we can shine a light on a hidden corner of history, it expands our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of accomplishing. In Code Girls, Liza Mundy tells the riveting story of the young American women who were recruited to crack codes for the U.S. Army and Navy during World War II. Their work saved countless lives, gave the U.S. an advantage in the Pacific in the Battle of Midway, and caught the Germans flat-footed during the Normandy landings. Like Kiernan, Mundy is a great researcher, and she was able to interview the remaining codebreakers who were a part of this story, but compelled to keep mum on the crucial part they played in the war until only recently.
An expert on East European politics and economics analyzes and evaluates Western policies toward the new East European democracies as they struggle to build stable political orders and functioning market economies. He argues that the West must give higher priority to assisting the region and reorient its strategies so as to emphasize the political and administrative dimensions of economic reconstruction. He reviews the economic legacy of past Western policies and of Eastern Europe's previous dependency on the Soviet Union, and then examines in detail the changing East-West trade patterns, the prospect for Western investment and technology transfer, the questions of…
Fall 2028. Mickey Cooper, an elderly homeless man, receives an incredible proposition from a rogue pharmaceutical company: “Be our secret guinea pig for our new drug, and we’ll pay you life-changing money, which you’ll be able to enjoy because if (cough) when the treatment works, two months from now your…
Janice Nimura dips into one of her first interests – medicine – to tell a novelistic story about Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, two groundbreaking sisters from the nineteenth century who became doctors, thus expanding women’s sense of what they could accomplish in the world. Their road was not an easy one. Men bristled at the thought of having to endure a med school class with a woman, or of possibly losing female patients to a female doctor. But through grit and determination, these siblings were able to overcome those obstacles and open the first hospital staffed entirely with women. It’s a wonderful, well-researched read, and a reference point to how far women have come in the medical profession.
Elizabeth Blackwell believed from an early age that she was destined for a mission beyond the scope of "ordinary" womanhood. Though the world at first recoiled at the notion of a woman studying medicine, her intelligence and intensity ultimately won her the acceptance of the male medical establishment. In 1849, she became the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician.
Exploring the sisters' allies, enemies, and enduring partnership, Janice P. Nimura presents a story of trial and triumph. Together,…
The book tells the story of Raye Montague, an ambitious little girl from segregated Little Rock who spent a lifetime educating herself, both inside and outside of the classroom so that she could become the person and professional she aspired to be. Where some saw roadblocks, Montague only saw hurdles that needed to be overcome. Her mindset helped her become the first person to draft a Naval ship design by computer, using a program she worked late nights to debug. She did this as a single mother during the height of the Cold War, all the while imbuing her son with the hard-won wisdom she had accumulated throughout the years.
Equal parts coming-of-age tale, civil rights history, and reflection on the power of education, Overnight Code is a tale about the persistence and perseverance required to forge the life of your dreams when the odds against you seem insurmountable and shows how one woman refused to let other people's prejudices stand in the way of her success.
At the age of forty-nine, Laurie Woodford rents out her house, packs her belongings into two suitcases, and leaves her life in upstate New York to relocate to Seoul, South Korea. What begins as an opportunity to teach college English in Asia evolves into a nomadic adventure.
Meet Lev Gleason, a real-life comics superhero! Gleason was a titan among Golden Age comics publishers who fought back against the censorship campaigns and paranoia of the Red Scare. After dropping out of Harvard to fight in World War I in France, Gleason moved to New York City and eventually…
