Lab Girl - Hardcover

[Lab Girl] does for botany what Oliver Sacks's essays did for neurology (Michiko Kakutani New York Times)

Some people are great writers, while other people live lives of adventure and importance. Almost no one does both. Hope Jahren does both. She makes me wish I'd been a scientist (Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto (winner of the Orange Prize))

Jahren's journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth . . . Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres (Kirkus)

Darkly humorous, emotionally raw and exquisitely crafted (Publishers Weekly)

This title should be required reading for all budding scientists, especially young women. However being a scientist is not essential in order to savor Jahren's stories and reflections on living (Library Journal)

Deeply affecting . . . A belletrist in the mold of Oliver Sacks, [Jahren] is terrific at showing just how science is done . . . Jahren's writing is precise, as befits a scientist who also love words. She's an acute observer, prickly, and funny as hell . . . A totally original work, both fierce and uplifting (Elle (US))

Jahren's singular gift is her ability to convey the everyday wonder of her work: exploring the strange, beautiful universe of living things that endure and evolve and bloom all around us, if we bother to look (Entertainment Weekly)

The Jane Goodall of botany . . . I am not sure which is more extraordinary, the plants or the woman who studies them. If the next generation of scientists have role models like Jahren, then the world of science will be better off indeed (Science)

this book is delightfully, wickedly funny. I was constantly surprised by the literary tricks this first-time memoirist manages to pull off. With Lab Girl, Jahren has taken the form of the memoir and done something remarkable with it. She's made the experience of reading the book mimic her own lived experience in a way that few writers are capable of. It's a powerful and disarming way to tell a story, and I admire the craft behind it. Mostly, though, I love this book for its honesty, its hilarity and its brilliant sharp edges. Jahren has some serious literary chops (Washington Post)

Leaves become elegant machines, soil is the interface between the living and the dead, and seeds, well, they are transformed into the most patient and hopeful of all life forms. Jahren has such a passion for the natural world that it's hard to imagine her in any role other than her current one; a professor of geobiology at the University of Hawaii. Lab Girl is her engaging new memoir, which tells the story of her fight to establish and fund her own research laboratory. And it's been a fascinating journey (Lucie Green Observer)