"Lab Girl," Hope Jahren, 2016

This humorous, heartfelt memoir alternates between episodes and events in the author’s life and short vignettes that illuminate amazing things about our world’s plant life.

Hope Jahren is a geobiologist.  In addition to numerous other awards, he has won three Fulbrights.  As of this writing, she is a tenured professor at University of Hawaii, where she built the Stable Isotope Geobiology Laboratories.  If that seems like an esoteric field (my spell checker flagged both “geobiology” and “geobiologist”) please don’t be put off. 

Jahren’s writing style is more than accessible; it’s appealing and engaging.  And her passion for her area of research comes through loud and clear. Jahren is a risk-taker.  She has a wry, go-for-it attitude that I found very appealing (and, at times, eyebrow raising).  Her work ethic is nothing short of astounding, and her research results are widely respected in her field.  She’s also a fantastic writer with a great sense of humor.  

Through brilliance, hard work, and determination, she climbed from a small, poor factory town in rural Minnesota into the highest echelons of academia (PhD at UC Berkley, tenured professorship at Johns Hopkins prior to her position at U of Hawaii).  She won scholarships and worked her way through undergraduate studies.  And she did it while struggling with (what seemed severe to me) bipolar disorder. On top of her professional achievements, Hope Jahren comes across as a very human character — what we’d call a “good person.”  She has a loving family life.  She inspires (and displays) loyalty to her friends had her staff. 

She’s more than worth reading about; I think you’ll be glad you had the opportunity to meet her through the pages of her memoir.