Writing by Topic: Science, Technology, & Environment

“100-Year-Old Frost Maps Show How Climate Change Has Shifted the Growing Season in the United States” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 28, 2016)
“Witness the Controlled Chaos of Boston Traffic, As Filmed From a Streetcar in 1906” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 12, 2016)
“Poe’s Only Bestseller as a Living Author Was This Schoolbook About Seashells” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 14, 2015)
“Lyrical Engravings of Cyclists’ Adventures During the Sport’s Earliest Days” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 28, 2015)
“Early Aviation in Italy, As Seen Through the Enraptured Lens of a Futurist Pilot” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 21, 2015)
“Beautiful Early-20th-Century Watercolors of Apple Varieties You Don’t See Much Anymore” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 5, 2015)
“A Bizarrely Complicated Late-19th-Century Flat-Earth Map” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, September 30, 2015)
“Gorgeous Plates from an Early-20th-Century German Encyclopedia of Minerals” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, September 25, 2015)
“A Delightful 1912 Children’s Book About a Wayward Rocket” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 31, 2015)
“A Depression-Era Medicinal Plant Map of the United States” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 13, 2015)
“‘U Tr?’: A Glossary of Abbreviations Used by Early-20th-Century Telegraph Operators” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 11, 2015)
“An Early-19th-Century Scientist’s Close-Up Portraits of Pollen” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 8, 2015)
“How Proponents of Forced Sterilization Convinced Everyday Californians to Support Their Cause” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 6, 2015)
“Audubon’s Animals of 19th-Century North America, Newly Available for Hi-Res Download” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 4, 2015)
“A Gorgeous Rainbow 19th-Century Geological Map of Europe” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 27, 2015)
“Punched Timecards of the Insanely Workaholic Thomas A. Edison” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 3, 2015)
“Bloody Accounts of Steamboat Disasters, Sold to Tourists on the 19th-Century Mississippi” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 20, 2015)
“A Telephone Map of the United States Shows Where You Could Call Using Ma Bell in 1910” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 16, 2015)
“Delicately Preserved Slices of Wood Illustrating a Late-19th-Century Book of American Forests” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 18, 2015)
“Beguiling 19th-Century Space Art, Made by a Self-Taught Astronomical Observer” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 21, 2015)
“Pretty Tree Maps Showing the State of American Forests in 1884” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 9, 2015)
“The Star Charts That Apollo 11 Astronauts Used to Land on the Moon” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 17, 2014)
“A Transit Map of 1906 LA, With Copious Streetcars” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 25, 2014)
“19th-Century Japanese Prints Showing the Trials of Western Inventors” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 17, 2014)
“A Physicist Eyewitness Sketches the First Atomic Test” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 16, 2014)
“A 19th-Century Panorama of the Beautiful, Reeking River Thames” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 1, 2014)
“A 1940s Government Comic Book For People Who’ve Just Had DDT Sprayed on Their Walls” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 2, 2014)
“1909 Advice for Lady Motorists, In Pictures” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 20, 2014)
“A Mournful 1876 Map Tracks the Disappearance of the American Bison” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 19, 2014)
“Two Colorful Infographic Wheels Used to Track the Apollo Missions” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 15, 2014)
“Photos Show How the American Museum of Natural History Made Its Blue Whale Swim” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 28, 2014)
“Mapping the Intensity of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 18, 2014)
“A 19th-Century Flowchart Helps You Ask Good Geographical Questions” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 17, 2014)
“Pretty Environmental Propaganda Posters from 1980s China” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 11, 2014)
“This Spreading Tree Chart Shows the Midcentury Explosion in Uses of Petroleum” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 8, 2014)
“How Guests at Late 19th-Century Luxury Hotels Ordered Up Their Sherry and Manservants” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 17, 2014)
“The First Modern Organizational Chart Is a Thing of Beauty” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 5, 2014)
“Einstein’s 1941 Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, Begging Asylum for Jewish Refugees” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 13, 2013)
“Haunting Photos Show Aftermath of 19th-Century Train Wrecks” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 23, 2013)
“A Gorgeous 1929 Map of the U.S. Given to the First Transcontinental Air Travelers” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 8, 2013)
“An Open Invitation to Seek Out the Center of the Earth” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 25, 2013)
“An Elaborate, Beautiful, Failed Vision for Central Park” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 15, 2013)
“The Government Tested a Flying Saucer in 1956. Here’s the Full Report” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 11, 2013)
“When Edison Tried to Make Single-Pour Concrete Houses Happen” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 14, 2013)
“A Teenage Emily Dickinson’s Careful Collection of Dried Flowers” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 4, 2013)
“Four WWII Posters That Taught Soldiers to Identify Chemical Weapons By Smell” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 24, 2013)
“Caught on Tape: The Hindenburg’s Fiery Demise” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 6, 2013)
“Theodore Roosevelt’s White House Bird List” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 1, 2013)
“Stitching the Solar System: Science as Needlepoint, 1811” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 20, 2013)
“Steampunk Before Steampunk Existed: Charles Dellschau’s Fantastic Airships” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 18, 2013)
“Gas Thieves and Gas Defenders in the 1973-4 Oil Crisis” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 15, 2013)
“When LBJ Drove on Water” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 6, 2013)
“Leaving Your Brain to Science? Please Fill Out This Form” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 28, 2013)
“Eyewitness Accounts of the Last Time A Heavenly Body Exploded Over Russia” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 15, 2013)
“A Midcentury Travel Guide for African-American Drivers Navigating Jim Crow” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 11, 2013)
“The World’s First Baby Monitor: Zenith’s 1937 ‘Radio Nurse'” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 7, 2013)
“Early Hackers’ Supersecret Spyware: Toy Whistles” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 1, 2013)
“The ‘Cemetery Gun’: One Defense Against Grave Robbers” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 29, 2013)
“Lost Invention: The Christmas Tree Vibrator” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 19, 2012)
“I Say ‘Space Shuttle,’ You Say ‘Space Clipper'” (November 15, 2012)
“Pink Science, 50s-Style” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 13, 2012)

Everywhere Else

“Why It Makes No Sense To Judge Groups of People By Their Histories of Invention” (Slate‘s Future Tense blog, July 20, 2016)
“Victorians’ Fears About The Ills of Modern Technology Sounded A Lot Like Ours” (Slate‘s Future Tense blog, July 1, 2016)
“Show & Tell: Rococo Microscope” (Mental Floss online, March 25, 2016)
“Show & Tell: Ford Model T Ignition Key” (Mental Floss online, March 18, 2016)
“Show & Tell: The Lamp That Saved Coal Miners’ Lives” (Mental Floss online, December 4, 2015)
“Honey, You’re Scaring the Kids” (The Appendix, July 25, 2014)
“‘Unclaimed Treasures of Science'” (Slate, July 13, 2014)
“Taking Rube Goldberg Seriously: What Fictional Inventions Say About American Ingenuity” (Slate, April 24, 2014)
“When Smartphones Attack” (review of Alena Graedon’s The Word Exchange) (Slate Book Review, April 9, 2013)
“Young and Hot: Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries” (Songbirds and Satellites, September 6, 2011)
“Deep in the Wonder Book of Knowledge” (Songbirds and Satellites, July 21, 2011)
“Cream O’ The Crop” (Songbirds and Satellites, June 1, 2011)
“Pasteur for Kids” (Songbirds and Satellites, April 4, 2011)
“Nuclear Fears, Soothed by Poop, Turtles” (Songbirds and Satellites, March 25, 2011)
“The Future Is Not Going To Be Like The Past: Mark Hertsgaard’s Hot: Living Through The Next Fifty Years On Earth” (Songbirds and Satellites, February 25, 2011)
“Shades of Science Fairs Past: Kids at the American Museum of Natural History” (Songbirds and Satellites, February 2, 2011)
“Sputnik Moment: Science as Destiny” (Songbirds and Satellites, January 27, 2011)
“Science vs. Childhood on ‘Fringe'” (Songbirds and Satellites, November 29, 2010)
“Being a Kid After the Bomb” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 29, 2010)
“Sweet Science Propaganda from They Might Be Giants” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 22, 2010)
“Archival Gleanings from the Chemical Heritage Foundation” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 14, 2010)
“Velcro’s Generation of Idiots” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 8, 2010)
“The Skinned Trilogy on the Market: Teenage Robots and ‘Humanity’s Future'” (Songbirds and Satellites, September 27, 2010)
“Envirogeddon!: Is It Time to Start Wishing For the End of the World?” (Slate, April 21, 2008)
“Not-So-Great Salt Lake: Why Have Even the Environmentalists Given Up on the Salton Sea?” (Slate, October 16, 2007)
“‘Tree So Horny’: What Happens When Sex Sells Environmentalism?” [PDF] (Bitch Magazine, Fall 2006)

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