Book Club

Upcoming Book Club

PAST BOOK CLUBS

4th Annual GWIS Book Club - hosted by Programming Committee

GWIS Review of Mischievous Creatures, from the Programming Committee’s August 2025 Book Club

Written by Sandra Langeslag and Rachel Cole

Edited by Brooke Long-Fox, Kendall Langsten, Sheri Peterson, and Zoe Hansen

The GWIS Programming Committee recently hosted our 5th annual Book Club, on Catherine McNeur’s Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science. This well-researched narrative introduces readers to Margaretta and Elizabeth Morris, sisters born in the 1790s in the bustling scientific community of Philadelphia. McNeur, a historian, stumbled upon the sisters in historical letters and meticulously reconstructed their lives and scientific contributions—Margaretta to entomology and Elizabeth to botany.

McNeur's research was a challenge, as the sisters' contributions were often ignored, systematically erased, and ultimately forgotten. Despite incomplete and disparate sources, she admirably weaves a compelling tale of life, gender inequality, and science in early 19th-century America.

Margaretta, the younger sister and an entomologist, pushed to be recognized for her contributions, which included major work on the Hessian wheat fly (a significant agricultural pest) and the 17-year cicadas. Elizabeth, her senior by two years, was a botanist who seemed more content to play a role in the background, which notably included characterization of plants, as well as detailed and beautiful scientific illustrations. The sisters did not have access to formal education, but they took advantage of tutors, familial connections, and robust professional networks within Philadelphia to acquire knowledge. Elizabeth and Margaretta were “amateur” scientists, which meant they conducted the work because they loved it, rather than as a means to earn money. Over the course of the 19th century, as science professionalized, the word “amateur” obtained a more negative connotation, coming to mean someone who was unskilled and unqualified, the opposite of an expert. According to this definition, the Morris sisters definitely were not amateurs -- both sisters dedicated their lives to their scientific inquiry and they made remarkable contributions to entomology and botany. Notably, Margaretta was inducted to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; she was one of the first women to achieve this honor!

The narrative also delves into their personal lives and explores how various relationships impacted their work. Elizabeth fell in love with a man who was in love with her too, but this match was frowned upon because he was 11 years younger than Elizabeth and he eventually married her younger sister Susan. Meanwhile, a few of Margaretta’s poems and letters suggested that she was romantically interested in women, which was (shockingly, in our view) not as stigmatized at the time. While the fact that neither sister married did afford them time for their work, their domestic duties later in life—caring for their aging mother and managing the household after her passing—did negatively impact their scientific productivity. Nonetheless, they sustained long scientific careers and important personal connections, many of which are explored in depth in the book (notably Asa Gray, Thomas Say, William Darlington, Charles Darwin).

The book also touches on fascinating, and at times surprising, cultural points. Our group noted that while the sisters fought for their own work, they weren't "feminists" in the modern sense and didn't always work to advance other women. Similarly, little is known of their political opinions. While they did not appear to own slaves themselves, they certainly had relatives and possibly even friends that did, which may have influenced their lack of a strong public stance during the Civil War. This silence on divisive political topics is reflected in their surviving correspondence—the primary source of McNeur's research—which focused on science and personal matters, but does leave us wondering about their take on important social and political debates of the time. 

In the last chapter of the book called Forgetting, McNeur describes the ways in which the sisters and their work have been forgotten, which makes it even more admirable that she was able to piece information together and write such a thorough book. Despite having certain privileges, such as being wealthy and white, Elizabeth and Margaretta, as women “amateur” scientists, still suffered the regrettable outcome of a nearly lost legacy. Just think how many other legacies, especially those of historically marginalized identities, have been truly lost to history.

Those of us who participated in the book club agreed - delving into the lives and scientific work of these sisters was well worth our time and effort and we think you’ll find value in it too. For more information, view this video with the author (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0QVPzubtS4), read this review in ‘Science’(

2023 Oct 27 Book Review in 'Science'.pdf), and, of course, pick up the book Mischievous creatures: the forgotten sisters who transformed early American science by Catherine McNeur.

2024 Book Club

Do you want some guidance for your next writing project? If so, check out GWIS’s 3rd annual book club! We read Scientific Papers Made Easy by Stuart West and Lindsay Turnbull . Check out this review of the book from the journal Science . We met virtually in March and April 2024 to discuss a few chapters at a time and actively practiced our writing. The good news is, the book is available online https://academic.oup.com/book/45619 ! 

2023 Book Club

In Spring 2023 we read In The Field, a novel by Rachel Pastan, based loosely on the life of Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock. Winner of the National Book Foundation's 2022 Science + Literature award, this novel follows a young woman in the 1920s who overcomes familial resistance and personal struggles to begin a life as a biologist. The novel explores what it takes to triumph in the world of competitive, and male-dominated, science, following its protagonist as she decides what she is—and is not—willing to sacrifice to succeed.

We were also lucky enough to be joined by the author in person at the 2023 GWIS National Conference in State College, PA! We had a great discussion about her process and the themes of the book. The book is widely available, at local bookstores or Indiebound, Amazon, Audible, etc, and we highly recommend it!

2022 Book Club

The Programming Committee collaborated with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to host a book club on the book Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini. We met in  August, September, and October to discuss a few chapters of this thought-provoking book at a time. Superior is “ An astute and timely examination of the re-emergence of scientific research into racial differences.” “Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science.

After the horrors of the Nazi regime in World War II, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide network of intellectual racists and segregationists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 title The Bell Curve , which purported to show differences in intelligence among races.

If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas and considered race a social construct, it was an idea that still managed to somehow survive in the way scientists thought about human variation and genetics. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, most of whom claim to be just following the data, Angela Saini shows us how, again and again, even mainstream scientists cling to the idea that race is biologically real. As our understanding of complex traits like intelligence, and the effects of environmental and cultural influences on human beings, from the molecular level on up, grows, the hope of finding simple genetic differences between “races”—to explain differing rates of disease, to explain poverty or test scores, or to justify cultural assumptions—stubbornly persists.

At a time when racialized nationalisms are a resurgent threat throughout the world, Superior is a rigorous, much-needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science—and a powerful reminder that, biologically, we are all far more alike than different.”