Lost in Curiosity: Field Notes from Scientists' Adventures Into the Unknown

The real story of science isn't a triumphant breakthrough. It's messy, mysterious, and deeply human.

In Lost in Curiosity, award-winning journalist Roberta Kwok pulls back the curtain on what scientific discovery actually looks like... Not a Eureka moment, but a fraught, often chaotic pursuit of truth.

Chronicling researchers' struggles and hopes in the field and lab, Kwok documents it all: fending off relentless snowfall on a remote Greenland glacier, desperately searching for an elusive frog in the rainforests of Borneo, and scrambling to capture fleeting signals of a faraway moon outside our solar system. These are the untold stories of devoted young scientists and restless minds who are chasing nature's riddles, without knowing what they'll uncover.

Through vivid reporting and moments of unexpected emotion, Kwok reveals the inner lives of researchers who care profoundly about understanding our world and saving what's left of it. From enigmatic fossils and mind-bending physics to the puzzling behavior of wild animals, Lost in Curiosity is a journey through the questions that keep scientists up at night--and the sometimes strange, always illuminating paths they take to answer them.

Roberta Kwok is a science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, NewYorker.com, Nature, New Scientist, Audubon, and other publications. She has received a fellowship from the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union. Before becoming a journalist, Kwok worked in a genetics lab at Stanford University. She lives in the Seattle area and is originally from Canada.