ACS NEWS/BOOKS
IN A MOVE THAT reflects our increas-
ingly digital era, the American Chemical Society will soon begin publishing its first onlineonly journal. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters will start up in January 2010. Northwestern University chemistry professor George C. Schatz, who is editorin-chief of the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, B, and C, will serve in the same capacity for the new letters journal. Prashant V. Kamat, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the Univer- Schatz sity of Notre Dame, will be deputy editor. ACS is “starting JPC Letters in response to interest in the physical chemistry com-
BOOKS
continued from page 42 that thereafter, no matter where he dwelt, he could easily slip away in his mind to that former life and imagine that he had never left it. He stretched those Sierra years into a myth of eternal youth, so that in all of his subsequent writings it would seem that he had never left the mountains. For the next four decades, although embedded in civilization most of the time, in his imaginary eye he was always on a trail somewhere in the high country. So too his readers would tend to believe that he had just come down from the summits for a brief spell and would return tomorrow.” Worster ably traces the events of those next four decades of Muir’s life. Muir married, became the prosperous manager and then owner of his in-laws’ ranch near Martinez, Calif., a town in the rolling hills east of San Francisco, and raised two daughters. He continued to travel extensively around the world and wrote of his travels in magazine articles and successful books. He befriended powerful individuals, including President Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as he became increasingly active in efforts to preserve wilderness in California and elsewhere.
munity in having a letters-only journal, which provides greater visibility to papers that need rapid communication,” Schatz says. One criterion for acceptance will be urgency of publication, he explains. Schatz estimates that JPC Letters will publish accepted papers in an average of seven weeks after submission. The new peer-reviewed publication’s online-only format makes the most of Web features, such as links between the journal’s content and scientific databases, including SciFinder. ACS is also exploring additional links between material in the letters journal and other JPC journals. Offering the journal exclusively online makes sense given the behavior of today’s readers, Schatz says. “Most readers only use the online versions of existing journals,” he notes, “so in many respects
this simply conforms to an accepted publication model that already exists.” “The online format is appropriate for this type of journal, where rapid publication is essential, and faculty and students generally prefer the online format over print,” agrees Mary Ann Mahoney, head of the chemistry and chemical engineering library at the University of California, Berkeley. She adds that she is converting all of her library’s journal subscriptions to the online format, even when print is available, because of “financial and space constraints.” Mahoney notes that “librarians are facing unprecedented pressure to reduce their spending due to severe reductions in library funding. Unfortunately, in order to purchase this new journal, I would have to cancel even more journals than are already on my cancellation list,” she says. “So I am not sure at this time if subscribing is feasible,” despite the publication’s association “with a journal as prestigious as the Journal of Physical Chemistry.”—
Worster relates all of this and also captures in small vignettes the offbeat character that Muir was. He writes of one foolhardy day trip in Alaska on which Muir set out by himself with no provisions and virtually no equipment to walk across a vast, 7-mile-wide glacier. On his return trip, with daylight fading, Muir and the small dog that accompanied him encountered a 40-footwide crevasse. “Retracing their path in the waning light to find another route was no option,” Worster writes. “Eight feet down the sides of the crevasse, however, stretched a bridge of ice from wall to wall— a fragile sliver above the chasm. With his axe Muir cut steps down to the bridge and then inched his way across. More cutting of footholds brought him precariously up the other side.” The little dog dashed across behind him. Most of Muir’s admirers did not doubt his survival skills, Worster writes. “But a few saw him in a different light. ‘In spite of his having spent a large part of his life in the wilderness,’ wrote one of his good friends, the naturalist C. Hart Merriman, Muir ‘knew less about camping than almost any man I have ever camped with.’ At times he seemed foolishly indifferent to cold, discomfort, lack of sleep, or threats to life or limb. Often he set out into the
backcountry without sufficient gear or left too late in the day for common sense. … While many assumed that he was a master of survival techniques, someone always to be depended on, Merriam found him to be a negligent hiker who too often let his passion overcome his judgment.” The last years of Muir’s life were not entirely happy or rewarding. His beloved wife, Louie, died in 1905. His two daughters, although not estranged from Muir, led independent lives that for long periods of time excluded him. He struggled with his writing. The battle over the future of Hetch Hetchy took a toll on his spirits. After that battle was finally lost, Muir withdrew to the ranch near Martinez and spent the last two years of his life alone and melancholy, sorting through his wildly disorganized papers and journals, vainly attempting to complete his autobiography. He died on Christmas Eve, 1914. Muir was, before reading “A Passion for Nature,” one of my personal heroes based largely on the myth I knew of him. After reading this towering biography, I know that my admiration was not misplaced.
COURTESY OF GEORGE SCHATZ/NORTHWESTERN U
ACS LAUNCHES ONLINE PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY JOURNAL
WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
44
MAY 25, 2009
SOPHIE ROVNER
RUDY BAUM
is the editor-in-chief of C&EN.
