QUOTE : Before I left them, I'd slipped a copy of her book in my bag. I read it as soon as I got back, without stopping. And then again the next day. It was the least academic ethnography I'd ever read, long on description and sweeping conclusions, shoty on methodical analysis. Haddon, in a recent letter, had mocked the success of The Children of Kirakira in America, and joked that we should all bring a lady novelist along on our field trips. And yet she wrote with an urgency most of us felt but did not have the courage to reveal, because we were too beholden to the traditions of the old sciences. For so long I'd felt that what I'd been trained to do in academic writing was to press my nose to the ground, and here was Nell Stone with her head raised and swiveling in all directions. It was exhilarating and infuriating and I needed to see her again.