External links
- Gerald Jonas at The New Yorker
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Gerald Jonas is an American writer, journalist, and literary critic. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker for approximately 30 years and a science fiction book critic for The New York Times Book Review. He wrote a number of nonfiction books, and his science fiction novelette The Shaker Revival was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1970.
Jonas was born in 1935. He attended the Horace Mann School in New York and Yale University where he wrote for the Yale Daily News, graduating in 1957. He subsequently held a Henry Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship.
Jonas spent approximately three decades as a staff writer for The New Yorker, writing about science, technology, psychology, and medicine. He served as a science fiction book critic for The New York Times Book Review for approximately 30 years, reviewing more than 900 works of science fiction and related literature.
In 1977, science fiction critic John D. Berry criticised Jonas's New York Times column in the fanzine Karass. Berry considered Jonas a competent but unexceptional reviewer.
In a review of the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction published in Fantasy Commentator, A. Langley Searles identified Jonas as one of several figures he believed warranted an entry.
In a 2006 discussion of science fiction reviewing in Publishers Weekly, Jonas' science fiction column was described as a near-monthly, one-page feature of capsule reviews that had become less frequent after Sam Tanenhaus became editor of The New York Times Book Review.
His later journalism included obituaries of science fiction writers Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Ursula K. Le Guin for The New York Times.
Jonas has written six nonfiction books on subjects ranging from religion and psychology to scientific research, dance and natural history.
His first book, On Doing Good: The Quaker Experiment (1971), examined the history and principles of the Religious Society of Friends. Reviewing the book, Kirkus Reviews described it as "refreshingly objective".
His second book, Visceral Learning: Toward a Science of Self-Control (1973), concerned research into the control of physiological processes. It was reviewed by Bob Samples in The American Biology Teacher.
Jonas's Stuttering: The Disorder of Many Theories (1977) combined scientific theories about stuttering with his personal experiences. A contemporary review in Kirkus Reviews praised the book's combination of personal experience and scientific investigation. In a 2012 essay in The New York Review of Books, Francine du Plessix Gray described the work as a "splendid memoir".
His 1989 book, The Circuit Riders: Rockefeller Money and the Rise of Modern Science, examined the role of Rockefeller Foundation philanthropy in the development of scientific research. The book was reviewed in several publications, including JAMA, The New York Times Book Review, Science, the Los Angeles Times, and The Quarterly Review of Biology.
Jonas wrote Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement (1992) as a companion to an eight-part television documentary series. The book and television series were reviewed in the Dance Research Journal.
His sixth nonfiction book, The Living Earth Book of North American Trees (1993), examined the history of North American trees and their relationship with human settlement and conservation. The book was reviewed in the journal Economic Botany in 1994.
In addition to his nonfiction and journalism, Jonas has published short fiction and poetry. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic and The Paris Review.
His science fiction novelette The Shaker Revival, published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1970, was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette for that year.
Jonas also collaborated with writer Renata Adler, writing under the pseudonym Jean Marple, on the short story "The Stand-in", which appeared in the summer 1969 issue of The Paris Review.
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