She earned an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 1998. Since then she has published three books: The Scalpel and the Butterfly: The War Between Animal Research and Animal Protection (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000); The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism and Transgender Rights (Pantheon, 2005) and Roots of Steel: Boom and Bust in an American Mill Town (Pantheon, 2010).