A good book with a fair mixture of diverse science topics. Some of the areas are very interesting, however some fail to interst me. I have read many other science writings that would beat many of the topics covered in this collection, but then my views are biased by my interest in certain fields of science.
Overall a good book. Definitely worth a read.

Editor David Quammen writes that science on the one hand is getting bigger and nature "in the narrow, green sense," has apparently gotten smaller, marginalized. "The task of writers who care about one or both of these vast subjects is, among other things, to retain a relentless urge for connectedness and a rogue disregard for boundaries," he says. After all, as he points out in his introduction, "Science is a human activity."

However science and nature are viewed, the requirement for inclusion in this volume was singular: good writing. In that, the book is a success. Each of the book's 19 entries from top writers retains that connectedness in as many different ways. From Natalie Angier's "Men, Women, Sex and Darwin," to Richard Coniff's "African Wild Dogs," to Judith Hooper's "A New Germ Theory," (which explores evolution and infection), Quammen's observation that science is a subset of human culture remains evident and that science is "not so purely objective as it sometimes pretends."

Each of the entries is well worth reading. Atul Gawande's "Cancer Cluster Myth," expands one's thinking in light of preconceived notions. The final entry, Gary Taube's article on string theory lets the reader know that while physicists are on the trail of "a theory of everything," and that they feel they are on to something big, ultimately they are not sure exactly what.

All in all, the collection offers great writing on a wide array of interesting and current topics in science that will inspire readers to want more good writing about science and nature.

"David Quammen" on a cover chains the eye and impels the hand to grasp the book displaying it. That he is the editor of this anthology instead of the writer doesn't prove a disappointment. Quite the reverse. Quammen's writing skills are nearly matched by each of the essays he's selected for this collection. With topics ranging from gorillas to GUTs, we're presented with delightful reading. Every essay will compete for your attention, subtly commanding some time for further reflection, and perhaps action. Quammen's given us readings of compelling interest. Going through this series in one reading may be overwhelming. A pause for personal afterthought could follow each of these articles.

Although a series of excellent pieces, the opening choice was unfortunate. Natalie Angier's diatribe against evolutionary psychology is overblown, overstated and overfocussed. Feminist writers find natural selection a ready target in these days of "political correctness" joining religious fundamentalism in assaulting Darwin from left and right. Attacking an emerging science such as evolutionary psychology is facile. Researchers groping for answers in a field fraught with prejudices and limited information are an easy target. Castigating "evo-psychos", as she terms them, as inconsistent, ignores the problems encountered in establishing a new scientific field. Human behaviour has been the subject of study for millennia. Today, molecular genetics is revealing biological sources for many behaviours giving firmer answers than we've ever had. While she rails at "Darwinian logic", whatever that means, for allotting human male/female roles, the reader can only wonder if she's aware of the wealth of research in those roles in other primates. As a journalistic sniper instead of a researcher, Angier adds nothing to resolving these questions or even posing new ones. Having judged the science as flawed seems sufficient for her purposes.

In striking contrast to Angier's vituperation, the pearl in this collection is Ken Lamberton's very compassionate account in "The Wisdom of the Toads." Quammen's ability to bring the reader into the account has received attention from this reviewer elsewhere. Lamberton's analogue ability gives a graceful style to his description of desert toads and their erratic life. As he and his daughters watch the toads adapting to the unpredictable ways of desert realities, we are granted insight to Lamberton's own reality. While jarring, his admission detracts neither from his powers of perception nor his gently insistent power of his descriptions. His writing commands respect; his close-up view of Nature one we should all emulate. It is particularly interesting that he shares place in this collection with Angier, while inadvertently refuting her.

Several essays dealing with other animals are curtailed in geography, but unlimited in approach. From African wild dogs, we're shown the threats posed to gorillas by human wars, to humans by viruses of chimpanzee origin. An almost whimsical essay introduces us to "Lulu, Queen of the Camels." Cullen Murphy skirts the ludicrous in his narration of the first serious biological study of nature's most useful animal. While many of us think of the camel as a Saharan native, Africa was the last continent reached though natural means by this intriguing creature. Few domesticated animals escape conversion to entertainment roles and Camelus Dromedarius is no exception. The camel racing industry, although rewarding to its practitioners, is beset with unique problems.

While biological research reveals increasing diversity in the pattern of life, physicists are probing atoms for signs of uniformity. The quest for a Grand Unified Theory [GUT] has been elusive. Gary Taubes' account of a quest for a "Rosetta Stone" between Einstein's General Relativity theory and quantum mechanics provides interesting surprises. He turns what could be an arcane topic into a comprehensible picture of the forces underlying our universe.

While the Cold War era produced many works of fact and fiction designed to jar us into more responsible actions, none matches Richard Preston's "The Demon in the Freezer" for ability to frighten readers. We've taken comfort, and no little vicarious pride, in the eradication of smallpox, but Preston jars us back to reality with this account of a hidden global threat. A 1972 outbreak of smallpox in Yugoslavia launches a vivid description of the disease's ability to propagate. That it was stopped required an autocratic government using tactics North American governments would reject. Yet real threats of infection remain, and the source of a new plague may lie in your backyard. Poxviruses move easily through the animal kingdom, and have the capacity to "jump" species, mutating as it infects. Preston's description of pox mechanics isn't dinner-time reading. The pox dissolves animal tissue, particularly the gut, leaving a residue of intestinal fluids and pox viruses. Hence, "don't eat . . . "!

A supporting "further reading" list would have iced this appealing confection of essays. Quammen provides the next thing with biographical sketches of the writers plus the runners- up in the selection process. A little delving with a good search engine has already turned up a few of these, demonstrating the challenges Quammen faced in making choices. None are failures in writing. Quammen has never disappointed and has now added editing skills to his superlative writing ones. This book will entertain, shock, and inspire you. With something in it for all, it's also worth the purchase in providing new areas of interest.

Two things brought my attention to this book. 1) Edward Hoagland's introductions in well known works of Thoreau and Muir, and 2) my interest in the beautiful expanse of wildness that is British Columbia. The book might be described as "quirky," and I have to wonder whether it was an influence in the creation of the early nineties television series "Northern Exposure" (one of the few TV programs I have ever cared for). Published in 1969, it is the account of a New York* novelist become journalist in the great, wild watersheds of the Stikine and Skeena River systems, waters coursing from the Cassiar Mountains, "from sources known only from aerial photographs, some of them where nobody alive had ever been."
*By the time the footloose essayist Hoagland recorder these images in the summer of 1966, he was already quite widely traveled, and had lived briefly in Hazelton, BC in 1960.
Hoagland renders "portraits" of trappers, merchants, guides, clerics, bush pilots, prospectors, "discoverers", and of the waters and forests that are their homes. He himself often fades from the text, reemerging as a curious anomaly in a world unfamiliar and unusual. In northwest BC, a wilderness "the size of several Ohios" in which the majority of residents are caribou, moose, grizzlies, marmots, wolves, beaver, otter, and lynx, each of the perhaps 1000 human residents, whether Indian or white, might be considered an anomaly. The author gravitates to the old-timers, asking "a dabbler's questions that to me are fun."
This volume is not for every reader. It is very unlike the wilderness travel accounts of Thoreau or Muir (who investigated closely a landscape's flora and geology). Hoagland's attentions here are mostly directed to the local "characters" and to the nuances of the human history of a great wilderness: "... airplanes have made mapping easier than naming nowadays. ... The surveyors of forty years ago did a much better job because they were actually on the spot. Being men of good intentions, they were glad to incorporate Indian names on their maps when they knew them." However, "it's an exceedingly accidental process ... if no Indian accompanied the mapper, or if he wasn't unusually expressive, all the native names slipped through the sieve and were lost right then and there."
The author admits, "I'm no outdoorsman, really," but he is taken with the beauty of northern BC: "Swaying and bucking as on a life raft, we scraped over a further series of ridges and peaks. This was the highest flying we had done; we were way up with the snow so that the cabin was cold. But the sunlight washed the whole sky a milky blue. Everywhere, into the haze a hundred miles off, a crescendo of up-pointing mountains shivered and shook. A cliff fell away beneath us as we crossed the lip. ... There was no chance to watch for game; the plunging land was life enough. It was a whole earth of mountains, beyond counting or guessing at, colored stark white and rock-brown. To live is to see, and although I was sweating against my stomach, I was irradiated. These were some of the finest minutes of my life."
Unlike most books of wilderness travel, this is not a record of the author as a man in the wilderness. It is a series of portraits of the true men and women (mostly men) of the wilderness. At Atlin Lake, for example, we meet three vigorous men in their nineties, one who came to the country during the Rush of 1899. We meet others who had first come to these mountains and rivers in the 1890's. In Hoagland's Journal from British Columbia, the century -- now centuries -- before, seem not so distant.

I just read this account of the author's three month exploration of northwestern B.C. in 1966 after it was recommended as one of the best 25 books of the last 25 years by the magazine Outdoor Canada. Edward Hoagland is a real find for me. I had never heard of him before, but his description by John Updike as "America's best living essayist" is close to the mark. His descriptions of the country and the people go far to preserve the early days of this wild and untamed corner of Canada. I love to read travelogues, and this one rates right up there with the best of them.

I picked up a copy of this book in a used book store recently. I initially thought it was going to be a dry, scholarly tome that would put me to sleep in between interesting parts. I was wrong.

The book was fascinating. Crompton's dry British wit and side stories were very amusing. His descriptions of the spider behaviors brought them to life almost like they were human. However he never went overboard to where he ascribed human emotions or thoughts to them.

It's easy to find books that cover the topic in greater technical detail but I doubt if you could find a more entertaining book that manages to cover a great deal of information about spiders and their habits.

I fully intend to track down copies of Crompton's other books on Bees and Wasps.

This book describes how an invasive alga was released into the Mediterranean and details the political story of why it was allowed to spread. The alga, caulerpa taxiflora, was first discovered growing under the windows of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco in 1989. When Meinesz saw the alga, he approached the director of the museum and was told that the alga, being tropical in nature, would never survive the winter. However, it did indeed survive the winter, flourished, and over the next few years spread beyond Monaco to the coast of France, Spain, and as far away as Croatia.

Although one section of the appendix describes the biology of the alga, the vast majority of the book is devoted to documenting the various political battles that the author fought to try to convince the authorities to take action against the spread of the alga. Some of the behind-the-scenes tales of how the academic publishing establishment works were quite illuminating. After reading this book, I will also be rather skeptical when I come across scientific articles in the popular press, especially newspapers, since Meinesz points out how often reporters got the details wrong or pulled other facts out of context. When I picked up this book, I was more interested in learning the scientific and environmental implications of an invasive species, but that's not the focus of this book.

This book should wake up anyone who still believes that clear scientific truth will automatically change the way that governments make decisions. Consider it the ocean-side equivalent of Halberstam's classic "The Best and the Brightest." and an excellent complement to Barbara Tuchman's "The March of Folly". Dr. Meinesz was among the few and leading French scientific voices who saw and, what's more, cared about the epidemic spread of a tropical green algae along the world's most expensive coastline - the Riviera. He shows how the famous Oceanographic Museum at Monaco not only caused the problem with its careless handling of an exotic species but how the Director's disinformation cover-up campaign spread faster than the noxious seaweed itself. And it did not help that this environmental mayhem was started under the watch of famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau (the preceding museum director). One of the most striking things one learns is how diverse and complex -- and ultimately useless -- the French bureaucracy is, that is supposed to be protecting their coastlines and marine environments. A scary story that might have done better with a more carefully chosen title!

The author does not try to convince the reader of the ecological threat that the algae imposes. That is now obviouse. He recounts the politics involved with this ecological crisis. There is a historical record of a failure in a system composed of government officials and agencies, and reputable scientific circles. First, the governmental agencies failed to recognize the problem. The "wait and see" attitude that is described shows a certain apathy or indolence of bureaucratic agencies. There is a failure in the practic of science to report ideas with the proper rigor. Both the author and his opponants make mistakes that exacerbate a pseudo-scientific debate, causing confusion in the news media. The unfortunate result is a crisis spiraling out of controll. In the last section "the lessons of Caulerpa" he explains his opinions on why the failure in the system occured. I don't necessarily agree with his views, but it is an interesting critique of the current politics of biological science.