Natural History Books for Summer Reading: 2010
(This
1004th Buffalo Sunday News column was
first published on June 20, 2010.)
Too many books; too little time. Here are some of this
year's excellent crop of natural history books for summer reading:
I
begin with a children's book that has lessons for us all. It is Elin Kelsey's Not
your Typical Book about the Environment (Owlkids).
Silly and frantic indeed, yet this 64-page book contains a mine of information
presented in novel fashion. I recommend it for everyone.
Paul
Collier's The Plundered Planet
(Oxford) should not only be read by every one of us but also force-fed to every
politician. His central point: "Environmentalists and economists have been
cat and dog. Environmentalists see economists as the mercenaries of a culture
of greed, the cheerleaders of an affluence that is unsustainable. Economists
see environmentalists as romantic reactionaries, wanting us to apply the brakes
to an economic engine that is at last reducing global poverty. The argument of
this book is that environmentalists and economists need each other, because
they are on the same side in a war that is being lost."
Valerie
Chansigaud's All
about Birds (Princeton) is, as its subtitle indicates, a short illustrated
history of ornithology. Although Audubon, Fuertes and Peterson make it, the
book is highly Eurocentric. Amadon, Mayr, Whetmore, Sibley, Ahlquist and Monroe together rate a single paragraph and
even there, Mayr is listed as a German-born American.
Despite this shortcoming, this is a useful book that earns a place in birders'
libraries.
The
best adventure stories appear in The
Eagle Watchers edited by Ruth Tingay and Todd Katzner (Cornell). Climbing to the nests of these large
raptors around the world is only part of these narratives. Equally exciting are
the researchers' encounters with grizzly bears, secret police and even the
Khmer Rouge.
I have always been intrigued by those
extreme time-lapse films of the Earth's geological history, with continents forming from a single Pangea and later the island India crashing into Asia to
force up the world's highest peaks in the Himalayas. For that reason I am enjoying
reading Dorrik Stow's Vanished Ocean: How Tethys Reshaped the World (Oxford) that
explains the dynamics of that rearrangement of continents. It is hard to
believe that Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift was still being
rejected during my lifetime. Geological thinking has come a long ways in a
brief time.
Another
serious book that I am finding well worth the effort is Vlatko
Vedral's Decoding
Reality (Oxford) about information theory. Yes, these are serious ideas but
no one could present them in a more entertaining fashion. I agree with the New
Scientist's evaluation of this book as "a ripping good read."
For
complete relaxation, however, and a pocket-sized book you can take to the
beach, consider Pete Dunne's Bayshore Summer (Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt). You can share Dunne's appreciation for the New Jersey
tidelands.
And
now to a remarkable series of field guides:
Best
of a fine lot is the encyclopedic Tracks
& Signs of Insects and other Invertebrates by Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney (Stackpole). Every time I pick up this book I find myself
lost in its contents. Here you find everything from egg cases and cocoons to
burrows and mounds, from leaf mines and galls to "footprints" in
sand, from wasp nests to termite tubes, from evidence of mangled leaves to
insect poop. This book belongs in every natural history library.
Equally
useful for the a narrower range of plants is Peter del Tredici's
Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast
(Cornell Comstock), a guide to the plants we know - but don't necessarily love
- as weeds.
Every
year field birding gets more technical. Most of us know birds, and especially
the males, in the bright colors they sport as they head north each spring. That
there is much more to the story is evident in Steve Howell's Molt in North American Birds (Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt).
The
Peterson series continues with a newly edited Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt). I recommend this book as the best guide for beginners and
intermediate birders and advanced birders are well served by it as well.
Despite this, I find this book's hundred pages of duplicate maps a serious
irritant. Field guides are supposed to be compact.