Book Description
A fresh look at Darwin's most radical idea, and the mysteriously slow process by which he revealed it.
Evolution, during the early nineteenth century, was an idea in the air. Other thinkers had suggested it, but no one had proposed a cogent explanation for how evolution occurs. Then, in September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that "natural selection" among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species. The human drama and scientific basis of Darwin's twenty-one-year delay constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that elucidates the character of a cautious naturalist who initiated an intellectual revolution.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin is a book for everyone who has ever wondered about who this man was and what he said. Drawing from Darwin's secret "transmutation" notebooks and his personal letters, David Quammen has sketched a vivid life portrait of the man whose work never ceases to be controversial.
Customer Reviews:
Beware the audio book verson.......2007-09-13
Be forewarned: the narrator of the audio book version is an unfortunate cross between J. Peterman from Seinfeld, Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes, and the narrator of old elementary school film strips. The content is very good (as described in other reviews posted here) but you should have a friendly warning about the audio version. The narrator will put you to sleep.
Short, Fast, and Informative.......2007-04-25
"The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" by David Quammen is a concise, fun, and fast read. If you want to learn the bullet points about Charles Darwin's life and the formative people, events, and intellectual and social climate that surrounded Darwin's publication of the On the Origin of Species, then this book is for you. Quammen does not spend too much time on any one point, but maintains a theme that Darwin was not lazy in publishing his famous book many years after his voyage but reluctant, wanting to make sure his ideas were sound and well evidenced.
An outline of Darwin's life can be found in many places, even Wikipedia, but what makes Quammen's book particularly helpful is the sections he devotes to writing about Darwin's contemporaries and their contributions to natural history and Darwin's work. Quammen writes about Charles Lyell and his advocacy of the idea of uniformitarianism, the idea that was formed by slow-moving processes, which opposed the idea of catastrophism, the idea that was consistent with Christian theology of the times and based on the belief that certain catastrophes shaped the geologic features of the earth as it is today. Quammen also writes about John-Baptiste Lamarck and his idea of the inheritance of acquired traits, an idea that has been found to be incorrect, but one that Darwin uses in his famous book. These sections in "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" give historical and scientific context to Darwin's work and allow the reader to more completely appreciate the specific and significant contribution that Darwin made in advocating the idea of evolution by natural selection.
Another important aspect of Quammen's book was how Quammen made it a point to show the evolution of Darwin's famous publication from its infancy, where he first wrote his ideas in journals titled Journal A, Journal B, Journal C, and so on to his obsession with writing a tome that covered every possible argument and objection to his idea with as much evidence as possible to his final rushed publishing of On the Origin of Species due to the threat of Alfred Russel Wallace nearly publishing the same theory before Darwin himself.
This book definitely gives the reader a good picture of Darwin and the social and scientific climate in which he lived. I came away from the book having what I felt was a basic yet complete understanding of Darwin's life.
On the Evolution of Darwin.......2007-04-25
I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a quick read on the life and works of Charles Darwin. David Quammen beautifully integrates excerpts from primary sources into this biography, really making the work a book, and not just a really long research paper. The sections are smartly headed and the writing style is engaging and makes the biography an easy and interesting read.
The biography itself provides an intimate portrait of Charles Darwin the son, husband, father, friend, etc., which also reveals much about his tendencies as a scientist. The author gives a good overview of all the theories regarding speciation that had already been discussed throughout the intellectual community before Darwin came up with his idea on the "transmutation" of species. It was particularly interesting when trying to imagine a society before the theory of evolution. My struggles to do so only further demonstrate how much Darwin has impacted our modern thinking. Quammen's summary on the ideas and examples provided in "The Origin of Species" may be interesting to many who do not wish to read the 500 pages or so of the actual book, but in my opinion, it was unnecessarily dry and seemed out of place in an otherwise interesting and engaging work.
However, one point that I particularly enjoyed was the fact that Quammen explored the evolution of Darwin's theory of evolution: from the beginnings of its fabrication in "notebook B" to its revealing to the public in the first edition of "Origins" to subsequent subtle changes in order to rectify problems brought up by opponents and finally to its modern applications in the field of molecular biology. The author definitely provided a persuading argument on the "fitness" of Darwin's great idea.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen.......2007-03-31
This book is by far one of the best I have read on Darwin. David Quammen puts you inside the period in Enland as well as providing a great understanding of Darwins personal thinking and self doubt as he formulated his theories on evolution. This is an excellent book for anyone but especially a non-scientist such as myself.
Larry Wilkinson
Howell, Michigan
Quammen on Darwin.......2007-03-12
This work focuses on the post Beagle period of Darwins life, and although I would have liked more included on Wallace, Lyell,and Huxley, Darwin was the deserving subject.
David Quammen is an excellent writer on science and scientists, and if you are starting with this work, you should check out his other works.
Book Description
The most famous work by the Australian novelist and poet, For the Term of His Natural Life is a powerful tale of an Australian penal settlement, which originally appeared in serial form in a Melbourne paper.
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So far the appearance of the vessel differed in nowise from that of an ordinary transport. But in the waist a curious sight presented itself. It was as though one had built a cattle-pen there. At the foot of the foremast, and at the quarter-deck, a strong barricade, loop-holed and furnished with doors for ingress and egress, ran across the deck from bulwark to bulwark.
Customer Reviews:
An Australian Classic.......2006-08-30
For the term of his Natural Life is an Australian classic, a tale of inhumanity and suffering during Australia's early colonial history.
The more I read this, the more I see in it the emerging attitudes that play a very large part of Australian culture today. To start with, there is no significant reference to the Aboriginal people, the actual owners of the land, they seem to barely exist at all and when they do they are dismissed.
The characteristic disrespect for authority is here of course, for there's no attempt to soften the truth of the degradation and cruelty, it's a living, breathing image of the times. It broke my heart as a teenager for the prisons that Clarke describes in Tasmania and Norfolk Island are the prisons where my 12 year old great grandfather was cruelly tormented.
But Clarke doesn't attempt to persuade us with pity. Nor are we persuaded to to censure. Clarke merely portrays the atmosphere and attitudes of the period.
Please don't confuse the book with the fim starring Anthony Perkins. The only similarity is the title.
In the film, the working class Rufus Dawes becomes young aristocrat Richard Devine. The plot dives to the depths as the dashing young gentleman Devine is wrongly accused of murder and shipped off to the penal colony to suffer under the harsh prison conditions where he resolves to escape and restore his good name. Only the help of Sylvia, the prison Commandant's daughter, can save him. A nice, trite sample of maudlin mush.
Marcus Clarke would be spinning in his grave if he knew of this travesty
A MUST READ FOR VISITORS TO TASMANIA.......2003-02-21
This book is a novel that reads like history. It offers interesting insights of the history of Tasmania. This book is an Australian classic. Highly recommended.
An insight into Ausralia's early penal system.......2001-08-16
Clark's writings in this book give you an insight into penal life in Australia's early history. His writing style gives you an empathy with the characters,and his descriptons of the Port Arthur site make you feel as if you are there. Some time later I visited Port Arthur, and Clark's writings came back. When you have been there you realise how good the book is.
A truly inspirational book........1999-09-17
I am planning a trip to Tasmania and it was recommended that I read Clarke's epic tale. It is one of inspiration and great character and describes life, the conditions and environment in which those men and women suffered. I am particularly looking forward to visiting Sarah Island and Port Arthur so I can get a taste of what those people (both innocent and guilty) had to endure. Definately recommended reading for those planning a holiday to Tassie!
Compelling story of tragic period in history.......1997-06-21
I read this book while in and returning from Tasmania. I found it to be a much better insight into the history and mentality of Australia than any tour/travel planner I read. It has survived the test of time because it is so accurate in its portrayal of the penal transportation system. It also serves to show that the recent tragedy at Port Arthur Tasmania is minor and almost insignificant if it is compared to what the "civilized" british empire performed at the same location
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In 1953 renowned American ornithologist and painter Roger Tory Peterson and British seabird specialist James Fisher undertook a whirlwind, 100-day tour of America's great wildlife refuges and corridors. This wonderful book recounts that sometimes madcap voyage, which took them to familiar places such as Long Island and the Smoky Mountains, but also to less traveled venues such as Big Bend and the then-remote Everglades. Along the way the authors document such things as the courting behavior of dragonflies and the arrival of the first cattle egrets in North America. This is a classic of nature writing and a great pleasure to read.
Book Description
On an April day in 1953, renowned American naturalist, author, and illustrator Roger Tory Peterson met his British friend James Fisher, an authority on seabirds, in Newfoundland. There they began a strenuous and thrilling hundred-day field trip around the edge of the continent. Part travelogue, part epic natural adventure, their richly illustrated record is "the superlatively good product of ideal circumstances" (Chicago Sunday Tribune).
Customer Reviews:
Gratitude and optimism for wild America........2006-07-10
When I found this book at Third Place Books in Seattle in the summer of 2002, I had never heard of it, but, from the authors' reputation as naturalists and ornithologists, it looked like a good read. I discovered the book at the end of my camping journey to three national parks in Washington state and a one-week cruise to Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park and the main points of interest in beautiful southeastern Alaska. My jaunt to the natural areas of the Pacific Northwest and the Alexander Archipelago would be lame compared to the 20,000+ miles that Roger Peterson and James Fisher logged in on their comprehensive foray to "Wild America".
The authors embarked on their journey following the coast of the US with intermittent forays to the interior and a brief excursion to Mexico a year before the publication of the molecular structure of DNA as double helix. Rapid developments in our understanding of the molecular basis of life ushered in the molecular era of biology, which has ultimately led to the restructuring and overhauling of the way we teach biology and the way we explain, understand, and appreciate the complexities of life. Just when most students in biology these days are honed to the molecular and cellular basis of life--a reductionist view, so to speak--and less to the holistic and more traditional view of biology, what a refreshing change to learn from and be engrossed by the keen observations of two naturalists on the road and be taken back to an era when biology as natural history was respected as an academic field and an engaging pastime as well!
There are tons of information on birds in this book, but the authors also pay attention to mammals and other fauna, and then there is the flora (peculiar landmark plant species of the West stand out, like the agave, saguaro, ocotillo, Joshua Tree, Monterey cypress, coastal redwood, sequoia, sugar pine, lodgepole pine, and Douglas fir). There are also accounts of long-term inhabitants and indigenous peoples, and their culture and history. The illustrations are superb. The most remarkable part of the book, however, are the wholehearted commentaries on the purpose and values of our national parks and monuments. Since 1953, many of the national monuments they visited are now national parks. Roads have been paved, widened, and increased, and so have concessions and amenities, converting park villages into virtual towns and confronting many visitors with the same urban and suburban evils (traffic, congestion, to name a few) from which they try to escape by visiting national park areas. You can try hard to hope that James Fisher criticizes the way national parks are run, but you don't find that in the book. Notwithstanding this, it is amusing that many facts about the national monuments and parks still apply today and that these places can make the same impressions today, mainly because we try hard to keep these natural treasures intact for future generations. The British naturalist's gratitude to Americans for the designation and preservation of national parks and optimism for their stewardship is a sharp contrast to Edward Abbey's cynical attitude towards the National Park Service and disdain for tourists.
The book concludes with a powerful statement that speaks of Fisher's gratitude to Americans and optimism for "Wild America": "And this is what I have tried to do--to tell of Wild America, and say that never have I seen such wonders or met landlords so worthy of their land. They have had, and still have, the power to ravage it; and instead have made it a garden". Certainly the power of his statement would not have been lost on people who deeply appreciate natural America and care to preserve our astounding natural heritage.
One of the Most Influential Books of the Century.......2003-02-08
The world of e-reviewing is a tolerant world, and exaggerations have an easy home there. But measured by the role it has played in people's lives, there is little hyperbole in identifying Peterson and Fisher's "Wild America," precisely fifty years old this year, as among the most important books produced in the twentieth century. In the 1950s and 1960s, the book found its way into school libraries all over America, where it has been read with awe and envy by the last three generations of would-be naturalists--read so intensively that many of us, decades later, can quote great passages by heart.
The book is a collaborative account of the biggest 'big year' up to that point ever undertaken in North America; the trip was planned by none other than Roger Tory Peterson, then (and still today, perhaps) the continent's best-known birder, and was intended as an introduction to America's natural history for James Fisher, an equally prominent British naturalist who had never visited this side of the Atlantic. "Wild America" was the result: a priceless document of the continent's natural riches seen through the eyes, the words and the illustrations of two gifted and interesting observers.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Peterson and Fisher's trip, and the book is certain to be celebrated over and over in the press. Those who have not read it should by all means visit their library to borrow a well-worn copy; and those who have should take it in hand again, and be reminded of how important this text was in the birth of North America's birding culture as we know it today.
Wonderful.......2000-12-20
Let me just quote my favorite line from the book. It is when James Fisher, an Englishman, first sees the Grand Canyon:
"I went down there a few yards. The world ended; began again eight miles away. Between the ends of the world was a chasm."
Now I have never seen the Grand Canyon, but reading about it with such wonder through Mr. Fisher's eyes was extraordinary. It brought tears to my eyes. It goes to show how truly amazing and beautiful America is. I highly recommend this book, not just for the birds these two men see, but also for all the wonderful sights they come encounter. It made me want to retrace their route.
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DRAWN FROM NATURE: The Botanical Art of Joseph Prestele and His Sons
Charles Van Ravenswaay
Manufacturer: Smithsonian
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ASIN: 0874749387 |
Book Description
Years ago, David Freedberg stumbled across a group of drawings by the little-known Academy of Linceans, a seventeenth-century Italian group that took as its task nothing less than the pictorial documentation of all of nature. Moving across Europe, he encountered thousands of such drawings—of fossils, the species of the New World, or the heavenly bodies studied by the group's most famous member, Galileo Galilei. Profusely illustrated and engagingly written, this book reveals this crucial moment in the development of natural history.
Customer Reviews:
Gorgeous book.......2002-12-20
This book, by David Freedberg, tells the fascinating story of Freedberg's discovery, on a tip from the notorious spy and brilliant art historian Anthony Blunt, of a group of amazing antique drawings stashed away in an obscure cupboard in Windsor Castle. The images, gracefully drawn and beautifully colored, depicted a bizarre range of flora and fauna: deformed lemons with claw-like legs, flamingoes, dramatic portraits of badger faces, strange plants...
The discovery marked the beginning of a great adventure told in the book--of Freedberg's search for and discovery of the source of the drawings: a 17th-century gang of noblemen and eccentrics based largely in Rome who took as their mission nothing less than the discovery, analysis, and visual record of all natural knowledge. They called themselves the Accademia Lincea, or Academy of Lynxes. This was the age of Galileo, who was in fact a member, and whose work the Lincea edited and published. With the aid of microscopes, telescopes, and other instruments, the Lincea and their peers began to develop a picture of the natural world in all its details that profoundly challenged traditional views of Heaven and Earth, supported by the Roman Catholic Church.
Freedberg's manner is at once learned and accessible. He tells a gripping story of a group of fascinating characters, some brilliant, some insane, and their grand projects, including a decidedly obsessive interest in bees. Lavishly illustrated in color and black-and-white, this is surely one of the most attractive, novel, and important works of history this year.
A MUST-HAVE FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN SCIENCE AND ITS HISTORY.......2002-12-19
Rich in breathtakingly beautiful illustrations (83 color plates, 89 halftones) "The Eye of the Lynx" is a must-have for those with a penchant for science and its history.
We are told that author Freedberg, an art history professor and director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, once happened upon a neglected cupboard in Windsor Castle holding hundreds of intricately precise drawings of plants and animals dating from the Old and New Worlds. He was acting on the word of Anthony Blount, an art historian and British spy. These drawings had been hidden and forgotten since the days of King George III.
Later, after coming across countless more throughout Europe, Freedberg discovered their provenance - a small 17th century scientific group. Based in Italy it was called the Academy of Linceans for Lynx-eyed.
This optimistic organization set as their goal the representation of all nature in pictures. The mighty task of the Linceans is recounted for the first time in English in this wondrous book. They, unlike their predecessors, focused on internal structures rather than external appearances.
For its time, one of the most outre ideas proposed by the Linceans was the microscope. They simply turned Galileo's telescope around and exposed a once invisible world.
Freedberg has rendered an enormous service in bringing to light this integral portion of the development of visuals as related to natural history.
- Gail Cooke
Average customer rating:
- A Resolution for 2001
- A fascinating biography, erudite yet highly readable
- Engrossing and Engaging
- Kudos for The Emperor of Nature by Patricia Tyson Stroud
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The Emperor of Nature: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte and His World
Patricia Tyson Stroud
Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0812235460 |
Book Description
In the early years of the Republic, America was a land filled with uncharted flora and fauna, a treasure-trove for every naturalist in the world. One such naturalist was Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Musignano and Canino, nephew of the Emperor Napoleon. Called the father of American descriptive ornithology, Charles-Lucien was the author of the monumental American Ornithology: or, The Natural History of Birds Inhabiting the United States not given by Wilson.
Born in 1803 to Lucien, a younger brother of Napoleon, Charles spent his early childhood in Rome, where his father, an ardent republican and opponent of the Empire, had sought papal protection. In 1810, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, the family left Italy with the intent of emigrating to the United States; instead, they were apprehended by the British off Sardinia and taken to England, where for four years they lived publicly as celebrated captives. Charles was privately tutored, learning English and concentrating on his favorite subject, natural history.
With his wife--and first cousin--Zenaide, Charles joined his uncle Joseph in exile in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1822. Stroud recreates the lives of these not quite Americanized Bonapartes in splendid and startling detail. Point Breeze, Joseph's estate, encompassed 1700 acres dotted with formal French gardens and a large artificial lake stocked with imported European swans. Here Charles hunted and studied birds, and encountered such purely American animals as the skunk and the rattlesnake. It was here, too, that American Ornithology took shape, and that he first collaborated with the still-unknown John James Audubon.
When Charles left America in 1828, he traveled to Italy and wrote works of comparative zoology, as well as a magisterial study of the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish of that country. Throughout the next decades he was instrumental in setting up scientific congresses in Italy, where scientists the world over were welcome. Yet he was also involved in the growing republican movement in Italy, and it was because of this that he was forced to flee the country and eventually settle in France under the protection of his cousin, the hated Napoleon III.
Based extensively on archival sources, including many unpublished letters still in the possession of the Bonaparte family, The Emperor of Nature is the first biography ever written of Charles-Lucien Bonaparte. Forced by the circumstances of his birth to be a perpetual visitor, he nonetheless carved out a place for himself in the science of the natural world. It is at once a compelling story of the fate of Europe's imperial family, and an impressive contribution to the history of nineteenth-century science.
Customer Reviews:
A Resolution for 2001.......2001-01-04
Adding The Emperor of Nature to your "must read" list will be one resolution that you will find a joy to keep. The author's graceful style in this scholarly, yet never pedantic, biography of the complex, heretofore little recognized naturalist and ornithologist, Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, is sparked by insightful and witty asides. Players in this intellectual and political history--the contraversial Bonaparte family, both its men and women, James Audubon, Thomas Say and other natural historians--emerge as distinct personalities as we read Bonaparte's lively--often impassioned--correspondence. The drama of Bonaparte's life, marked by his lifelong dedication to the science of natural history, is deftly enhanced by rich descriptive detail as each "scene is set". Equal attention is given to the underbrush of family and scientific disputes and jealousies, to the complications of early 19th century travel and the preservation of specimens, and to physical and psychological health issues. The abundant illustrations throughout, including many from the author's own collection, (it is always so disappointing when the illustrations in a biography, no matter how erudite, are limited to a tiny center folio of tired old photographs!) were a delight to this fascinated reader.
A fascinating biography, erudite yet highly readable.......2000-09-18
Fans of the Bonaparte family and of 19th-century science have had to wait a long time for a biography of Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew and the leading ornithologist of his age -- this is the first. Happily, it has been worth the wait. Stroud has crafted a masterly portrait of a gregarious, complicated, hugely talented man, who published the first volume of his famous American Ornithology when he was just 22. By drawing on Bonaparte's own voluminous correspondence and those of others to and about him, which fortunately survive in great abundance, Stroud brings alive a man full of contradictions. Bonaparte was fiercely devoted to his scientific efforts, though drawn away from them by radical politics. He loved his wife and children dearly but neglected them, often for months at a time. He was ever concerned about money, yet on numerous occasions gambled away what little he had. Bonaparte's time and contemporaries are equally well-drawn, with some of the foremost scientific, literary, and political figures of the day drifting in and out of Bonaparte's rich life with pleasing regularity -- luminaries like Louis Agassiz, James Fenimore Cooper, Isadore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, and, of course, Napoleon himself. One of the book's great contributions is a highly readable fleshing out of Bonaparte's close yet often tempestuous relationship with Audubon. Stroud has enlivened Emperor of Nature with luscious illustrations (including a beautiful color insert) chronicling every stage of Bonaparte's life, and she supplies complete reference notes and bibliography. If you liked Stroud's biography of the naturalist Thomas Say, you'll love this.
Engrossing and Engaging.......2000-08-27
One does not have to be an ornithologist, and I am not, to become absorbed in this scholarly yet eminently approachable biography. The life of the nephew of the Emperor Napoleon is placed confidently in the turbulent times on both sides of the Atlantic. While its focus is on the man who "helped to lay the foundation for the modern science of ornitholoy, upon which Darwin based his theory of evolution," it is, at the same time, a history of the era in which he lived. Ms. Stroud turns quite a phrase ("the ground rumbling with revolution") and I surprised myself by reading it from start to finish in one long pleasant afternoon.
Kudos for The Emperor of Nature by Patricia Tyson Stroud.......2000-08-15
I agree completely with the review in the July issue of Library Journal and couldn't say it better myself. The Journal stated: "In this extensively researched, detailed, and skillfully written work of natural history and familial squabbles, Stroud, a scientific scholar and author of Thomas Say, New World Naturalist, presents a historical, political, and scientific account on the leading ornithologist of the 19th century--who also happened to be Napoleon's nephew. In a clear, precise, and witty manner, she conveys the life of Charles-Lucien Bonaparte (1803-57)from birth to death through his own letters and publications and through the letters and correspondence of his contemporaries: Agassiz, Audubon, Gould, Huxley, Owen, Say. and many other great naturalists of the 19th century. A wonderful read, this biography, the first ever of Charles-Lucien, includes a vast bibliography and over 30 pages of notes. Recommended for all libraries." Review by Michael R. Blake, formerly with Harvard Univ. Lib. Alexander McCurdy
Book Description
The Halls of Invertebrate Evolution at the American Museum of Natural History display the world's greatest fossil collection and have long been a treasured landmark in New York; they currently attract about 1.5 million visitors each year. Dinosaurs fascinate people of all ages. A look at the Museum's giant Barosaurus skeleton rising up on its hid legs to face a predator, or at the specimen of the fierce Tyrannosaurus rex, enables us to journey back in time to imagine even earlier animals that lived as long as hundreds of millions of years ago. Most fossils are not actual bones but mineralized replicas of an animal's hard parts, yet they enable us to see that vertebrate animals, including humans, share an evolutionary heritage that includes the smallest jawless fish who lived 500 million years ago as well as massive dinosaurs, and mammals of the Ice Age such as wooly mammoths and saber-toothed cats.
All of these specimens and hundreds more are collected in the spectacular, newly renovated fossil halls at the Museum. This book, liberally illustrated with beautiful new color and archival photography, and artwork and graphics produced especially for the renovated exhibits, is an in-depth look at the evolution of vertebrate animals in the collection. In an incisive, behind-the-scenes text, paleontologist Lowell Dingus discusses the earliest specimens: fish, amphibians, and primitive reptiles that represent evolutionary starting points for major groups; the popular saurischian dinosaurs, including the seventeen-ton Apatosaurus (once called Brontosaurus) skeleton; and ornithischian dinosaurs such as the horned Triceratops. He concludes with the mammal halls, where animals as diverse as the finbacked Dimetrodon, mastodons, and, after primates, our closest "next of kin"-- bats-- are shown to be related by one hole in the skull behind the eye socket. This modification illustrates the contemporary approach to evolution that readers will learn about called cladistics, which establishes animal relationships based on unique shared anatomical changes that were inherited over the course of time. The Museum galleries are organized to reflect how this approach has been used to reconstruct the family tree of vertebrate evolution: walking along the main pathway through the fossil halls is like walking along the trunk of the vertebrate evolutionary tree.
The first of the seven halls was opened in 1877 and featured ornate columns, ironworks, high ceilings, and large arched windows with spectacular views of Central Park. A ten-year restoration project has now returned the halls to their original grandeur and redesigned the fossil installations. This volume celebrates the dynamic fossil displays and the magnificent architecture of the American Museum of Natural History; it also introduces provocative questions about long-extinct species and the mysteries of life on Earth.
Customer Reviews:
Great guide to the Museum of Natural History exhibits.......1997-08-29
This is the next best thing to being there! A readable, accessible history of the Musuem of Natural History itself; or rather of its world famous halls of dinosaurs and mammals. After a multimillion dollar facelift the exhibits reflect the latest theories in vertebrate science--and there are some major revisions made. The chapter on Horses is worth the price of the book. Black and white photos of the older mounts are juxtaposed with brilliant color shots of the new, revised versions. The Apatosaurus gets a new head and longer tail, the Tyrannosaurs goes for a run, and the Horses develop in groups. The book's tone reflects the pride the Museum's staff feel in their accomplishments, and it is enough to make one book an immediate flight to New York just to see these marvels--if not 'in the flesh' at least in the round. Highly recommended
Customer Reviews:
First-rate.......1999-05-09
I bought this book after hearing a lecture by Edward Renehan at the Union League Club in NYC. Renehan is the biographer of Muir's friend and associate John Burroughs, and in the course of his lecture he recommended this edition as a good, solid, representative volume of Muir's prose. That it is, and I'm happy to join Renehan in recommending it. -- Alfred Roosein
Customer Reviews:
An excellent account of a personal odyssey.......2001-08-16
Aldo Leopold is widely admired for his contribution to the modern conservation movement and his seminal work, "A Sand County Almanac." In my own profession (wildlife ecology and management), it seems like a Leopold quotation carries the ultimate weight of authority (and they're much more common, since Meine and Knight's collection, "The Essential Aldo Leopold," came out).
For many years I admired the wise, kind-hearted old man who wrote The Almanac. Aldo Leopold became the most exalted member of my personal pantheon of saints. Aldo Leopold became inspiration incarnate, but lost his humanity in the process. He could do no wrong.
Then I read Curt Meine's biography. Leopold's famous essay, "Thinking Like a Mountain," chronicles only one of the many lessons learned in a life filled with equal parts reckless bravado and deep introspection. Leopold launched his career as a fortunate son, cocksure and itching to change the world, only to learn that real change takes patience, commitment, hard work, compassion, and an open mind willing to learn. Sound familiar?
I read Curt Meine's biography before I read Marybeth Lorbiecki's "Fierce Green Fire." To be honest, I enjoyed both, but found Meine's biography to be more fulfilling. If you want to understand where the Land Ethic really came from, pick up "His Life and Work."
One of the best on the life of Aldo Leopold - riveting!.......1998-05-08
If "Sand County Almanac" was your first taste of Leopold, you'll want to read Curt Meine's book. It's one of those books that you can't put down (if you are a true Leopold fan - if you're not - don't bother, you wouldn't appreciate it!
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The World of Rene Dubos: A Collection from His Writings
Gerard Piel
Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Company
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0805021108 |
Books:
- The Road from Coorain
- The Shadow Lines: A Novel
- The Soft Addiction Solution
- The White Nile
- The Wizard and the Warrior: Leading with Passion and Power
- The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
- The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
- Unafraid: Mary (Lineage of Grace)
- Velazquez: Painter and Courtier
- Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
Books Index
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Recommended Books
- A Commitment To Honor A Unique Portrait Of Abraham Lincoln In His Own Words
- St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica
- Four Mothers: A Novel
- Hidden Gardens of Spain
- Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth
- Optimal Estimation of Dynamic Systems
- Microsystem Design
- Final Report of Independent Counsel in Re: Weronica Lewinsky
- Hearing Grasshoppers Jump: The Story of Raymond Ackerman
- The Smart Office: Turning Your Company on Its Head
Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
Intelligent Thought: Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution
The God Delusion
