A clear, concise description of how evolutionary theory works, ardently argued by a True Believer.
Evolutionary theory can help answer questions about issues ranging from the behavior of a virus to international relations and religion.
So says Wilson (Biology and Anthropology/Binghamton Univ.), who writes with the glee of a guy who’s discovered the philosopher’s stone. Evolutionary theory is not all that difficult, he argues fervently. Furthermore, it’s applicable to the study of all human behavior and all human societies. At times, the author’s enthusiasm is infectious, especially when he focuses on his own research questions and describes the processes he employed to answer them (for example, the studies of world religions that culminated in Darwin’s Cathedral, 2002). He generously summarizes and lavishly praises the work of likeminded colleagues—e.g., Thomas Seeley’s extensive research on honeybees—and the efforts of his students, who frequently participate in the author’s research. He repeatedly tips his mortarboard to the John Templeton Foundation, which has funded a number of his activities. The book’s very personal, scholar-adventurer tone makes some of this read like memoir, especially the penultimate chapter, relating Wilson’s boyhood (father Sloan wrote The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit), education, marriage, divorce and remarriage (current wife and colleague Anne is profiled with great affection). The author outlines basic Darwinian principles, then proceeds through a series of chapters that illustrate how they apply to such matters as homicide, human personality, physical attractiveness, morality, human societies, laughter, literature and the arts, symbolic thinking, religion and international relations. He takes some shots at creationists but in far less confrontational, dismissive fashion than either Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris.
A clear, concise description of how evolutionary theory works, ardently argued by a True Believer.Pub Date: April 3, 2007
ISBN: 0-385-34021-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world.
The author’s father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren’s journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed’s first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: “Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist.
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87493-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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