An unusual and enjoyable look at the ongoing process of evolution. Think finch. Think Gal†pagos. Darwin's finches. All those clever birds adapted to fill niches that might normally be filled by other birds. Each with beak adapted to be long and pointy or stout and deep: whatever it takes to tackle the food of choice. It all happened when the first finch or two blew into the volcano islands millennia ago, right? Wrong. What Weiner (Planet Earth, 1986) sets out to do, and does very well, is demonstrate that evolution happens fast and now. That point is not new to those in the know: Remember those 19th-century English moths that adapted to soot-covered bark by turning from predominantly white to predominantly black in a few moth generations? Weiner's tale focuses on Peter and Rosemary Grant, who have spent 20 years documenting every finch on Daphne Major island and coding data on life history to be plugged into computers back home in Princeton. The story is fascinating: In hard times the species exploit their separate niches: ground feeders of varied-sized seeds, cactus feeders, etc. In soft times they intermingle, even hybridize. Thus the pendulum swings from species fission to species fusion. Now after a few flood seasons, the hybrids are doing very well...but times change. And that is the point—dynamic and constant change. As Weiner winds up his story, he moves on to thee and me: with the bacteria in our guts, with antibiotic and pesticide resistance, global warming and the greenhouse effect—all the manmade changes that are ratcheting up the evolutionary gears. All this is artfully told, with maps and drawings, some by a Grant daughter. There are lots of memorable lines, and telling, even funny anecdotes (don't miss the one about the barnacle that bit) that make this Weiner a winner. (First printing of 40,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection; History Book Club selection)
Pub Date: May 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40003-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
Lively writing and colorful anecdotes enhance this insightful look at an unexpected side of agriculture.
We’ve cultivated plants since the dawn of time; but all along, the plants have been cultivating us as well.
Pollan (A Place of My Own, 1997) uses four plant species to support his thesis: apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes. Each, by offering some quality that we humans find valuable, has managed to propagate itself throughout the world. In the process, each has generated more than its share of fascinating lore. Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) has become an icon of early American enterprise, creating orchards out of untamed forest. But the apples Chapman planted were meant not for eating, but for cider, the ubiquitous tipple of early America. Only when temperance began to give the apple a bad name did orchardmen switch to the sweet varieties for eating. The tulip boom in early 18th-century Holland saw prize bulbs selling for the price of a fashionable house in Amsterdam. Now, ironically, the plant that commands high prices in Amsterdam is marijuana, over the last few decades the focus of some of the most intense research in the botanical sciences (most of it conducted indoors, away from official eyes). The humble potato, for its part, has come a long way since its origins as an Andean weed: The russet Burbank, for example, which yields perfect fries for the fast-food trade, dominates the US market almost to the exclusion of all other taters, and its cultivation depends heavily on chemicals nastier than anything the cannabis bud secretes. Pollan keeps the reader aware of how the plants induce us to spread their genetic material to new environments—and how the preservation of natural variability is a key to keeping them (and us) healthy.
Lively writing and colorful anecdotes enhance this insightful look at an unexpected side of agriculture.Pub Date: May 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50129-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A penetrating look at the bitter controversy between animal rights activists and research scientists over the use of monkeys and chimpanzees in medical research. Given their proven intelligence, asks the author, can a chimp or monkey ``comprehend that it is being used by another species? It is not a question everyone wants to see answered.'' Blum, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Sacramento Bee articles that led to this book, acknowledges that in tracing the history of primate research- -and she discusses several horrendous abuses—any accounting ``must include the knowledge gained, the human lives saved.'' But some researchers who recognize the animals' suffering and strive for more humane handling, such as Roger Fouts at Central Washington University, find themselves ostracized and refused government funding. Fouts, renowned for his sign language work with the chimp Washoe, has battled the National Institutes of Health for years, finally filing suit to challenge its way of regulating experimental animal facilities. His 1986 visit, along with famed chimpanzee specialist Jane Goodall, to a notorious Maryland laboratory conducting AIDS research brought enough negative publicity to force some changes in the way the animals are caged. Other researchers, like Tom Gordon, director at Yerkes Field Station (a ``monkey farm'' in Georgia), fault both animal activists ``for making the monkeys too human'' and scientists for treating them as mere mechanical objects. Primates' humanlike physiology (a chimp's DNA is 98.5% identical to a human's) renders them perhaps indispensable in AIDS research and other crucial medical experiments. But, as Blum shows, it is their humanlike nature and their intelligence that give rise to important questions about ethics and respect for life. As a solution, Blum has nothing better to offer than a vague suggestion for ``education programs'' aimed at reaching a ``troubled'' middle ground. But she brings the issues into sharp, disturbing focus.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-509412-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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