Opens interesting doors—it would be good to see more along this line.
A marine ecologist looks at social problems from the perspective of natural science.
Sagarin (Environmental Policy/Univ. of Arizona) identifies adaptability as the key to survival in an uncertain world. Improvised responses to threats—the “hillbilly armor” U.S. troops adopted to defend against roadside IEDs—are a clear example. A key point is that natural selection operates not just in the wild but in modern asymmetrical warfare, where lightly armed insurgents take on large professional armies. The high casualty rate among insurgents is a selective pressure; the stupid and incompetent are killed off, and those who survive are better equipped to fight on—as the Taliban has done in Afghanistan. The author argues that dedicated task forces are less effective at problem solving than independent groups seeking answers to a specific challenge. Redundant features, which efficiency experts hate, aid survival by preserving vital information, and cooperation and exchange of information among organisms in the same environment is a major tool for increased security. Sagarin cites cooperation among Middle East countries, bitter rivals in many ways, that helped slow the spread of H1N1 in 2009-10. Even the apparently irrational “sacred truths” of religious minorities can be turned to assets in the survival of larger groups, by such simple means as athletics. The author is sometimes too abstract in his approach. However, when gives real-life examples, either from nature or from human society, the points are usually convincing, and he provides plentiful documentation.
Opens interesting doors—it would be good to see more along this line.Pub Date: April 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-465-02183-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
A cetologist chronicles her 25 field-season summers studying generations of Atlantic spotted dolphins.
Beginning in 1985, Herzing, then in her early 30s, traveled to an area in the Bahamas, a known home to families of friendly dolphins, and began tracking them, analyzing behavioral traits and the courting and mating habits of what she believes to be “one of the most advanced nonhuman intelligence on the planet.” Initially taking an anthropological approach, she quickly realized that an interactive, participatory methodology would play a more critical role in her research. So she dove in, equipped with scuba gear, cameras and a “hydrophone” for video-recording the dolphins’ highly expressive underwater vocalizations and behavior. Herzing passionately writes of her first summer cautiously immersed in the marine mammal’s world of clicks and whistles, their playtime and foreplay and in naming the dolphins and ultimately reconstructing elaborate family trees. Though it would take her five years to establish some semblance of shared trust and solace with the apprehensive dolphin pods, the many summers that followed only served to reinforce the author’s enthusiasm and perseverance for the wide-eyed observation of mothers and calves, their babysitting mystique, intricate interspecies relations (humans included) and elaborate communication coding. The author’s liberal use of “anthropomorphizing” (ascribing emotions to the dolphins) only adds to the exploration’s allure, especially when threatening elements like storms, dangerous water currents and hungry sharks enter the picture. Herzing’s fervent work became disrupted, however, by three hurricanes the 2004-5 seasons, which displaced many of the dolphins she’d been meticulously documenting. Inspired by the pioneering work of Jacques Cousteau, Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Herzing’s focused, captivating account concludes with moving animal-rights arguments centered around the injustices foisted upon defenseless cetaceans and the many other species senselessly killed or held in cruel captivity.
Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-60896-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
The last words in the title might better have read "and other columns"—for this 342nd "book" by Isaac Asimov is composed of 72 very brief reprinted columns from American Way, American Airlines' in-flight magazine. The range of topics is wide—from the Oort cloud to the discovery of microwaves; from the virtues of iron as a metal to the invention of the toe stirrup. The style, too, is perspicuous enough to ensure that Asimov would be your top choice—if you were a captive audience seven miles up in the wild blue yonder, desperate for distraction and bored by your 7,000th in-flight article on jet-lag. But the viability of this collection for earth-bound bibliophiles and popular science aficionados is quite questionable. The "chapters" average only 2-3 pages in length, fostering the kind of airy generality that teases instead of informs. While the production of ephemera is a perfectly respectable enterprise for a full-time writer/journalist such as Asimov, it is cynicism on the part of his publisher to offer such stuff to the book-buying public as worthy of permanent space on their shelves.
Pub Date: June 18, 1986
ISBN: 0395415543
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1986
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