A slim but comprehensive zoological guide.
Zoologist Clouse (The Wiring Diagram, 2016, etc.) offers a beginner’s reference manual of scientific terms relating to invertebrates.
Invertebrate zoology is a vast field, containing numerous strange and wondrous subjects from insects to worms to jellyfish. Its great diversity, however, has given rise to a specialized vocabulary that can seem impenetrable to those who may be looking to enter the field. Clouse’s book is “intended to be a companion that beginners can take to lectures, laboratories, and study sessions to help them navigate the maze of terminology which underlies a course in invertebrate zoology.” He begins with a quick 10-page primer on the Latin and Greek roots that form the building blocks of zoological terminology to help readers suss out the meanings of unfamiliar words: echin means “spiny”; gnath means “jaw”; stoma means “mouth.” He then moves into the glossary proper, taking readers alphabetically through the most essential terms of invertebrate zoology, from “book lungs” (“The respiratory structures of some arachnids”) to “Gordian worms” (“Common name for nematomorphs, also called ‘hairworms’ or ‘horsehair worms’ ”) to “slime glands” (“The large glands in velvet worms that open on either side of the mouth and shoot out sticky secretions for defense and prey capture”). Terms that aren’t common English words feature pronunciations in addition to definitions, and every term lists the taxonomic groups to which it refers. Clouse’s prose possesses the crispness and precision that befits a scientific reference text. The book’s layout is highly accessible and pleasing to the eye, with occasional black-and-white illustrations of creatures at the bottoms of pages. Reading one definition will likely lead readers to a number of other terms; italicized words in each entry are defined elsewhere in the text, allowing one to move through the book by pursuing one’s interests. Even spending half an hour with this text will make readers more knowledgeable about invertebrate zoology than they were prior to picking it up, and it would be difficult to imagine an easier or more handsome reference guide for a novice.
A slim but comprehensive zoological guide.Pub Date: April 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5306-7002-4
Page Count: 190
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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