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
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
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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