Red Sky in the Morning by James Gustav Speth (2004)
"A very well written description of the international environmental policy failures of the past 30 years by someone who was at the eye of the storm. Though excellent in presenting why important environmental issues went unaddressed or poorly handled, it is a little light in its prescription for the future. Nevertheless it is a good read and an important contribution to the field." -- Don Melnick
Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner (1994)
"This Pulitzer Prize winning Book follows the careers of Philip and Rosemary Grant, two evolutionary biologists who have studied finches on Daphne Major, a tiny island in the Galapagos, since 1972. By following the lives and relationships of EVERY bird on the island year after year, they have been able to watch natural selection occurring on human timescales. The book does a fantastic job of explaining their scientific results. Along the way, Weiner gives us a look into the personalities of these two scientists and the creative and sometimes wacky parts of field research." -- Robin Herrnstein
The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era by Jeremy Leggett (2001)
"A summary of the negotiations during the 1990s regarding limiting CO2 emissions written by a member of Greenpeace. Although the authors shows his very strong bias against continued use of fossil fuels, he does a good job of recounting the steps leading up to the Kyoto Agreement." -- Wally Broecker
Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk & Genetic Research by Alice Wexler (1995)
"Alice's father and sister have been in the forefront of research on Huntington's Disease, which runs in their family, and killed their mother. The family's work has led to a test for the disease (well before the symptoms develop in middle age). How did they do it, and should Alice and her sister get tested? The book is fascinating both as hard science, as a history of science, and as a personal memoir." -- Debbie Mowshowitz
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley (1999)
"The genome's been mapped, but what does it mean? Ridley picks one gene on each chromosome and then uses that gene as an excuse to expand on some essential (& fascinating) aspect of human evolution or development. Overall, a good explanation of what your genes are, what they do, and what they don't. Includes extensive discussion of the ethical and moral implications of biology. This book is rich enough to intrigue the bio grad student TA's yet clear enough for non science students to read with pleasure." -- Debbie Mowshowitz
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2003)
"Bill Bryson, after a science education based on stultifyingly boring textbooks, realized that he knew very little about some of the most basic questions such as "how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since." So, he spent three years reading the scientific literature and "finding saintly, patient experts prepared to answer a lot of outstandingly dumb questions." The result is a fascinating and amusing exploration of many of the big questions that have puzzled scientists over the past two centuries as well as vivid portraits of the individuals who have made, or failed to make, the critical discoveries. The book is a surprisingly quick read given its heft and covers many of the topics covered in Frontiers." -- Justin Wright
Song of the Dodo by David Quammen (1996)
"Why are there so many species on this planet? Why are they distributed the way that they are? What is the likely fate of this treasure trove of biological diversity in the face of habitat destruction caused by humans? and How are scientists addressing these questions? These are the questions that motivated Quammen to travel from Madagascar, to the Amazon, to Harvard to witness first hand both the wonders of biodiversity and the scientists who birthed the new discipline of Conservation Biology. This lively book combines features of a travelogue, biography, and easily approachable, yet rigorous, scientific theory. It clearly conveys the central issues facing Conservation Biology today while providing a well-grounded history of the fields birth and maturation." -- Justin Wright
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FOLLOWING NEED EDITS
A Brain for All Seasons by William H. Calvin (0000)
"This for me was the most interesting, and the most irritating, book we read. I don't know Calvin, but I would like to -- his is clearly a fascinating mind, easily captivated by everything he encounters. His extraordinary bold hypothesis -- that climate variability drove human evolution -- almost becomes compelling by the end of the book. From his own theory of hand axes, to the origin of our preference for garden designs by Capability Brown, to a well-done description of climate variability and its causes, to cognitive development and evolutionary theory, this guy is never dull. And on the subjects I know something about, he was unerringly accurate. It is clear even to me on the subjects I know little about (evolution, anthropology, cognitive development, etc.) that he is highly opinionated and probably not mainstream, but, again, it certainly isn't dull.
But WHY couldn't someone have edited this book to remove the dozens (maybe hundreds) of redundancies, the occasional awkward sentence, and the pretence of a "human evolution e-seminar." Less than one week's effort would have vastly improved it. I thought at first the endless encomiums to his Atlantic Monthly editors were overdone -- but they are not! The guy is DESPERATELY in need of a competent editor. It is a great shame, because I certainly found this book the most intellectually engaging of the lot." - David Helfand
Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution
on Earth by Andrew H. Knoll (2003)
"While after my first two years on this committee I am still looking in vain for the perfect book, this one comes the closest this year. The writing is excellent throughout, poetic in places and pleasingly didactic in others. It is rather demanding of the reader, in that it introduces many terms (perhaps just a few too many) and expects him to remember them, as well as assuming a rather broad knowledge of basic science. The numerous literary and cultural references teeter on the edge gratuitousness, but never quite fall over it.
What I like most about the book is the way it balances the truly remarkable successes in understanding the early Earth with the requisite skepticism science must always maintain about both our theories AND the data. The penultimate chapter on the Martian meteorite controversy is an excellent example of this. I have struggled for decades to find the right balance in my classes between celebrating science's remarkable progress in the past 400 years and making certain my students understand the limits of our knowledge without providing them with an excuse for dismissing the entire enterprise. Knoll has taught me valuable lessons on how to achieve this end." -- David Helfand
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