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Many Things Under a Rock

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Did you know octopuses can shift their skin to create papillae, bumps or folds? Or that they don’t see color but can see polarized light? Did you know they can be cannibals but also seem to live in relationship with other creatures?

In Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses, David Scheel shares these facts and many more. Scheel is a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University, but Many Things Under a Rock is accessible regardless of the reader’s amount of scientific knowledge. Scheel’s straightforward prose places readers beside him as he gets to know the elusive, intriguing octopus. He describes the molluscs, their habits, their characteristics and their habitats in detail gathered from 25 years of research and observation.

And the book is well researched, with dozens of pages of meticulous notes as evidence. But Scheel doesn’t overload his text with annotations, and he never turns to jargon or complex explanations to ensure that he’s perceived as an expert. Instead, Scheel invites readers along on a journey of discovery. He shares the lessons he’s learned about octopuses by recounting research trips and personal anecdotes, writing like a teacher who is eager to invite readers into octopuses’ magical world. It’s as though he’s in the water with us, lifting a stone or pushing aside seaweed to show off the many things that can exist under a rock (which is a translation of the Eyak word for octopus).

Scheel’s curiosity about octopuses parallels his curiosity about Alaska Native history, and his respect for Indigenous experiences is obvious. Particularly in the early years of his studies, Scheel turned to Native people for insight into the cephalopods they’ve hunted for centuries. He weaves their knowledge and stories into this book, showing appreciation for shared wisdom and making Many Things Under a Rock a treasure trove of expertise, generously shared.

David Scheel’s straightforward prose places readers in the water beside him as he lifts a stone or pushes aside seaweed to show off the elusive, intriguing world of the octopus.
NonfictionScience

Under Alien Skies

Review by Kelly Blewett

Have you ever wanted to visit space? Reading public astronomer Philip Plait’s Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe is the next best thing. Beginning with that closest rock, the moon, Plait describes at length what it would feel like to land on the lunar surface, from the bizarre sensation of shuffle-walking because of the difference in gravity to the pesky bits of crushed-up rock, called regolith, that would inevitably dust one’s spacesuit. His vivid imagination combines with his deep and specific scientific knowledge to engage—and educate—lay readers. 

As the book progresses, Plait moves from the familiar—the moon, Mars, Saturn and even Pluto—to wilder reaches and more conceptual destinations. My favorite chapter imagines a spaceship landing on the surface of the Star Wars planet Tatooine; the movie clip of Luke Skywalker standing at dusk beneath a sky with two suns provides the basis for Plait’s enthusiastic explanation of what conditions could lead to a sunset that looks, well, exactly like that. This was a moment, he points out, when Hollywood actually got space right (unlike their interpretations of black holes, which he explores in a later chapter).

Plait could dance circles around what most of us know about space. He has a Ph.D. in astronomy and has even professionally analyzed images from the Hubble Space Telescope. And yet, through the imaginative premise of this book, Plait finds ways to talk about how an everyday person would experience space: what Saturn’s rings would look like up close, how the landscape of Mars might stir associations with the barren, red scenery of the American West, why some stars appear blue and some appear red, what it might feel like to land on an asteroid. By grounding his prose in bodily sensations and then explaining why he believes something would look or feel a certain way, Plait doesn’t just look up at the sky and dream but really envisions what it would be like to spend a summer among the stars.

Have you ever wanted to visit space? Reading public astronomer Philip Plait’s Under Alien Skies is the next best thing.
NonfictionScienceHistory

Pathogenesis

Review by Deborah Mason

In the age of COVID-19, it is impossible not to appreciate how a virus can upend societies, reshape politics and divide populations. But what many of us do not know, and what Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues makes clear, is that viruses and bacteria have been integral to all of human history—including the emergence of Homo sapiens as the sole surviving human species on the planet. In his debut book, public health scholar Jonathan Kennedy explains the complex interplay of humans, germs and animals, and the consequences of those interactions.

Most of us know about the carnage of the Black Death and the devastating impact smallpox had on Indigenous populations. But there have been many other plagues, and the ways their combined effects helped create the modern world make for compelling reading. For example, Kennedy tells how the bubonic plague was a significant factor in creating a new European economy, which in turn influenced the colonization of the Americas. That colonization resulted in not only the decimation of Native populations but also the introduction of enslaved West Africans to take Native Americans’ place as forced laborers—as well as the introduction of the viruses that cause yellow fever and malaria. These diseases contributed to the liberation of Haiti from colonial rule, as well as the economic conditions that supported chattel slavery and its attendant horrors in the Southern American colonies. These forces in turn gave rise to other deadly epidemics that had their own repercussions, and on and on.

Kennedy is not arguing that germs were the sole contributors to these and other historical events; economic, sociological and political factors also played their roles. But Pathogenesis makes a convincing case that germs did help mold history—and that history in turn affected how germs evolved and traveled around the globe with ferocious efficacy. Kennedy’s final chapters are cautionary but not pessimistic. What has happened in the past can happen again—but not necessarily in the same way. With this knowledge, perhaps we can be better armed when, not if, the next plague emerges.

Public health scholar Jonathan Kennedy makes a convincing case that germs, viruses and diseases have helped to mold human history.
NonfictionScienceHistory

Egg

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Eggs are the ubiquitous breakfast food, served up every day in kitchens and restaurants around the world. They are also a cornerstone for many savory dishes and added to baked goods to provide richness and leavening. But have you ever considered the egg’s importance beyond its vast utility as a food source?

In Egg: A Dozen Ovatures, author Lizzie Stark (Pandora’s DNA) dishes up 12 ways eggs have affected and benefited humans. Blending fascinating factoids, historical tales and her own personal stories, Stark highlights the remarkable, the unusual and the extreme.

Each chapter focuses on a different topic, describing how eggs have been treasured as artistic objects, hunted by eccentric egg collectors, traded as a precious commodity, used in scientific cures and even sent to the moon. Throughout, Stark fills readers in on related practices and definitions, such as egg candling, “a technique used since ancient times, [that] employs light—a candle in the early days, and later electric lamps—to reveal what’s under the shell.” Such historical and scientific facts are combined with contemporary cultural touchstones in a style that is witty, engaging and descriptive.

Stark also adds moments from her own personal history, which provides a perfect balance to the data points and statistics. From egg experiments with her dad and decorating Ukrainian pysanky eggs with her mom, to her decision to have her ovaries removed to stave off the high likelihood of developing ovarian cancer due to an inherited gene mutation, Stark is skilled at making connections between eggs’ symbolic meaning and real-life significance. Egg is surprising, revealing and entertaining. After reading this delightful book, you will never look at an egg the same way again.

Blending fascinating factoids, historical tales and her own personal stories, Lizzie Stark uncovers the remarkable, unusual and extreme cultural history of the egg.
NonfictionScience

What’s Gotten Into You

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

Even if the word science only conjures up bad memories of frog dissections and failed lab experiments, you’ll find much to enjoy in Dan Levitt’s What’s Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body’s Atoms, From the Big Bang Through Last Night’s Dinner. Levitt, a writer and producer of science and history documentaries, delivers a survey of life’s building blocks that’s intelligent, accessible and just sheer fun.

Levitt launches his inquiry with two fundamental questions: “What are we actually made of? And where did it come from?” His subsequent hunt for answers begins in an appropriate place: the discovery in the 1930s of what became known as the Big Bang by Belgian physics professor and Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre. Lemaitre‘s story is especially interesting for the way it encapsulates the tension between science and religion that looms over some of the issues in Levitt’s wide-ranging account.

Most of the book’s chapters follow a similar format. Levitt will open his investigation of a specific topic, such as how water appeared on Earth or the race to discover the structure of DNA, with an economical but informative biographical sketch of one or more of the scientists whose work proved pivotal in the field. Then he’ll dive into the science, with a special enthusiasm for the controversies that pitted one expert against another. While some of these researchers—such as Nobel laureates James Watson and Francis Crick, of DNA fame—are well known, others—such as Justus von Liebig, the 19th-century German chemist who pioneered research in the field of nutrition—are not. Levitt devotes extra attention to the role of women in science, noting the discrimination that has often prevented their work from receiving the recognition it deserves.

Levitt has the ability to present abstruse subject matter in a form that’s easily digestible by lay readers. He’s scrupulous about giving equal time to warring scientific combatants and is especially sensitive to the biases (among them, the “Too Weird to Be True” bias) that have dogged even the most brilliant scientists. One especially stimulating discussion plays out in the chapters titled “The Most Famous Experiment” and “The Greatest Mystery,” describing the controversy over the origin of life and whether it was sparked in the Earth’s atmosphere, in outer space or in the depths of the ocean. Extensive endnotes and a bibliography that stretches to 20 pages reveal that Levitt has done his homework.

Readers of What’s Gotten Into You will come away better informed while still appreciating that some of our most fundamental scientific questions have yet to be answered.

In What’s Gotten Into You, Dan Levitt delivers a survey of life’s building blocks that’s intelligent, accessible and just sheer fun.
NonfictionScienceAnimals

Koala

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Australia has perhaps the most unusual (and dangerous) wildlife of any continent, a product of its unique status as a vast island that broke off from other landmasses millions of years ago. Due to this isolation, plants and animals specifically adapted to its climate, independent of what was evolving in the rest of the world. Among Australia’s unique fauna is the adorable marsupial known as the koala, which is only now being studied with more scrutiny as its numbers dwindle.

In Koala: A Natural History and an Uncertain Future, biologist and author Danielle Clode (Voyages to the South Seas) provides a thorough and descriptive backstory of the koala, including topics such as mating, conception, eating and sleeping habits, sensory patterns and anatomical anomalies. With her scientific yet accessible writing style, Clode digs deep into koalas’ evolution, giving examples from fossil findings that show that koalas’ ancestors were likely much larger than their contemporary descendants.  

The facts Clode shares are fascinating, such as the reality that, like humans, koalas are “phylogenetically sterile” (lacking in close relatives). We can at least count apes and monkeys as distant cousins, but “ecologically, as well as evolutionarily, koalas really do sit alone on their tree.” She also explains just how integral a koala’s diet is to their survival. Koalas only eat the fibrous, toxic leaves of the eucalyptus gum tree. As a result, their digestive system has evolved in a specialized way, with enzyme-laced saliva and a supercharged liver to remove toxins. 

Clode also discusses human encroachment on koala territory, particularly following the colonization of Australia by Great Britain. Diseases that killed the continent’s Indigenous people also wreaked havoc on animals such as the koala, and continue to do so. Koalas have also been hunted, exported as pets and victims of wildfires and other climatic events. All of these things have made koalas vulnerable, and they are now considered an endangered species by the Australian government.

Leaving no stone unturned, Koala makes great strides to advance our knowledge of this largely misunderstood animal.

With her scientific yet accessible writing style, Danielle Klode makes great strides to advance our knowledge of the largely misunderstood koala.
NonfictionScienceLifestylesArt

The Cosmic Dance

Review by Susannah Felts

Stephen Ellcock has made a name for himself as a digital curator, or “image alchemist.” He ventures deep into visual art archives and surfaces with paintings, drawings, photographs and other images that inspire and intrigue. His fourth book, The Cosmic Dance, is “but a tiny sample of the fruits of ceaseless foraging,” and like his previous volume, The Book of Change, it is as curious a compendium as it is difficult to summarize.

Ellcock takes us on a magic carpet cruise through centuries of art and science via images from medieval art, abstract paintings—you name it—that invoke the cosmos, the spiritual realm, the geological and insect worlds, the human body, geometry and much more. This enchanting book invites readers to muse on the repetition of patterns and the power of symbols, and to discover illuminating connections between visual representation and meaning-making across time and place.

Stephen Ellcock journeys through centuries of art and science via images that invoke the cosmos, the spiritual realm, the human body, geometry and much more.
NonfictionSciencePhotographyHistoryBiographyArt

Giftable glimpses of history

Feature by Alice Cary

Documentary filmmaker and historian Ken Burns believes that photographs are portals “not just to a different time and space but also to dimensions and possibilities within myself.” Through photographs and illustrations, these books are guaranteed to transport you.

★ Apollo Remastered

Book jacket image for Apollo Remastered by Andy Saunders

Apollo Remastered: The Ultimate Photographic Record is a weighty, large-format coffee table book that beams readers right into its cosmic world. The original NASA film from the Apollo missions (which includes some 35,000 images) has been safely secured inside a frozen vault at the Johnson Space Center, but new technology has allowed digital restoration expert Andy Saunders to painstakingly remaster this treasure trove of photographs, many of which have never been published. The results are pure magic, full of clarity, sharpness and color that make readers feel like part of the team—a far cry from those grainy images that were broadcast on TV at the time. 

During their spaceflights, many astronauts were shocked by how moved they felt looking back at Earth, and readers will see why. Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell notes, “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.” Apollo 9’s Rusty Schweickart recommends reading this book at night, surrounded by darkness and silence, to allow the gleaming spacecraft and spacesuits to shimmer and shine.

★ Our America

Book jacket image for Our America by Ken Burns

In the tradition of Walker Evans’ groundbreaking 1938 book, American Photographs, Ken Burns has assembled a collection of his favorite images in Our America: A Photographic History. “I’ve needed forty-five years of telling stories in American history, of diving deep into lives and moments, places and huge events, to accrue the visual vocabulary to embark on this book,” he writes in his introduction. 

These black-and-white photographs are arranged chronologically from 1839 to 2019, with only one on each page for full visual impact. They’re labeled by date and place (at least one for each state), with fuller explanations at the back of the book, and they are mesmerizing, drawing on a multitude of personalities, emotions and events. The images depict the brutally scarred back of an enslaved man, decomposing bodies at Gettysburg, frozen Niagara Falls, a 1909 game of alley baseball in Boston, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Elvis onstage and, finally, a stunning portrait of Congressman John Lewis from 2019.

Illustrated Black History

Book jacket image for Illustrated Black History by George McCalman

For Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen, artist, designer and creative director George McCalman created 145 original portraits spotlighting Black pioneers in many fields, each accompanied by a short biographical essay. Moving alphabetically from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to cinematographer Bradford Young, McCalman uses a bold array of acrylics, watercolors, pen and ink and colored pencils, to capture each personality in an individualized way. “I document body language, I document exuberance, I document pain,” he writes. “I draw like a reporter because I am a reporter.” 

McCalman began this project by challenging himself to paint one such portrait every day for a month, and the result overflows with energy and color. His choices are inspiring and well-rounded, running the gamut from Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin to activist Alicia Garza and food journalist Toni Tipton-Martin.

My Travels With Mrs. Kennedy

Book jacket image for My Travels With Mrs. Kennedy by Clint Hill

Despite the mountains of books already written about the Kennedys, I couldn’t put down My Travels With Mrs. Kennedy, a conversational memoir and very personal photo album by Clint Hill. A former Secret Service agent who served under five U.S. presidents, Hill was present during John F. Kennedy’s assassination and later assigned to the first lady and her children. He’s written other books about those experiences, including several with his wife and co-author, Lisa McCubbin Hill. 

This book was sparked by the process of cleaning out the garage of Hill’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, going through boxes of memorabilia, including a forgotten steamer trunk. Dialogue between the co-authors makes the book immensely readable as they discuss their discoveries and Hill’s memories. Numerous photos bring each scene to life, capturing intimate moments that reveal the first family’s personalities, especially that of Jackie. Of their relationship, Hill writes, “It wasn’t romantic. But it was beyond friendship. We could communicate with a look or a nod.”

The Only Woman

Book jacket image for The Only Woman by Immy Humes

The Only Woman is a unique gallery of group portraits that contain a lone female figure surrounded by men. There’s Marie Curie, for instance, with her head in her hand, looking downright bored among a group of suited scientists at a 1911 conference in Belgium. There’s 9-year-old Ab Hoffman, who earned a spot on a Canadian hockey team for one season in 1956 because her coaches hadn’t noticed her gender. In a 1982 photo, a white male U.S. Army Diver candidate sneers at Andrea Motley Crabtree, a Black woman who made the training cut when he didn’t. “Most of the men hated me being there,” Crabtree recalls. “He couldn’t understand how I was better than him.” 

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Immy Humes provides concise commentary throughout her collection, which spans from 1862 to 2020. She speaks to “the pleasure of spotting them, and then, most of all, the mystery of them: What was she doing there?”

Affinities

Affinities book cover

In need of some creative downtime? Curl up with the hefty Affinities: A Journey Through Images From the Public Domain Review and lose yourself in a delightfully imaginative, visionary game. The book’s 350-plus pages contain a miscellany of images arranged to showcase unexpected similarities. For example, one section features the shapes of outstretched arms as seen in a 16th-century drawing of a mechanical arm, an image of the Borghese Gladiator sculpture, a John Singleton Copley painting and—of all things—a photo of damage sustained to the bow of the HMS Broke during a World War I battle. 

With images old and new from around the world, all selected from the archive of the Public Domain Review, this is a book designed for random perusal. Some images come with suggested paths to different pages, creating a sort of chutes-and-ladders effect. As explained in the introduction, the result is “a maze of rootlike cut-throughs that allow you to move through the book in different ways, to disrupt the sequence and carve through your own serpentine trajectory.”

The armchair historian’s wish list isn’t a tough nut to crack. Just give them a great book.
NonfictionTrue CrimeScience

The Forever Witness

Review by Alice Cary

“What an amazing world we live in today,” Laura Baanstra said. She was speaking at a 2018 press conference to announce the scientific process that had been used to solve the 1987 murders of her brother and his girlfriend. The Forever Witness: How DNA and Genealogy Solved a Cold Case Double Murder details this brutal crime, the failed efforts to solve it and how its eventual unraveling led to the first genetic genealogy murder trial. Fans of Michelle McNamara’s acclaimed I’ll Be Gone in the Dark should clear their schedules, because Edward Humes’ riveting account is nearly impossible to put down.

Pulitzer Prize winner Humes is no stranger to true crime writing. His 16 books include Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia and Burned: A Story of Murder and the Crime That Wasn’t. In The Forever Witness, he takes on the murders of 20-year-old Jay Cook and 18-year-old Tanya Van Cuylenborg, who set out by van from Victoria Island, Canada, to Seattle, Washington, to pick up a furnace for Jay’s father. Baanstra vividly remembers waving goodbye to her brother as he drove away in the family van for what was meant to be a quick overnight trip. Instead, Tanya’s body was dumped alongside a lonely road in Washington, Jay’s body was tossed over a bridge, and the van was abandoned. There were no eyewitnesses, no way of knowing what happened and little physical evidence, except for semen and a palm print on one of the van’s rear doors.

Hume’s account brings the young victims alive: Tanya, a photography buff planning to head to Europe as an au pair, and Jay, a kindhearted soul toying with becoming a marine biologist. Their families’ ongoing anguish is palpable, and details of the police investigation offer sharp reminders of how difficult such cases were to solve before the advent of technology such as cell phones and surveillance cameras, not to mention widespread DNA processing. 

Deputy Sheriff James Scharf had been working the graveyard shift in Snohomish County, Washington, when he got an alert to be on the lookout for the missing Canadian couple. Decades later, after becoming a cold case investigator, he would take the case to CeCe Moore, a self-taught genetic genealogist featured on the PBS show “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” Her amazing detective work—done in just two hours from her couch—led the authorities to William Earl Talbott II, a truck driver with no criminal convictions or known connection to the victims. Along the way, Hume explains the advent of DNA technology and databases in highly readable terms and examines the continuing debate about their use.

With over 30 years separating the crime from the arrest and trial, Hume does an exceptional job of navigating the vast time frame and re-creating the victims’ last journey. The results are heartbreaking as well as heart pounding. The Forever Witness has earned a well-deserved place among top-notch true crime reads.

Fans of Michelle McNamara’s acclaimed I’ll Be Gone in the Dark should clear their schedules, because Edward Humes’ The Forever Witness is nearly impossible to put down.
NonfictionScienceLGBTQEssays

How Far the Light Reaches

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Science journalist Sabrina Imbler dives deep into the waters of human and marine life in their luminous essay collection, How Far the Light Reaches.

In the book’s 10 essays, Imbler cannily observes the lives of sea creatures, drawing out lessons about resilience, survival and wildness and tying those insights to their own experiences as a biracial, queer writer. For example, goldfish that survive being thrown from a tiny fishbowl into a larger pond revert to a feral state. When Imbler encountered these wild fish, they saw “something that no one expected to live not just alive but impossibly flourishing, and no longer alone.” Imbler compares a female octopus who starves herself in order to nourish and protect her eggs to their own efforts at dieting to please their mother. Imbler eventually started to feel good in their body, learning to “revel in queer bodies and the endless and inventive ways we crease into ourselves.” In the deep rivers of China, sturgeon forage for food to survive in the murky waters, just as Imbler’s grandmother foraged for food to survive after fleeing Japanese-occupied Shanghai during wartime. In perhaps the most brilliant chapter of the book, Imbler alternates the necropsy of a whale with the necropsy of a relationship. Like the carcass of a whale, the threads of a dead relationship—“once so staggeringly alive”—float through space and time with no sense of what is to come.

How Far the Light Reaches meditates radiantly on the ragged ways we adapt to the world around us, probing the lives of marine animals for strategies for our own survival. Imbler’s first-rate science writing glistens with the same sheen as the best of Oliver Sacks’ essays.

How Far the Light Reaches dives deep into the waters of human and marine life, glistening with the same sheen as the best of Oliver Sacks’ essays.
NonfictionAudioScience

If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Who would have thought a discussion about the intelligence (or lack thereof) of humans and animals could be so fascinating and fun? Such is the case in If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity (7 hours), thanks to the conversational prowess and keen (I’ll go ahead and say it) intellect of behavioral scientist Justin Gregg.

Gregg excels as both author and narrator, laying out arguments for and against humankind’s intellectual advancements in concise, accessible language. With witty commentary and humorous anecdotes, he draws comparisons to our counterparts in the animal kingdom, who appear to be doing just fine without technology, political discourse or overriding ambitions for power, wealth or popularity. 

Each of the seven chapters starts with a thought-provoking passage from German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, whose criticisms of the human condition laid the groundwork for modern thinkers. In whimsical fashion, Gregg breaks down Nietzsche’s arguments into easily digestible chunks of information. All in all, it’s a joy for listeners.

Image of author Justin Gregg

Read more: Justin Gregg, author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, extols the virtues of stupid animals.

Behavioral scientist Justin Gregg excels as both author and narrator, laying out arguments for and against humankind’s intellectual advancements in concise, accessible language.

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