Featured Book Review
Pocket-sized Mental Health Improvement Kits
Let’s be honest – even the most social media skeptical amongst us is vulnerable, should we find ourselves waiting in a particularly long queue, stuck in non-moving traffic, waiting for a coffee or a meal, etc. – to pulling out one of the ubiquitous little electronic time thieves that we carry about on our person each day, tapping open Insta-Book-Red-Tok, and allowing our attention to be diverted while our cognitive abilities and mental health are slowly degraded. It’s difficult not to fall into this trap. Indeed, it’s designed to be that way as there are billions of dollars to be made by causing every man, woman, and child on the planet capable of seeing a screen to develop an addiction to the use of social media through the Pavlovian conditioning of those using it by leveraging with each scroll the user’s own hypothalamus to release dopamine, explained by this article from Mass General Brigham McLean Hospital as “a ‘feel-good chemical’ linked to pleasurable activities such as sex, food, and social interaction.” As the article continues “the platforms are designed to be addictive and are associated with anxiety, depression, and even physical ailments.” More than perhaps any other modern business, social media companies have proven very well that if you aren’t paying a company for a service you think you are receiving, you’re not the customer; you’re the product.
Fortunately, we haven’t – yet – quite reached the Orwellian stage where the use of social media is both mandatory and enforced, although given the rapid demise of traditional forms of mass communication such as newspapers, magazines, broadcast television, and radio this may not be necessary as most of use may very well be “willing” (scare quotes added to emphasize the difficulty in ascribing free will to anyone acting under the effects of a chemical addiction) to do so rather than need to be made to comply. Myself, to borrow from Mr. Thomas, I’m not quite ready to go gently into that good mental night. In fact, I make it a practice of raging – quietly, admittedly – against the dying of the intellectual light by ensuring that I have a small book with me at all times when I’m away from home. Preferably pocket sized, these books have, over the course of this my journey, most commonly been from the Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford Very Short Introductions, and – when I can find well-preserved copies of them here in the former colonies far from their original country of publication – the Observer’s’ Book series. However, recently to these stalwart tools of intellectual and mental health defense, I have added the volumes of the Princeton Little Books of Nature series.
Newly Noted Books
Conrad Gessner (1516–1565)
As Conrad Gessner is one of those cornerstone figures of Early Modern natural philosophy whose life and work are not as readily known to most, including even a fair number interested in the subject, the publication of this newly translated biography of him presents a superb opportunity to discover, or improve one’s knowledge of, this remarkable man and his work.
Stone Circles; A Field Guide
In their recently published book “Stone Circles; A Field Guide,” Prof. Colin Richards and Prof. Vicki Cummings present an extensively researched, very detailed, highly informative presentation of 344 stone circle sites across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, and the Republic of Ireland.
Thylacine
Shadowy, perplexing, only recently extinct, and now iconic, Thylacines survived the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions of Australia and continued on throughout the Nineteenth Century in the Tasmanian wilds. So how did the last one end up dying of neglect in a zoo in 1936?
The Courage of Birds
When I first took up birdwatching in the mid 1990s (knowingly and intentionally, that is; I’d been watching them casually long before that) one of the first books I read on the subject in an effort to learn how to do it was Pete Dunne’s “The Feather Quest.”
The Princeton Field Guides to Dinosaurs
As with so many naturalists today, my first love in the world of natural history studies was dinosaurs. As a boy, I would expound upon these remarkable creatures ad nauseam to anyone willing or foolishly indulgent enough to listen.
The Science of Weed
One of the many benefits of cannabis being made legal for recreational use in twenty-four U.S. states and the District of Columbia is that for the first time since it was made illegal nationally in the country under the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 it can now be discussed with both reason and rationality amongst serious-minded people.
Naturalist Classics
Back to Basics Through Black and White
After being rejected by four other publishers who thought the market for such a book was too small to be worth their time, when Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds: Giving Field Marks of All Species Found in Eastern North America was first published on 27 April 1934 by Houghton Mifflin in an initial printing of 2,000 copies, it sold out in two weeks. It has ever since reigned as the monarch of North American field guides, being still available in the seventh edition Peterson Field Guide To Birds Of Eastern & Central North America, now published by HarperCollins following Houghton Mifflin (Harcourts)’s sale of its trade publishing division and other assets to News Corp in 2021. But enough about the board room machinations of the present-day masters of the universe
While most bird watchers have almost certainly seen a copy of at least one of the printings of one of the editions of Peterson’s field guides to birds, many may not have seen a first edition of it. Unlike the present-day editions of the Peterson field guides, and most all new field guides in general, the first Peterson guide was noteworthy for the eloquent brevity of its text, and its black and white images. (For those interested, Houghton Mifflin published a reprint edition of this classic book in 1997 that while now out-of-print can still be found with regularity in shops selling used books.) These black and white images – both plates of Peterson’s paintings and line illustrations – were partly due to the economically-dictated limitation of such guidebooks of the time as color printing was far more expensive then than it is today.
Recent Featured Book Reviews
Guides for the Perplexed
Beginning in 2024, after some years of putting it on the metaphorical back burner, I made the decision to devote more time and effort to birdwatching. I was once an avid birder, meticulously listing every twitch of a feather that can into view, then, having become disillusioned by some of the things I experienced in the birding world over the years, I transitioned into a birdwatcher, hoping to rediscover the joy I once found in watching birds without the politics, pettiness, and cults of personality that put me off birding. However modern life in America and its responsibilities, as it does, tends to get in the way of such things, and my birdwatching activities dwindled into near non-existence.
After a few months of rising early every morning for a walk up and down the hills near my home, Spring began to arrive and with it more bird activity. Soon, each morning as I was crossing the bridge across the South Fork of Scappoose Creek, I began to hear the easy-to-remember “Fitz-Bew!” call of the Willow Flycatcher. Similarly, on the slog up the hill back home, the BREEeeer” of the Western Wood-Pewee began to be heard each day. However as I dutifully entered these into eBird each day, it occurred to me that other than the Olive-sided Flycatcher (“Quick! Three beers!”) these two daily walk companions were the only flycatchers sufficiently familiar to me to identify by call.
Discovering Our Deep Connections to the Ocean
To borrow and slightly adapt a verse from The Little River Band‘s “Cool Change,”
Well I was born in the sight of water
And it’s there that I feel my best
The albatross and the whales they are my brothers
For me, this is not just a bit of poetic nicety. Having been born and raised in a town where the great mouth of the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean, into a family whose history as well as economic and cultural existence was deeply connected to the fisheries and transportation made possible by both these great bodies of water, my childhood and youth was rich in time spent on boats, on docks, and on shorelines. I learned early, well, and first-hand the power and vastness of the sea, the richness of life held within it, the ways of its cycles, and – unfortunately – the damage that can be done to it by mankind. And while I continue to this day to be connected both heart and soul to it, I am often perplexed by how many people I meet, even those living near the ocean, are unfamiliar with the life and cycles of, as well as threats to, it.
Of Interest
Harvard University Press Holiday Sale 2024
One of the things I look forward to each December is the Harvard University Press book sale. I appreciate all sales from book publishers who publish high quality works, but the Harvard sale helps me to continue a completely barking mad project I began a few years ago…
The RHS Podcast – Garden and Botanical Books
I’ve only recently begun listening to the Royal Horticultural Society’s “Gardening with the RHS” podcast but in that short time I’ve become quite fond of it.
The HPS Podcast – Erika Milam on Colloquial Science
A new (to me) podcast was recently added to my regular listening rota: “The HPS Podcast.”
For the Love of Weather: Interview with Zoë Johnson
One of the podcasts I’ve begun listening to relatively recently is Gemma Plumb’s and Aisling Creevey’s For the Love of Weather. Both meteorologists with years of experience in the field, the podcast is the duo’s genuine labor of love for the title subject.
From the Backlist
Seduced by Logic
When it comes to the spread of knowledge – particularly the communication of some of the most paradigm-shifting ideas of all time – it is Émilie Du Châtelet and Mary Somerville whose names should not only be familiar to anyone who would call her or himself educated, they should leap to mind as two of the most significant authors in the history of mathematics and physics.
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