New and forthcoming books that are worthy of attention but that have not yet been fully reviewed.
Like the other volumes in Princeton’s The Lives of the Natural World series, “The Lives of Sharks” presents its subjects in a habitat arranged structure that features representative species presented in lively and accessible text that explains shark biology, behavior, and ecology, all of which material is extensively supported by vivid, captivating photos and well-drawn, informative illustrations.
Like its predecessors in its series, “The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives” provides and extensively full color photo and drawing illustrated structure, and follows a habitat themed organization featuring representative species with explanations of their biology and life history along with overviews of the habitat’s ecology that should make the book very appealing to beginning naturalists and new-comers to the subject of cephalopods.
On the very same day that a copy of the newly published “Wildlife Disease and Health in Conservation” reached my desk for review, the top natural history story in the general news was the bleaching of corals off the coast of the U.S. state of Florida. Opening its cover to read through its table of contents, my sense of serendipity was immediately stimulated by discovering that following an introduction by one of the books co-editors, David Jessup, the very first full chapter is Thierry M. Work’s “Coral Reef Ecosystem Health.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if those setting out to perhaps make a career for themselves in a particular field had a guidebook available to them that provided clear, straight-forward advice on not just the formal aspects of how to undertake the work done in that field but also explained the “unwritten” aspects of how those in the field actually got there and how, as it were, the sausage is made? Well for those for whom a career in the field of ecology is the goal – or even for those simply considering if it is right for them – “How To Do Ecology” has provided just such a guidebook since its first edition was published in 2006.