Quickly perusing the newly arrived copy of David B. River’s new Insects: Evolutionary Success, Unrivaled Diversity, and World Domination from Johns Hopkins University Press, I can’t help but suspect that it too may prove to be another delightful exception to the “stodgy textbook” rule. One early review has already praised it for being “fresh and relevant” as well as “ooz[ing] with an entomological swagger representing the passion of the insect world.”
“Science is about the Age of Rocks, religion tells us about the Rock of Ages” – or so the late Dr. Stephen J. Gould is frequently quoted as having written. It’s a clever quip – one I’ve heard often repeated, both humorously and seriously; however…
On the eve of European colonization, the Potomac River valley was a remarkably fertile place, teeming with game and fish, and with rich soil well suited to cultivation; yet when the first colonists arrived they found much of it apparently uninhabited. Why?
When it comes to dinosaurs, there are few who can match the enthusiasm for the subject than that possessed by children with a particular interest in them. To be sure, paleontologists know their field of study, but for sheer exuberance-driven knowledge, your dino-obsesed ten-year-old is a perpetually bubbling font of information like few others.