Book review – Is a River Alive?

7-minute read
keywords: environmental issues, nature writing, rivers

Nature writer Robert Macfarlane will need little introduction, having authored a string of successful books on people, landscape, and language. I was impressed by his 2019 book Underland, so when Is a River Alive? was announced, I decided to spoil myself and purchase the signed Indie Exclusive edition. Billed as his most political book to date, Is a River Alive? is a hydrological odyssey into three river systems that sees Macfarlane wrestle with the titular question and examine its relevance to the nascent Rights of Nature movement.

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Book review – Fossils: The Essential Guide

8-minute read
keywords: paleontology

The opening of Fossils: The Essential Guide sets the tone as to who the intended audience is, with invertebrate palaeontologist Paul D. Taylor pointing out that palaeontology and archaeology are not the same thing. Ah yes, that old chestnut. To me, that means you intend to write a book for general readers who are interested but lack relevant background knowledge. Part of the long-running publishing programme of the London Natural History Museum (NHM), this is a whistlestop tour of life’s diversity as revealed by the fossil record. My take is that “It is good, but…”, as I feel the formula somewhat restricts it from being the accessible and thus truly essential guide that it wishes to be.

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Book review – Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places

7-minute read
keywords: evolution

Once it evolved, “life unfurled into every open space and every crevice” (p. 9). This is one of the observations underlying Super Natural, the second book by science writer Alex Riley. In the drive to escape predators and competitors, to find an ecological niche of one’s own, organisms have adapted to some of the planet’s most extreme and hostile environments. Extreme and hostile to humans, that is. In this entertaining romp through life’s outliers, Riley marvels at the resilience and ingenuity of many organisms and introduces you to some of the truly mind-boggling conditions under which they not only survive, but often thrive.

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Book review – King Tyrant: A Natural History of Tyrannosaurus rex

7-minute read
keywords: paleontology

This review concludes a short series on theropod dinosaurs, having just read Gregory Paul’s The Princeton Field Guide to Predatory Dinosaurs and Dave Hone’s The Tyrannosaur Chronicles. When Princeton University Press announced King Tyrant, I was beyond excited. Whether it is pterosaurs, palaeoart, or the Crystal Palace dinosaurs; whatever palaeontologist and palaeoartist Mark Witton writes on has so far been brilliant, and King Tyrant very much continues that tradition. Do not let the pretty pictures fool you; this is not a children’s book but a grounded, fact-based overview of the scientific consensus on all things Tyrannosaurus rex, combined with numerous informative diagrams and Witton’s gorgeous palaeoart. The execution of this book sets the standard for what good popular science can be and is a model that other authors and publishers can aspire to.

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Book review – The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: The Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaurs

8-minute read
keywords: dinosaurs, evolutionary biology, paleontology

I am not quite done with predatory dinosaurs yet. With the publication of Mark Witton’s much-anticipated King Tyrant just now, I turn towards that most famous of theropods. I do so, however, by taking a detour via palaeontologist David Hone’s 2016 book The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, which provides an accessible introduction to the 100-million-year history of the family that would ultimately spawn Tyrannosaurus rex. Along the way, there are shades of mythbusting that would foreshadow his later books.

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Book review – The Princeton Field Guide to Predatory Dinosaurs

10-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology, paleontology

Independent palaeontologist and palaeoartist Gregory S. Paul is well-known for his scientifically informed diagrams of dinosaur skeletons. Over the course of four decades, he has perfected this style of infographic, showing white bones laid out on the black silhouette of a body. After writing and illustrating three editions of The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs and two companion volumes on pterosaurs and extinct marine reptiles, I was ready to congratulate him on a job well done. He has collated arguably the largest collection of skeletal reconstructions of extinct Mesozoic reptiles in print. Imagine my surprise, then, when Princeton published this book on predatory dinosaurs only six months after the most recent iteration of the dinosaur guide. But… hang on. Does that mean that the dinosaur guide is not as complete as claimed? Have there been that many developments that a separate book is already warranted? I am confused by this book: time for an in-depth comparison.

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Book review – Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

10-minute read
keywords: degrowth, economics

I have been promising/threatening for a while to cover degrowth, and thanks to a United States Society for Ecological Economics book club, now I will. In Less is More, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel identifies capitalism as the cause of our problems—the sort of criticism that makes many people really uncomfortable. Fortunately, he is an eloquent and charismatic spokesman who patiently but firmly walks you through the history of capitalism, exposes flaws of proposed fixes, and then lays out a litany of sensible solutions. It quickly confirms that sinking feeling most of us will have: that the economy is not working for us. What is perhaps eye-opening is that this is not by accident, but by design.

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Book review – The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (Third Edition)

10-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology, paleontology

If you have ever seen a diagram of a dinosaur skeleton in a book or scientific paper—white bones, black silhouette, I am looking at you—odds are that it was drawn by independent palaeontologist and palaeoartist Gregory S. Paul, or at the very least inspired by his work. As a consultant and illustrator-for-hire, he has been researching and drawing these diagrams for over 40 years, and The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs brings together the largest such collection in print. I have previously reviewed his companion volumes on pterosaurs and extinct marine reptiles, which is coming at it somewhat the wrong way around. His tenure with Princeton University Press started back in 2010 with the first edition of this dinosaur guide, followed by the second edition in 2016, and the third edition in May 2024. High time, thus, to make up for that lack of review coverage. In the process, I will address the question of whether buyers of the second edition should upgrade.

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Book review – Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing

6-minute read
keywords: biomechanics, ethology, evolution

Having just reviewed the 2015 book On the Wing, I continue my brief two-part foray into the evolution of flight with Taking Flight by writer and conductor Lev Parikian. In a book that is full of wonder and humour, he marvels at the many different strategies for flying that have evolved in primarily insects and birds. However, the somewhat muddled explanations of flight mechanics and limited attention for other groups make for a somewhat uneven book.

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Book review – On the Wing: Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Bats and the Evolution of Animal Flight

8-minute read
keywords: biomechanics, evolutionary biology, paleontology

Flight fascinates me for two reasons: one is pure envy at being earthbound, and the other because it is a fantastic example of convergent evolution, having evolved not once, but on four separate occasions. Last year I was sent Lev Parikian’s book Taking Flight and in finally reviewing that, I took the opportunity to also read David E. Alexander’s 2015 book On the Wing. A very accessible popular science book that tells the intriguing story of the evolution of flight, it helpfully assumes little background knowledge of either evolution or biomechanics. This, then, is the first of a two-part review of how life got airborne.

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