Let me first welcome all my readers to 2020. Casting my gaze back over last year, 2019 was an exceptionally productive year where I managed to read and review 107 books. Although I fully intend to bring you many more book reviews this year, I am not sure whether I will match that output again.

For those who do not feel like trawling through that many reviews, here is my personal top 5 of the most impactful, most beautiful and most thought-provoking books I read during 2019.

1. The Outlaw Ocean: Crime and Survival in the Last Untamed Frontier

The most impactful book I read last year. The Outlaw Ocean takes an unflinching look at the criminal excesses playing out on the high seas. Riveting, exceptional, deeply troubling – this brutal reportage left a lasting impression. Read more…

2. Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization

Books dealing with overpopulation featured quite a few times on my reading list this year. Abundant Earth is a radical and furious cross-examination of the concept of anthropocentrism, arguing it has a stranglehold on our thinking and is holding us back from quitting environmental destruction. Read more…

3. Everything is Fucked: A Book about Hope

This is perhaps a strange book for a blog that mostly reviews life science books, but I will make no secret of the fact that I am a big fanboy of his blog, and this book was a worthy follow-up to his last one. With Mark’s trademark vulgar wit and imaginative metaphors, Everything is Fucked tackles the thorny question of why everything seems so fucked when we have never had it this good. Read more…

4. Underland: A Deep Time Journey

There were several wonderful travel narratives I read this year, and I was torn between this one and Gange’s The Frayed Atlantic Edge. Macfarlane won. Underland is a beautifully written and contemplative travel companion to our planet’s many subterranean realms. Read more…

5. Lost Anatomies: The Evolution of the Human Form

Of all the books I read on human evolution in 2019, this one stood out in particular. At first glance you might think this is “just” a coffee-table book, but Lost Anatomies contains an extraordinary body of beautiful drawings of our human ancestors that combines science and artistry in a way I have not seen before. Read more…

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“The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel“, written by David Gange, published by William Collins (a HarperCollins imprint) in July 2019 (hardback, 404 pages)

If Gange’s aim is praiseworthy, his approach has been nothing less than audacious. He admits that the sensible thing would be to kayak south to north with the prevailing winds at his back. Instead, he chose for disorientation by total immersion, jumping into an alien ocean world like “the hare-brained, ill-prepared flop” of a guga (a gannet chick). Starting from the northernmost tip of Shetland in July 2016, he paddled south, passing Orkney, the Outer Hebrides, the whole western coast of Scotland (just for good measure), the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland, and, finally, the coasts of Wales and Cornwall. Nicely prepared maps of the route open each chapter.

Tackling the journey over the course of a year in two-week intervals, Gange wrote up the book in the two weeks between each period at sea. As a consequence, The Frayed Atlantic Edge starts off as a travel narrative, but the sights, sounds, and smells of the sea soon take a backseat to historical research and arguments, as well as critical analysis of literature and poetry. During landings and short trips inland he talks to village elders, poets, artists, farmers, historians, archaeologists, naturalists, etc. and scours local archives, picking the brains of archivists.

Gange channels his trip in evocative prose. On launching from the Shetland Islands, he is accompanied by “flocks of gannets [that] form like cyclones overhead.” Battling around the northernmost headland of the Orkneys he reflects on the changing coastlines, musing that “if timelessness exists anywhere on earth, it is not in sight of the sea”. The Scottish mountains on Skye, Rum, and Mull are “young rock cascades suspended in motionless pouring”. Off the coast of Ireland “horizons bright with golden light spilled between pewter sky and iron ocean”. While off the coast of Munster sits the stupendous skerry (a small, rocky island) of Skellig Michael. Home to a tiny 6th-century monastery, it is so jagged that only small boats can land here, “all pilgrims sit small and low in the water as if in supplication at these immense altars in the ocean”.

“Gange channels his trip in evocative prose; reflecting on changing coastlines, he muses that “if timelessness exists anywhere on earth, it is not in sight of the sea””

There is plenty here for readers of nature writing to enjoy, and Gange’s trip is studded with wildlife encounters; curious sea-otters, seals, dolphins and whales aplenty. Two colour plate sections contain breathtaking photographs, while the accompanying website contains hundreds more and has other interesting background material. Though the natural beauty and the battle with the elements is a continuous backdrop, this is no mere adventure story. His mission as historian quickly takes over but is no less fascinating.

The big theme of this book is the marginalisation of coastal communities in historical narratives. Obviously, fishing has always been an important activity (see also my review of Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization), as have other subsistence activities such as collecting of bird’s eggs and feathers, hunting of seals and cetaceans, and harvesting of seaweed. But, often overlooked, the Atlantic coast has long been an international trade hub, and Gange traces threads to Iceland, the Americas, Scandinavia, and Africa. Historian Barry Cunliffe has done much to highlight this in his book Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples, 8000 BC to AD 1500, and Gange mentions recent works such as Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans as a sign that the tide for oceanic histories is turning.

According to Gange, the period leading up to the 19th century marked a sea change. He scoffs at terms such as “the Enlightenment” and “Renaissance” as “an identity politics that values the rich alone”: while big cities such as London and Edinburgh flourished, coastal communities went into near-terminal decline. The modernisation of this era affected numerous aspects, customs, and habits. Modern agricultural methods led to the decline of old farming practices, often degrading the land. Only in the last decade has there been a recognition that traditional crofting practices are the only sustainable form of agriculture in this kind of marginal landscape.

“[…] while big cities such as London and Edinburgh flourished, coastal communities went into near-terminal decline”

Many historic episodes Gange touched on were new for me. I was particularly shocked reading the effect of the Education Acts in the 1870s which sought to standardise education across the British Isles and went hand-in-hand with anti-Gaelic propaganda. It resulted in children who were ill-prepared to value or comprehend local life and who, in the words of an embittered older generation, were educated for one purpose only: to leave their communities to work in the cities.

More recently, Ireland joining the European Economic Zone opened up its waters to international fishing fleets, resulting in “resource-raids inspired by short-term profit in contrast to the long-term custodianship” by local communities. Gange is level-headed enough to not lay the blame with European administrators, but with Irish regulators, insensitive to the needs of their islanders. Similarly, plans by multinationals such as Shell to drill for oil off the Irish coast have met with fierce resistance.

“I was particularly shocked reading the effect of the Education Acts in the 1870s which sought to standardise education across the British Isles and went hand-in-hand with anti-Gaelic propaganda”

Besides the geopolitics, Gange explores the legacy of literature, art, poetry, and (particularly overlooked) oral history. Obviously, they offer a window onto a different era, but recently they have become a vehicle for a renewed interest in local languages. Local archives and historical societies are seeing much footfall, and the opening of local universities means there is a renewed interest in local cultural heritage. I admit that I found some of these sections a bit abstruse, although that reflects on me not being much of an arts and literature buff, rather than on Gange’s writing.

English kayaking literature has a long history, going back to Dunnett & Adam’s exploration of the Highlands in 1934, immortalised in their book The Canoe Boys: The First Epic Scottish Sea Journey by Kayak. Since then, plenty of people have taken to Scottish waters (see the classic Blazing Paddles: A Scottish Coastal Odyssey) or paddled around Ireland (see On Celtic Tides: One Man’s Journey Around Ireland by Sea Kayak, Dances with Waves: Around Ireland by Kayak, or Paddle: A Long Way Around Ireland). Although all of these contain some of it, The Frayed Atlantic Edge stands out for its focus on history over adventure. I expect that those with an interest in the local communities at the margins of the British Isles will devour this book, and it powerfully argues its central message for a rereading of history. But thanks to its evocative writing, it succeeds both as a history book and a travel narrative.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

You can support this blog using below affiliate links, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases:

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“Journeys in the Wild: The Secret Life of a Cameraman“, written by Gavin Thurston, published by Seven Dials (an Orion Books imprint) in August 2019 (hardback, 441 pages)

The downside of being a cameraman is that you are literally out of the picture, so most people might have no idea who goes behind the name Gavin Thurston. But if I say BBC, David Attenborough, Blue Planet II, or Planet Earth you might get an idea. That, and he has won Emmy and BAFTA Film awards for his work. Still stumped? Remember that utterly bizarre sequence in Blue Planet II of an underwater brine pool with an eel suffering toxic shock? That was Thurston behind the camera.

Now, a picture may say more than a thousand words, but Thurston’s book tells of all the things that the cameras did not capture. Journeys in the Wild is divided into seven parts, each seemingly structured around a certain theme (first encounters, courage, patience, luck etc.) and contains a series of diary entries in chronological order.

The material here is thoroughly engrossing and there are some nail-bitingly tense situations: a narrow escape from a kidnapping in India, being caught out in a fierce storm in Antarctic waters, crashing an aeroplane in remote Gabon, being stalked by a pride of lions, or nearly being beaten up by a kangaroo. Especially the trip into war-torn Sudan to film for the BBC is harrowing to read.

But there are also moments of comic relief: dressing up as a gorilla to get close-up shots of sitatunga (small, swamp-dwelling antelopes), dealing with a corrupt customs official in Panama who insists on a “donation for their Christmas party”. But it was the opening scene in a UK studio filming rabbits, where a dominant male rabbit by the name of Piss Dick gets up to no good that had me in stitches, tears running down my face with laughter.

“The opening scene […] where a dominant male rabbit by the name of Piss Dick gets up to no good […] had me in stitches”

There are moments of intense wonder, as Thurston witnesses wildlife and natural events that most people will never see, in many cases before he even has a chance to record it: a chimpanzee admiring a butterfly, the mating call of the male kakapo (an endemic ground-dwelling parrot) in New Zealand, a chance encounter with a wild fossa (an endemic mammalian carnivore) in Madagascar. But he does not shy away from the less glamorous sides of the job: the long days spent waiting in hides, the bush camping under all weather conditions, falling ill while travelling in the tropics, the frequent jetlags, and the long months spent away from home and family.

Thurston has many captivating anecdotes to share and I found it difficult to put the book down. But I thought there was one downside to the way Journeys in the Wild is written. It is literally a collection of diary entries, making the book feel slightly disjointed. One moment we are in the ’90s, the next moment a paragraph header announces we have fast-forwarded weeks, months, or many years to a completely different location. This leaves very little room for a continuous narrative or for reflections on how documentary filmmaking has changed over the years (there are occasional remarks on how technology has advanced, but these are made almost off-hand). The upside of this approach is that it is very easy to pick this book up or dip into it if you do not have stretches of time to read non-stop.

“There are moments of intense wonder, […] But [Thurston] does not shy away from the less glamorous sides of the job”

Although often hard work, documentary filmmakers at the same time lead a charmed and adventurous existence. Many of them would not wish to trade it for something else for all the world. There is a huge audience out there craving to hear their stories, and Thurston joins an illustrious line-up. Attenborough has written many books over the years (most recently e.g. Life on Air, Adventures of a Young Naturalist, and Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist), but the people working behind the scenes have equally captivating stories to tell, e.g. James Aldred’s The Man Who Climbs Trees, Doug Alan’s Freeze Frame, Keith Partridge’s The Adventure Game: A Cameraman’s Tales from Films at the Edge, and the forthcoming The Whale in Your Room: Adventures of a Blue Planet Producer by producer John Ruthven.

I think it is no exaggeration to say that wildlife documentaries have been influential in shaping people’s attitude to the conservation of wildlife and natural habitats (see also BBC Wildlife Documentaries in the Age of Attenborough). If anything, Thurston’s drive to capture footage of some of nature’s extraordinary wonders for all to see shines through in this book. If you ever wondered what goes on behind the lens, then Journeys in the Wild is just the ticket: a captivating collection of exotic encounters and truly memorable adventures.

If you want to read more, an interview with Thurston was posted over at my employer’s blog.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

You can support this blog using below affiliate links, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases:

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Other recommended documentaries or books mentioned in this review:

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“Spying on Whales: The Past, Present and Future of the World’s Largest Animals“, written by Nick Pyenson, published in Europe by William Collins (a HarperCollins imprint) in June 2018 (hardback, 322 pages)

Pyenson, as curator of the fossil marine mammal collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is uniquely placed to write a book like this. The museum houses the world’s largest collection of fossil whale remains and related documentation and publications, and he is intimately familiar with it. Although the first part of Spying on Whales covers how whales evolved from land-dwelling creatures to become the ocean-dwelling giants of today, this book is not a nuts-and-bolts technical account (see instead the readable introductions offered by Return to the Sea: The Life and Evolutionary Times of Marine Mammals and The Walking Whales: From Land to Water in Eight Million Years). Even so, this book adds new information to this rapidly developing field, including a detailed first-hand account of the revolutionary fossil site of Cerro Ballena described in the first paragraph.

Another question informed by palaeontology is how and why whales became so big. As it turns out, gigantism is only a recent development in the approximately 50-million year evolutionary history of whales. The search for clues takes the reader from the blood-stained deck of an Icelandic whaling station to study the finer details of feeding and jaw mechanics up-close (including the chance discovery of a sensory organ in the chin of filter-feeding whales that had escaped everyone’s attention so far), to the waters surrounding Alaska to tag humpback whales to learn more about their feeding behaviours. Along the way, Pyenson covers the theoretical underpinnings of gigantism, including Cope’s rule, allometry (the study of biological scaling, see the classic On Growth and Form) and limits imposed by physics, something which West touched on in Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies.

“Whaling has impoverished the seas in ways we did not even imagine, a perfect example of shifting baselines.”

The last part of the book looks at the uncertain future for many whale species. Having barely recovered from the onslaught of industrial whaling, whales now face new challenges from increased shipping, waste, and chemical and noise pollution. There is a very interesting chapter on shifting baselines. Originally coined in the context of overfishing (see my reviews of Vanishing Fish: Shifting Baselines and the Future of Global Fisheries and All the Boats on the Ocean: How Government Subsidies Led to Global Overfishing), it indicates how each successive generation of humans accepts degraded ecosystems as the new normal, forgetting what the past was like. Some of this ties in with the groundbreaking work on top-down trophic cascades involving orcas, sea otters, sea urchins, and kelp forests that James A. Estes recounted in Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand Nature. Sea urchins eat kelp. When otters were reintroduced following overhunting for fur, kelp forests rebounded. With the disappearance of larger prey items, orcas have in turn, however, started snacking on sea otters. This raises the question of what orcas were eating before industrial whaling. It has been suggested that many large whales were on the menu. Whaling in that sense has impoverished the seas in ways we did not even imagine, which is a perfect example of shifting baselines (see also Whales, Whaling, and Ocean Ecosystems).

A final touch worth mentioning are Alex Boersma’s fine illustrations, mostly linocuts, that were commissioned specifically for this book. She has a deft hand in creating illustrations that are both stylish and informative, her bubble-net diagram on page 115 being a particularly good example.

Spying on Whales is a perfect mix of both science and the stories behind it, laying bare the hardships, teamwork, and effort involved. Pyenson’s narrative is very readable and the personal experiences he recounts are particularly vividly written. I finished the book pretty much in one sitting and highly recommend it, whether you have an interest in palaeontology or whales.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Spying on Whales paperback, hardback, ebook or audiobook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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