A City On Mars (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith)

A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin
Nonfiction, Humor/Science
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Few things epitomize the Space Age dream like visions of cities on distant worlds, a future where humanity expands through the final frontier of the solar system. The challenges appear daunting, but so did the challenge of a manned moonflight, and we ticked that box decades ago. Surely, in this age of supercomputers and AI and swarms of satellites, with tech billionaires throwing money and resources at bringing down the cost of space travel, we'll see the first permanent human presence on another world in a matter of decades, at most... right?
Maybe not quite.
While it's true we've come a long way from the days of Sputnik, there are numerous problems to be solved - from thorny legal matters of who owns space and its resources to the practical matters of survival, let alone reproduction, in environs inherently hostile to life - before anyone rolls out the welcome mat on their Martian home. In this book, these obstacles are explored, with speculations on what a space-bound future might actually entail.

REVIEW: From The Jetsons to Star Trek, from space fantasy like Star Wars to grittier takes like 2001 and The Expanse, sci-fi and popular culture are steeped in visions of orbital habitats, space stations, and otherworldly colonies, a seemingly-inevitable next step for the wandering ape that emerged from Africa to spread to essentially every habitable corner of the Earth, adapting to wildly different conditions along the way. Successes like the 1960's moonshot and the International Space Station help keep the dream alive, further fueled by boasts from billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their races to build a better rocket, with exploitation of off-world resources and/or Martian colonies as the stated end goal. But the actual logistics of building and maintaining a human presence on another world, let alone a self-sustaining one, are immense. With humor and some interesting asides, the Weinersmiths break down the challenges confronting any would-be space colonizing civilization, a fair bit of which involves research that hasn't even been adequately done, such as how reproduction in a low-gravity environment would work and what the long-term effects of space radiation would be on an average population (our sample size, and sample specimens, of humans spending significant amount of time off-planet being statistically minuscule and based on trained specialists who had gone through rigorous pre-mission screening). Experiments to create entirely self-sustaining biomes are also not nearly robust enough to tell us what we'd need for a truly independent colony over the long term. Even finding a place to colonize is fraught with problems, from the limited prime real estate on the Moon (only a tiny fraction of locales are ideal) to the toxic "soil" of Mars to the technological challenges of that old staple of sci-fi, the spinning habitat that generates its own gravity. And that's not even getting into the psychological challenges, legal dilemmas, or potential security risks of sending people out into space who could potentially fling rocks down at our planet and re-enact the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact.
Does that mean that space colonization, even in orbital stations, is entirely impossible and will never happen? No, it does not, but the authors make some very valid points as they argue that we're going to have to do some very hard work, some very hard science, and some very deep thinking before we're ready to step offworld.
The whole makes for a fascinating, interesting, and occasionally amusing exploration of a fascinating concept. I'll still enjoy my sci-fi and space operas, of course, but I'm not so blinded by shiny fictional objects as to not understand that the reality, if it ever happens (exceptionally unlikely in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone reading this review), will be something far different, if equally as awe-inspiring and fascinating (again, in theory and concept, if unlikely to be fact anytime soon). I couldn't find any down sides or nitpicks, so I awarded this book top marks.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Beyond: Our Future in Space (Chris Impey) - My Review
Vacation Guide to the Solar System (Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich) - My Review
Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) - My Review

Dinosaurs (DK Smithsonian)

Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Life from Dinosaurs to Humans
DK Smithsonian
DK
Nonfiction, YA? Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life/Science
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: By the start of the Mesozoic - the "Age of Dinosaurs" - life in some form or another had been proliferating on Earth for several hundreds of millions of years, until a mass extinction event (not the first, but one of the most iconic) that ended the Permian Period. From the devastation would rise many grand, diverse plants and animals that would define an era... and the same would happen at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when the Cenozoic began. Using numerous diagrams, fossils, and reconstructions, this book charts life on Earth from the start of the Triassic to the appearance of modern humans.
Material in this volume was previously in Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life from DK Publishing.

REVIEW: I picked this up in the Barnes and Noble discount section because it included many non-dinosaur life forms (plants, insects, and invertebrates, as well as covering Cenozoic times) that are often glossed over in other books on prehistoric life I have... well, that, and I had a gift card that made it free to me. Considering what I paid for it, and the new-to-me material it covered, I can't say I'm entirely disappointed, but I can also say that I would've liked more.
After the overview at the start - giving a quick look at what evolution is, what fossils are, and how we know what we know about biomes that died out long before our own ancestors began walking upright, let alone writing science books - this book starts with the Triassic. I admit I'd hoped for a little on the pre-dinosaur life forms, which I have found frustratingly little on in armchair-accessible works, but at least this volume covers something more than the usual suspects, offering fossils and a few reconstructions of plants, invertebrates, and several non-dinosaur (or non-dinosaur-ancestral, as the "terrible lizards" themselves took some time to rise to dominance) entries. Some were interesting, but most feel like quick post-it notes that only tantalize, that don't always explore what's significant about this particular entry to justify inclusion over others... and a few are just plain irritating, showing only fragments while others that claim in the text to have excellent fossils aren't show well, or at all. More than once, I found places where text contradicted itself, likely the result of incomplete editing as content was revised over subsequent editions. And there are several scientific terms that the book throws around without including a glossary. Those frustrations aside, books like this rest largely on visual appeal, and Dinosaurs does deliver fairly well there. In addition to the bite-sized entries, there are several insets comparing extinct life forms to modern counterparts. This may not be the only book on dinosaurs and prehistoric life one will ever need (no such book exists that I'm aware of), but it's not a bad entry point or addition to a layperson's library on the matter.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Michael J. Benton) - My Review
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs (Riley Black) - My Review
Dinosaurs (Carl Mehling, editor) - My Review

Fundamentals (Frank Wilczek)

Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality
Frank Wilczek
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: What is the universe? How did it begin? How will it end? What is it made of, and how can we tell? Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek walks the reader through ten fundamental concepts that help explain the world around us, the discoveries that illuminated them, and what further questions remain.

REVIEW: Oh, what a difference a mere few years makes... Published in 2021, Fundamentals at times seems impossibly optimistic as it extols a wonderful potential future for humanity and the sciences, how civilization has only grown more accepting of science and empathy, how AI will soon usher in a golden age for the planet. It was almost painful to listen to in early 2025, in a country whose leaders have openly railed against the "sin of empathy" as a destroyer of Western civilization, that has deported scientists and hacked research off at the knees and cowed universities into submission, that has become almost giddy in its rush to reject the very concept of science and the accumulated intelligence and knowledge of centuries as it elevates the basest and most debunked superstitions to national policy and law, how the AI Wilczek hoped would save the world has become a major destructive force in the hands of greed that is being used to undermine the notion of reality itself... but I digress. Setting aside the stark contrast of the dismal present compared to the author's hoped-for future (which seems rooted in a sadly unrealistic notion of our species, or at least those of our species who have grasped the most power to shape our destinies), this is an interesting, if occasionally overwhelming, exploration of the nature of reality itself, from the smallest subatomic particles and forces to the greater universe at large, from clues about cosmic origins and hints about its future. Along the way, he explains the processes that led to the various discoveries and theories, how everyone can benefit from adopting a more scientific attitude toward life and the unknown, and how science is in no way incompatible with philosophy or even (non-fundamentalist) theology. Though - once again - I was unable to find the promised downloadable supplemental PDF file with this Libby audiobook, I found it intriguing. I just had a very hard time even pretending to share a glimmer of the author's wonder and optimism through the metaphoric stormclouds on the national horizon...

You Might Also Enjoy:
It's Not Rocket Science (Ben Miller) - My Review
Everything All at Once (Bill Nye) - My Review
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil deGrasse Tyson) - My Review

The Possibility of Life (Jaime Green)

The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos
Jaime Green
Hanover Square Press
Nonfiction, Media Reference/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Are we alone in the cosmos? Ever since humans realized we are not the center of the universe, many have looked to the skies and wondered if, somewhere beyond our tiny sphere, other minds were looking back at us. But where might such life be found? What would it look like? Would we even recognize it if we saw it? What would happen if we ever made contact? Could we even begin to communicate with extraterrestrials? Drawing on experts and sources in history, science, and visionaries in science fiction, the author explores the possibilities of life beyond Earth.

REVIEW: - Given the sheer scale of the universe at large, the idea that Earth alone has been blessed with life of any sort seems almost ludicrously self-centered. Whether that life ever moves beyond single-celled organisms, let alone achieves the level of civilization required to be detected, let alone initiate communication with us, is another matter altogether. In exploring how people have approached the notion of extraterrestrial life and potential for civilizations beyond Earth, the author demonstrates how it's as much about learning more about ourselves and our world - not just on a sheer biological level, but psychological and cultural levels - as it is about speculative evolution.
Drawing on both fact and speculative fiction - Green explores how our fiction about aliens has evolved, and how it reflects both the eras in which it was crafted and ultimately reflects human hopes and fears and understanding - the book explores a broad variety of topics encompassed in the seemingly simple question of whether or not alien life exists. In doing so, it reveals how much we still don't understand about ourselves and our fellow terrestrial life forms past and present; even the definition of "life" itself is slippery, let alone defining life as it might have sparked and evolved under vastly different conditions. On Earth, convergent evolution tends to arrive at similar solutions to general problems - as prehistoric reptiles and whales and fish arrived at roughly similar body plans for optimal aquatic survival, for instance, despite not being closely related - but would that be the case elsewhere? And then there's the matter of brain biology and psychology. When we have great trouble envisioning the world as, for instance, a dolphin or bat experiences it, would we even have a chance of understanding a hypothetical alien ambassador standing right in front of us? There is rarely consensus on any given topic, and Green tends not to rely on just one expert or source. She also acknowledges how cultural biases have colored speculations, even beyond our inherent human thought processes.
There are a few blind spots, particularly in the science fiction works she cites and which she chooses to explore in depth. (How could she discuss aliens thinking and communicating in barely-comprehensible-to-humans ways without mentioning the creations of C. J. Cherryh, who in at least one book (The Pride of Chanur) had a species speaking in matrices that even other aliens often struggled to understand?) A few topics also felt less deeply explored than others, though that's an understandable issue given that, thus far, the whole subject matter of the book is hypotheses and speculation, let alone the bits and pieces that make up that subject. The whole, however, is an interesting enough look at the matter of alien life, and how it ultimately often becomes a mirror in which to better understand our own selves and the futures we both fear and hope for.

You Might Also Enjoy:
To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers) - My Review
On the Origin of Species (Charles Darwin) - My Review
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum) - My Review

The Truth About Animals (Lucy Cooke)

The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife
Lucy Cooke
Basic Books
Nonfiction, Animals/History/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Since humans first began noticing the natural world, misconceptions have abounded - not just in folklore or myths, but in the works of apparent experts and theoretically learned people... and not just in ancient times. It's not all just harmless ignorance, either; bad press and flawed understanding can substantially harm conservation efforts and the future of our planet. Zoologist and author Lucy Cooke examines several species that have borne the brunt of our species's seeming inability to separate fact from fiction and superstition from science, from bats to storks and eels to hippos, even the venerated panda.

REVIEW: Anthropomorphizing nature is one of the oldest human traits, turning them into supernatural agents or morality lessons or embodiments of our own aspirations or failings or plain old wishful thinking. Unfortunately, this idealized thinking can prove a serious problem when one is trying to understand the truth, as demonstrated in this examination of several key species. One would think that we'd be over that by now as a species, or at least science would be over that as a discipline, with our advanced understanding of so many fields and our increasing awareness of our own faults, but, as Cooke demonstrates, even in modern times myths and mysteries persist, with many secrets the natural world is still reluctant to offer up for our edification.
With a focus on the "Western" world's views of nature and how the roots of science and understanding were so hopelessly entangled with ideas that appear quite ridiculous now (but at the time were often implicitly believed to be true), Cooke explores the history of natural science and the people who both advanced and regressed the field. From the notion that eels spontaneously generated in river mud to beavers having hidden human-like communities complete with law enforcement, many false notions were rooted in the ancient classical world, where armchair experts repeated travelers tales as gospel truth, often with a dash of moralizing that would be raised to an art form in medieval bestiaries. Animals like the sloth were dismissed and denigrated by Europeans as "useless", when in fact their slow-motion lifestyle is such a successful way to survive in their native habitat that it evolved twice, while bats were treated as agents of evil in much of the world because theoretically intelligent H. sapiens brains apparently could not wrap their minds around something that couldn't be neatly defined as "beast" or "bird", and hyenas were considered cowardly and nasty because they just plain look less noble than a lion (who, it turns out, scavenge hyena kills more often than hyenas scavenge lion kills, despite popular media depictions). Even scientists in "enlightened" ages often skewed data based on their own religious or moral assumptions, even deliberately burying observations they deemed "unsuitable" for general knowledge (such as the sex lives of penguins - especially ironic, given how the nature documentary March of the Penguins was embraced in conservative circles as depicting an ideal monogamous family). Politics also invariably come into play; for many years, it was a commonly understood "fact" that North American animals (and, of course, natives) were inferior to their European counterparts in every conceivable way... a notion that was difficult to dislodge when most of the "experts" penning natural science resided in Europe. Even today, politics warps popular perceptions: for instance, "panda diplomacy" has created a highly artificial image of the panda as a cutesy but clumsy and naturally deficient "teddy bear" in desperate need of human intervention to even reproduce, when in fact human interference and captive breeding has created an entire population of animals so divorced from their very capable wild cousins that reintroductions almost invariably end in disaster. (As for the notion they can't even breed competently, that's yet another result of humans projecting human ideas and moralities onto wild animals; pandas breed just fine outside of captivity, just not very well in monogamous pairings that are forced on them in zoos.) The only thing they need from people is to be left alone with sufficient natural habitat to survive... but that's something nobody seems particularly interested in hearing, let alone doing, even in their native country. And then there's how people have used/abused animals through the ages, where even the best intentions often go awry; the African clawed frog, once a boon in the days before simple chemical strip pregnancy tests, is responsible for the worldwide spread of a toxic fungus devastating global amphibian populations after they escaped or were released into nonnative environments.
As part of her research, Cooke talked with many working conservationists and scientists who are doing their level best to dispel old myths and bad press before time runs out on the conservation clock, as it has for too many species. Misunderstandings and mysteries still plague the field, despite modern technology being brought to bear on matters such as eel reproduction (a reverse-salmon situation, where adults breed in the ocean and the young swim upriver to live for years until returning to the Sargasso Sea to breed... though, as of the book's writing, apparently even now nobody has witnessed the act). There is still so much to learn (and unlearn), even as a fresh tide of intentional ignorance seems to be rising globally in the form of authoritarian governments and would-be theocrats gaining traction.
At times, I'd hoped for a little less focus on the "Western" perception of animals, and maybe a little more on how native populations considered the creatures they lived beside for countless generations (though even they were not above anthropomorphizing and other misunderstandings). The whole is a plea for humans to step off our pedestal and actually look at the world around us, that we are part of (little as many seem willing to admit it). Seen on their own terms, even the "lowest" and "ugliest" animal is valuable and wonderful, with much to teach us if we're willing to learn... which we can't do until we stop insisting we're the pinnacle to which all others should kneel in subservience.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Frans de Waal) - My Review
Being a Beast (Charles Foster) - My Review
Animal Wise (Virginia Morell) - My Review

How to Survive History (Cody Cassidy)

How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History's Deadliest Catastrophes
Cody Cassidy
Penguin Books
Nonfiction, History/Humor/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: History is a dangerous place, but it also has some excellent sight-seeing. After all, where else are you going to witness herds of woolly mammoths or the splendor of 1400's Constantinople? If you managed to obtain a time machine, and avoided the pesky causality paradoxes that might erase your own existence, you could experience the vacation of a lifetime... but it's not much of a vacation if you don't make it home safely to share your photos on social media. If a Tyrannosaurus Rex crashes your Cretaceous-era picnic, could you get away? If your working vacation takes you to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, how would you blend in? What if your trip to long-ago London coincides with the arrival of the Black Plague, or your around-the-world cruise drops you into Magellan's ships, or your Old West adventure lands you in the notorious Donner Party? Find out in this handy guide to some of the world's greatest disasters, and learn from those who survived.

REVIEW: As the description implies, this is a nice, light "popcorn history" book. Using records, archaeology, speculation, and some science, as well as numerous interviews with experts (not all of whom agree on the best courses of action to, say, survive the Titanic or escape Pompeii), Cassidy brings big ideas and moments down to a human scale. From facing off against giants of Earth's prehistory to surviving the darkest years of the Dark Ages to escaping the ravages of the worst tornado ever recorded in America and more, he whisks the reader/time traveler through highlights (or lowlights) of the past and offers survival tips for the savvy time tourist. Each entry is fairly short and contains interesting details, though a few gloss over what felt like important points and end a little abruptly. Overall, though, it's an intriguing little book of historical facts and factoids and speculations.

You Might Also Enjoy:
A SURVIVAL GUIDE: Living with Dinosaurs in the Jurassic Period (Dougal Dixon) - My Review
Terry Jones' Barbarians (Terry Jones and Alan Ereira) - My Review
Where's My Jetpack? (Daniel H. Wilson) - My Review

Hallucinations (Oliver Sacks)

Hallucinations
Oliver Sacks
Vintage
Nonfiction, Biography/Medicine/Psychology/Science
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: The first word that pops into most people's heads when someone mentions "hallucinations" is "crazy". After all, only a deeply disturbed mind could conjure images and voices from thin air, and only an equally disturbed person would actually believe these figments of imagination brought to apparent life, right? But hallucinations, of various forms and with various causes, are something most everyone has experienced at some time or another, from the phantom ringing phone at the edge of sleep to the "night terrors" associated with sleep paralysis. Medical doctor Oliver Sacks explores the causes, manifestations, and history of hallucinations through the lenses of medicine, psychology, and popular culture past and present.

REVIEW: This was another random selection via Libby. Like many people, I, too, have experienced what author Sacks would call "hallucinations" a time or two, mostly around the edges of sleep, though never to the extent of needing medical intervention. Referring to historical texts and recent investigations, as well as some personal experiences, Sacks relates the broad range of phenomena that could be called "hallucinations" - covering everything from seeing objects that do not exist to hearing voices to migraine "auras" to the phantom limbs felt by amputee patients and more - and how quite a few people who experience them aren't "crazy" in the least. Brains are tricky, complicated organs, about which quite a bit is still not fully understood, and the fact that we rely totally and utterly on them to interpret input from our senses to understand the world around us (and understand our own thoughts about said world) means that we can't always reliably sort out what's actual sensory input and what is a hiccup or glitch in the wiring or processing units. Historically, many cultures did not attach the stigma that the modern world often places on hallucinations, and sometimes they were deliberately sought out for healing or religious reasons. Likewise, not all hallucinations are necessarily harmful or indicative of major problems. Several of the stories were interesting, though the book as a whole seemed a little scattered, some parts feeling shallow or barely touched on before Sacks moved on, and I thought it could've used a stronger wrap-up at the end to summarize and tie together what it had covered. (Part of the problem may have been that the topic turned out to be too broad to adequately cover in a single volume of any reasonable length.)

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Third Man Factor (John Geiger) - My Review
Other Minds (Peter Godfrey-Smith) - My Review

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs (Riley Black)

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World
Riley Black
St. Martin's Press
Nonfiction, Dinosaurs/Science
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Death came for the dinosaurs on an otherwise ordinary day approximately 66 million years ago, a seven-mile-wide rock plunging through the atmosphere at unthinkable speeds, unleashing unimaginable devastation. There are many places it might have struck where the devastation would've been less complete, but luck was not with the Earth that day. Massive quakes, volcanoes, a global ash blanket and years-long winter, poisoned air, acid rain... In the hours, days, months, and years to follow, the fallout would continue to resonate around the world. Of those who survived the initial impact, many would succumb afterward... but from those who survived would come a rebirth, new species proliferating, eventually leading to a particular species of upright-walking mammal who would look back upon that lost world in wonder. Using science and speculation, author Riley Black recreates snapshots of those days of devastation and renewal.

REVIEW: Many people look back upon the Age of Dinosaurs with both awe and regret. Awe at the sheer scale and diversity and strange nature of the extinct animals that once walked our Earth, even as glimpsed through the fragmentary fossil record from millions of years in the future. Regret that, barring time travel, we will never actually meet the former "rulers" of the world. But people tend to forget, or simply gloss over, that just because they were the dominant and most noticeable life forms, the dinosaurs were never alone; there were plants, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and more sharing that world... and they, too, were impacted by the asteroid impact that would utterly transform life on Earth in its wake. Black emphasizes this interconnected nature of life in ways that several books seem to overlook as she recreates moments around the world, moving from the hours just before the strike to the immediate and longer-term aftermath. This approach paints vivid pictures, if sometimes quite bleak ones, of what the survivors endured, as well as how much sheer evolutionary happenstance played into what species lived and which perished. The sheer scale of devastation utterly boggles the imagination, but what's almost harder to wrap one's mind around is how anything at all survived... and not only survived, but eventually flourished. It is no exaggeration to say that we owe our current world, and our very existence, to that wayward space rock, which destroyed so much but also created conditions for a new world to rise from the ashes, if one forever marked by the tragedy. As we barrel into a new age of mass extinctions and rapidly shifting climate (nowhere near as immediately catastrophic as that asteroid, but just as potentially fatal to our species and numerous others), it offers some hope that, even out of all this devastation, something beautiful might eventually arise... even if no human eye is there to witness its flowering.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ghosts of Evolution (Connie Barlow) - My Review
Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Michael J. Benton) - My Review
Tyrannosaur Canyon (Douglas Preston) - My Review

Other Minds (Peter Godfrey-Smith)

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Nonfiction, Animals/Philosophy/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: For a long time, many humans - especially in the "Western" world - considered ourselves the sole thinking, self-aware animals on Earth. But that kind of thinking, even assuming it was true, never answered questions about how we came to possess the brains we have, able to process information and ideas as we can. More recently, research has shown us we are not as alone as we think we are; other animals have been shown to demonstrate behaviors and brain patterns we once reserved exclusively for ourselves, with increasing evidence that they possess some sort of "inner lives" too... but what might that look like? How and why, indeed, did minds like this evolve? Searching for answers, philosopher and scientist Peter Godfrey-Smith turns to animals with remarkable intelligence, animals that diverged from our own ancestors long before even the Cambrian "explosion" of life, animals that some have called the closest we humans may ever get to encountering a truly alien mind: the octopus.

REVIEW: This is an interesting exploration of the evolutionary roots of brains and consciousness, a process that has led to two very different "solutions" in humans and cephalopods. To understand philosophical questions of awareness and what being a nonhuman is like, one must understand something about how humans and nonhumans came to be, the biological and environmental and social pressures that drove what was once a presumably content free-floating cell to transform over countless generations into the remarkably complex life forms with remarkably complex behaviors that we're familiar with today. Through fossil records, gene sequencing, experiments, and more, some truly mind-boggling answers have come to light, particularly in recent years - answers that, in true scientific fashion, lead to even more questions. It is difficult enough to put ourselves into the mind of another mammal, or even a bird, but the cephalopods are further removed from us on an evolutionary scale even than insects, and the intelligence they've developed may be that much further beyond our imagination, suited to entirely different bodies and lifestyles than anything remotely familiar to us. It makes for some interesting thought experiments, if nothing else.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Frans de Waal) - My Review
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum) - My Review
Your Inner Fish (Neil Shubin) - My Review

The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum)

The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens - and Ourselves
Arik Kershenbaum
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Animals/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: For generations, humans have speculated on what life on other worlds might be like. Given the many strange surprises and wonders that have evolved on Earth, and in the most unlikely of places, what could an entirely alien ecosystem produce? So far, aside from speculation (and innumerable offerings of science fiction and Hollywood), nobody knows, but it is possible to make some educated guesses. After all, while the details may be unknowable (such as whether alien biomes would use DNA as a basic genetic material, or show right/left body symmetry as the majority of Earth animals do), some things - the basic physics of locomotion, a need to consume nutrients and reproduce, adaptability in the face of changes and the opening or closing of niches, the constant trade-offs of advantages and disadvantages, and more - are quite likely to be universal. Zoologist Kershenbaum draws on our own world's prehistory and other sources to offer educated guesses on what we might find if we ever manage to glimpse life on another world.

REVIEW: Drawing on what we understand of evolution and adaptation from the first living microbes to the current Anthropocene age, plus several other disciplines such as mathematics, linguistics, studies of animal intelligence and communication methods, probability and "game theory" behaviors, and more, author Kershenbaum offers compelling arguments that, while we of course can't conjecture specifics of alien life, we can make some very educated guesses about what such life might look like. The idea that there is other life in the universe (microbial at the very least) appears more and more likely, even if interstellar civilizations (so far) have yet to make an appearance on our telescopes. Even though we only have one known example of a living biosphere (our own), we can make some general educated guesses based on what we have learned - knowledge that is still expanding and being rewritten, particularly in areas such as animal intelligence. Much of life is about solving problems, even if that problem is as basic as acquiring energy for survival or moving toward a nutrient source (or away from a threat)... the sort of problems that any life form is going to encounter, be it on Earth or elsewhere.
From the start, he admits that some terms he uses - even the term "animal", when there's no way to even know if alien biospheres would have any distinctions like what we think of as animals, plants, or fungi - are terms of convenience for the thought experiments in the book. From there, he makes convincing arguments that several of the things we find in Earth evolution are more likely than not to have analogues elsewhere, such as methods of locomotion or sound as an ideal method of intra/interspecies communication or the development of certain social dynamics and strategies. Others, however, are likely to be unexpected or surprising, especially in areas where life on Earth has developed numerous strategies and no one has come out a clear winner (such as the various ways Earth life forms reproduce). Later chapters speculate on artificial life or tailored evolution, and whether or not immortality is a feasible goal even for a superintelligent species. At more than one point, he delves into the thorny issues of what constitutes intelligence, and what constitutes "human" or "person" - concepts that most of us think we know, but which are very difficult to definitively quantify, especially if we were ever to be faced with making such calls in the faces (or equivalents) of actual non-Earth entities. In numerous places, he acknowledges the speculations of sci-fi creators without belittling the genre or sneering at their creations (even when they're biologically unlikely or were created for allegorical purposes). Throughout are notes on other works for further reading on a wide variety of topics covered. The whole makes for a fascinating exploration of an interesting topic. In considering what might evolve on alien worlds, it explains much about how life evolves and behaves on our own world, and why.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Undeniable (Bill Nye) - My Review
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil DeGrasse Tyson) - My Review
The Doors of Eden (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review

Where's My Jetpack? (Daniel H. Wilson)

Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived
Daniel H. Wilson
Blackstone Audio
Nonfiction, Humor/Science
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Moon colonies, flying cars, robot servants, ray guns... the Golden Age of science fiction promised us all these things and more by the year 2000. We're several years past that, and so far, science has not delivered our personal jetpacks or hoverboards. What gives? Scientists had one job, after all: give us our Jetsons future. The author, a roboticist, runs down several amazing predictions and what happened to keep them from coming to pass... or, at least, coming to pass as part of everyday casual life.

REVIEW: Any book on "future" tech is bound to age iffily. This one, published in 2007, already feels almost quaint. Nevertheless, it does what it set out to do: with a humorous spin, it explores the fates of a selection of sci-fi staples. Many are (or were at the time) much closer to fruition than is apparent, while others fell victim to exorbitant costs (and/or lack of sufficient interest or return on investment to make it worth pursuing), or thus far are still basically impossible (such as revival from a cryonic state). Instantaneous transportation, in the vein of Star Trek's transporter beams, has actually occurred... but only at subatomic levels. Weapons that might be deemed "ray" guns have been developed, even if they aren't the retro-looking casual sidearm of many a fantastic space adventurer. Underwater colonization hasn't happened (yet), but at least one submerged hotel exists, or did as of this book's original publication. Thought-controlled robotics and prosthetics are still not universal but are doing more and more impressive things. Moving sidewalks and "people movers" have found some real-world applications. And robot "pets" were already being explored.
In the years since Where's My Jetpack? was published, some tech has leapfrogged those here; smartphones, for instance, seem to be taking up the cause of the "universal translator" better than the dedicated portable device Wilson describes. A few other predictions, unfortunately, have fallen victim to reality; we still have not sent a manned presence back to the moon, which Wilson excitedly predicted was supposed to happen in 2018 by original NASA timelines. (I might also mention that the growing contributions of nations other than America, Russia, England, and the European Union were also apparently not predicted, or not generally mentioned; I'm writing this mere days after India became the fourth nation to successfully land an unmanned mission on the moon - just after Russia's effort failed.) He also seemed blissfully unaware of what climate collapse would do to the potential tourism draws of those underwater hotels; bleached and lifeless coral reefs just aren't quite what most tourists have in mind.
While I can't exactly blame it for aging, the presentation itself often gets too clever for its own good, offering thin glimpses of a given subject that gloss over a lot of material or nuance; even in old sci-fi, not all predictions were equal, with different authors offering different tech with different implementations, some more plausible than others. (And, seriously, no Asimov in either the "robot buddy" section or the "city-in-a-skyscraper" section?) He also seems reluctant to explore the drawbacks of a given tech that also play roles in keeping them out of the public eye (or not, as we've seen in the case of self-driving cars that keep being pushed onto public streets despite ample evidence of them not being ready for prime time, or skyscrapers that are growing so tall that they become death traps in the way predicted by Towering Inferno). It often seemed like Wilson was more interested in being funny than being informative and thought-provoking, and I found the humor a bit hit-and-miss myself. (I think the target audience of this book was that envisioned by most Golden Age sci-fi authors: almost exclusively young men, American or English or otherwise "light". The idea that anyone else might be interested in sci-fi still seems inconceivable to too many people... but I digress.)
Overall, while some of the entries are intriguing, I wished for fewer jokes and more substance.

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Written in Bone (Sue Black)

Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
Sue Black
Arcade
Nonfiction, Anatomy/Autobiography/Science/True Crime
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The human body has more than two hundred bones, and we are born with more individual bones than we end up with as adults. Though all bones are marvels of engineering and evolution on a macro level (if not without failure points and potential flaws), they also record the story of our individual lives, from before birth until our deaths. Forensic anthropologist Sue Black, among the top experts in her field, offers a guided tour through the human skeleton, along with stories of how the bones have been used to identify remains and shed light on lost lives and possible crimes.

REVIEW: The relatively recent long-running TV series Bones (a highly fictionalized take on the matter) and popular crime novels (such as those the series was based on, by another forensic anthropologist) have raised public awareness of the field, a more specific offshoot of general anatomy and forensics (the latter of which has long been of general popular interest in various media). This is Black's second book, but the first I wandered across and picked up based on the admittedly unscientific method of "there was a multi-book discount sale, I needed one more book to take advantage of it, and this one looked interesting". It happily turned out to actually be interesting, even to a marginally educated and minimally intelligent person like myself. As promised by the cover and opening, she walks the reader through the skeleton from cranium to metatarsal, from initial fetal formation to lifelong changes. Many also come with stories, from her own career and other sources, on what particular purpose they have served in identifying bodies or victims of crimes. Unlike Hollywood or other fiction, these stories don't always tie up in a neat little bow in twenty to forty minutes (plus ad breaks), with a victim and a suspect and a dramatic courtroom presentation that breaks the defense and ensures justice is done (until the writers get desperate for a storyline and decide they need a recurring nemesis character). Black's stories are reality, which is often fragmentary and lacking a dramatic arc or resolution, her involvement with the case limited to her expertise and not the actual tracking down of perpetrators, when there is a perpetrator to be tracked down; many involve simply identifying remains of those who passed from natural or undetermined causes. Some stories are tragic, some are even amusing (more the living people involved than the deaths, of course), and Black's writing can take some witty turns. At several points, she refers the reader to her previous book, All That Remains; not having read that book, I was a little left out of those references, but overall this one stands on its own as an informative, accessible look at the human skeleton and how much information a skilled forensic anthropologist can extract from it.

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Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Michael J. Benton)

Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology
Michael J. Benton
Thames and Hudson
Nonfiction, Dinosaurs/Science
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Since their discovery, dinosaur fossils have puzzled and fascinated people, spawning all manner of speculation. What kind of animals were they? How did they live? What did they look like? When did they first arise, and what made them die out? In recent decades, new discoveries and technologies have led to a veritable revolution in our understanding of the "terrible lizards", answering all manner of questions and leading to countless fascinating new ones.

REVIEW: I've had an armchair interest in dinosaurs since childhood (nothing remotely scientific or intelligent, naturally, more of a generalized awe and fascination). Lately, it seems like every other day I see a new article about an amazing find or reinterpretation, brought about by new methods of examining fossils and breakthroughs in other fields. Since most of my meager dinosaur library is rather dusty by now, I thought it high time to pick up something newer to see what's changed, and this looked like just the thing.
The author, a working paleontologist, has seen firsthand how the field has been radically transformed since the 1980's, and offers both personal and professional observations of the shifts and breakthroughs and debates. Using terminology friendly to the average reader, he explains such things as how the dinosaur family tree has been reinterpreted, how it was determined that dinosaurs were most likely warm-blooded, how new technology and tools borrowed from architecture programs helped answer questions about locomotion and bite strength and probable feeding strategies, even how similarities with bird feathers led to the first-ever determination of dinosaur colorations and patterns. All of this has transformed the field from something more speculative to somewhat harder science, though of course there remain innumerable questions to be answered, and some that will likely never be answered (barring time travel, of course). Several illustration plates and photographs are included, as well as graphs, though the latter are sometimes a bit over the head of the lay reader (at least, this lay reader). It culminates, of course, with a chapter on the dinosaurs' extinction and the wider acceptance of the massive meteor impact theory, though there is some indication the dinosaurs were already in some decline globally before then.
While the terminology and science and names could get a little thick now and again, on the whole Dinosaurs Rediscovered is a fascinating look at how far paleontology and dinosaur studies have come in a few decades, a revolution that is still ongoing. I might be stretching a slight bit with the extra half-star, but the subject is just so awesome (in both the technical "awe-inspiring" and colloquial "totally cool" senses of the word) I consider it earned.

You Might Also Enjoy:
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Scatter, Adapt, and Remember (Annalee Newitz)

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive A Mass Extinction
Annalee Newitz
Anchor
Nonfiction, Science/Sociology
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: If there's one thing the history of the earth teaches us, is that change is inevitable - as is extinction. Since its formation, the planet's atmosphere has veered from snowball to greenhouse, methane to oxygen, lush tropical paradise to barren wasteland, even the occasional catastrophic impact from space. Species come and go, with life enduring massive upheavals and bottlenecks. So far as we know, however, humans are the first species to not only be able to observe and predict coming catastrophes, but engineer our own survival. As life itself has to change to survive in dramatically altered circumstances, so, too, we will have to change: how we live, how we think, what we value, even perhaps our own bodies. In this book, author Annalee Newitz looks to the past to understand where humans have come from and what we've come through, then to the present and future to consider what challenges we face in our long-term survival and what we might have to do to endure.

REVIEW: Oh, the sweet optimism of the previous decade... Starting with the earliest life forms (cyanobacteria) to showcase how life has proliferated even under the most trying of circumstances and bounced back from extinction-level events of almost unimaginable proportions, Newitz's book - published in 2013 - offers tempered optimism, based on humanity's previous brushes with oblivion, that we can overcome the numerous challenges before us - climate collapse, resource scarcity, disease, and more - and come out the other side, perhaps altered on a fundamental level but still alive and potentially thriving. Unfortunately, I'm reading this after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that makes a lie of her extensive chapter on global disease and how humanity "will" come together to confront and overcome the next pandemic threat... something which, as we sadly know, is not what happened, at least not as well as one might hope. Instead of coming together and embracing science for the good of the whole, too many turned to tribalism and denial and weaponized ignorance to deepen divides and gain short-term political ground on the backs of long-term damage and death tolls, even leading to potential knock-on effects (I have to wonder if the politicized ranting about vaccines is linked to the current worrying dip in standard childhood vaccinations and rise in diseases like measles in "developed" nations that had once beaten it back; even as I type this, one American state proposed banning COVID vaccines altogether, a move which, even if it was withdrawn, is an exceptionally worrisome sign of the overall political climate that has gained far, far too much traction in recent years, not to mention the general state of education that allowed said climate to develop in the first place... but I digress). Considering that this book was written only ten years ago, it's a sad statement that the author's optimism has so quickly dated her book. It also makes other scenarios and changes she proposes seem far less likely to come to fruition; she does acknowledge that there needs to be sufficient political will to fix problems current and future, but I think she underestimated the level of resistance and even active backsliding those in power seem prepared to execute just to maintain their grips and the illusion that nothing needs to change (because if nothing changes they won't lose their power). That things do need to change is absolutely undeniable, and the many different possible changes and responses to different threats are outlined here, through numerous interviews with experts. From living skyscrapers to underground shelters to potential body modifications and even space colonization, all manner of possibilities are discussed.
Despite the unfortunate dating (after only a decade), it's an interesting exploration of what the future could bring if humans choose to rise to the occasion. I wish I had more faith that any of the futures Newitz outlines here will come to pass. If they do, I fear it will only be after our current catastrophic age plays out to the very last gasp, with far more losses all around than should be necessary if we really lived up to our own species name of "wise man".

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The Red Canary (Tim Birkhead)

The Red Canary: The Story of the First Genetically Engineered Animal
Tim Birkhead
Bloomsbury USA
Nonfiction, Animals/Biography/History/Science
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Since its discovery by Europeans, the canary had fascinated the western world with its enchanting song, if not its original drab greenish coloring. Captive breeding became a booming industry, and soon gave rise to both brighter colors and greater song variations, but it wasn't until the early 20th century, in the canary breeding hotbed of Germany, that anyone thought to turn the fledgling concept of genetic inheritance to the matter of deliberately creating a canary not seen in nature or any domestic random mutation: a red canary. To do this, one would need to introduce genes from a related species and somehow get the hybrids to breed true without otherwise compromising the basic canary makeup: selective genetic introduction. The idea sent shockwaves through the highly competitive world of canary fanciers and breeders around the world. But even as amateur scientist Hans Dunckler turned his prodigious intellect to the task, aided by local Bremen fanciers, Germany was developing another, far less wholesome interest in the matter of genetics, one that would derail the experiment and bury its originator under a generation of scandal.

REVIEW: I obtained this as an e-book some time ago when it was discounted (possibly even free), and finally got around to clearing it from the backlog. Birkhead touts the long-unsung contributions of amateur scientists and domestic bird keepers and even medieval bird-catchers to modern ornithology (while glossing over the destruction to wild populations and somewhat questionable birdkeeping practices of the not-so-distant past, such as blinding birds so they'd sing more), as well as the long-besmirched contributions of Dunckler to canary breeding in particular and bird genetics in general. The author's opinions show fairly clearly beneath the research and retelling, occasionally compromising objectivity to the point where even I, a notoriously unobservant reader, noticed. He does, however, present a mostly interesting history of singing birds in captivity and the canary breeding craze that was, for a time, a very lucrative cottage industry in various parts of the world. Dunckler was indeed revolutionary in his way, seeing the potential for genetic transfer between species in a time when Darwin was still somewhat controversial. Politics, though, have a way of warping everything and everyone; Dunckler was swept up in the eugenics fervor of the Nazi party, not particularly against his will, and whatever his later rationalizations, a lot of harm was done by him and others like him. Because of that association, much of his work was swept under the rug of history, but his canary breeding experiments led to later breakthroughs, even as they showed that he was overlooking some key ingredients to success. (They also, sadly, likely helped contribute to the near-extinction of the tropical red siskin, the species chosen for the cross-breeding, which remains critically endangered and a target of bird smugglers to this day.) In any event, while the author's ideas and preconceptions had a way of coloring the narrative, overall it's not a bad exploration of its subject.

You Might Also Enjoy:
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Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith)

Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin Press
Nonfiction, Humorous Nonfiction/Science
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Since the earliest days of civilization (and likely earlier than that), people have speculated what the future would bring, what marvels and dangers awaited just beyond tomorrow: would we be zipping around a utopia in flying cars, or toiling in Martian mines under the whips of robotic overlords? Most predictions have turned out to be dead wrong (for better or worse), and yet time and again our world has been transformed, and will continue to be transformed, by new ideas and discoveries. The authors examine ten bleeding-edge fields, some of which are already making waves and others which may be destined for the dust-heap of predictions with those flying cars.

REVIEW: Zach Weinersmith is the creator of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, one of my personal favorite online comics (if one that admittedly is aimed at a higher academic and intellectual level than my paltry high school diploma qualifies me to appreciate), which frequently tackles the occasional absurdities and potential pitfalls of scientific breakthroughs. This book explores several real-world technologies that may not be quite ready for proverbial prime time, but which have the potential to remake society... sometimes in ways we may not like (or simply not be ready to handle, though that could be said of most any seismic technological shift.) The Weinersmiths spell out what the technology is, where it currently stands, what it could do for us (or to us), and the problems holding it back at the moment, from practical and economic issues to ethical concerns. From the problems with offworld expansion to the possibilities of neurological upgrades, from custom-grown organs to augmented reality, they present a fascinating array of technologies in an intelligent, accessible, and often humorous fashion. A closing chapter sums up some technologies that didn't make the final cut, while an extensive list of acknowledgements and citations point the way to further reading on every subject covered. The potential futures that could be opened by any of these technologies becoming mainstream are dazzling, dizzying, and occasionally disturbing, yet the idea that few might ever come to pass in my lifetime - especially with a seemingly-increasing societal momentum away from science as a goal or even a concept - is also vaguely depressing. It's a very enjoyable book even for undereducated readers like myself who are curious about such things.
As a minor nitpick, though, the ebook has a few formatting issues with text occasionally running over illustrations (not the first title I've read on Overdrive to have this problem, unfortunately.) This is not new technology; is it that hard to get them to display properly?

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Paleofantasy (Marlene Zuk)

Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live
Marlene Zuk
W. W. Norton and Company
Nonfiction, Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: From "paleo" diets to barefoot running to "natural" child-rearing and family structures, countless modern trends look to our ancestors as the ideal model of human lifestyles and behaviors. Surely, the argument runs, the environment we evolved to fit in for hundreds of thousands of years is a better fit for us than all this newfangled agriculture and city-dwelling, which must be to blame for most (or even all) of our modern stresses and ills. Back then, we were perfectly suited to our place in our world, and it in turn was perfectly fitted around us - right?
Not so, says evolution.
Since the first single-celled organisms started reproducing and passing on genes, life has been less of a spiritual quest for harmonic perfection than an eternal ad-hoc balancing act of survival, every competition won bringing one up against new challenges, every innovation fraught with unintended consequences. Humans are no different from other lifeforms in this respect, and our past was no less full of problems than our present, if different problems than some we face today. Author Marlene Zuk explores and explodes the myth of a golden paleo past, as well as the notion that we humans are somehow beyond the processes of natural selection and evolution that brought us to where we are today.

REVIEW: I've always been a little skeptical of these trends that claim all the answers to our ills lie beyond a golden, conveniently opaque curtain of time: how things were invariably and universally happier, healthier, and better X generations ago, or Y ages ago... even the notion that life on Earth was perfectly peaceful and harmonious until Z event. It strikes me as the evolutionary equivalent of the old saying that nostalgia is remembering yesterday's prices while forgetting yesterday's wages; it's easy to just look at one side of things through rose-colored glasses and imagine (or handwave) away the less appealing sides lost in the shadows.
Zuk cites numerous researchers and studies as evidence that the answers to the world's ills are not to be found by regressing to a previous era. Indeed, the era that many are envisioning as ideal - often pegged sometime in pre-agricultural Paleolithic times - was likely nothing at all like popular culture imagines it, as indicated by archaeological evidence and studies of modern pre-industrial cultures. That's not to say there aren't numerous problems created by modern life, but that pretending we were perfectly adapted for a world that no longer exists is not only not helpful, but ignores our cultural and genetic history, not to mention blinds us to actual and practical solutions. Zuk has a particular bone to pick with the paleo diet fads, particularly the idea that Homo sapiens has not had adequate evolutionary time to adapt to eating grains or consuming dairy products; numerous studies and genetic evidence show that evolution works much faster than some people seem to think, within a few thousand years in the case of several genetic adaptations, well within the timeframe for agriculture's development. She can get a trifle overbearing on these points, clearly frustrated by how people seem to fetishize a Paleolithic world that's more Flintstones than actual science. (The idea that modern lifestyles alone are responsible for diseases like cancer is its own source of obvious irritation.) The chapters can sometimes feel a bit long, and now and again the tangents into genetics feel thick for an undereducated layperson like myself, though there are numerous footnotes and an extensive chapter-by-chapter bibliography for further research and reading.
On the whole, Zuk effectively makes her points about how mythologizing prehistory does little good, and might even do actual harm, while cheapening the remarkable truth about human origins and the ongoing, marvelous mechanism of evolution itself.

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It's Not Rocket Science (Ben Miller)

It's Not Rocket Science
Ben Miller
Sphere
Nonfiction, Humorous Nonfiction/Science
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Science. It's all over the news, from climate change to DNA to space exploration to Higgs bosons, but how many of us really understand that stuff? Let's be honest; somewhere on the path between basic arithmetic and quantum physics, many of us got lost in the brush. Fear not: British comedian Ben Miller is here to help. By cutting out several years' worth of tedium and background equations and experimentation, he offers the edited, exciting-bits-only reel of modern science.

REVIEW: Miller presents a spread of science dishes, from evolution to relativity, even including rocket science, made palatable for the average reader who may have an interest in science but feels intimidated by it. Naturally, many details are necessarily glossed over, but this book states at the outset that it's just offering an introduction, a way to make sense of some of the terms that float through the news feeds these days, and perhaps spark curiosity for further personal exploration. Once in a while, I got the sense that some of what was cut out altered the topic under discussion in a subtle yet fundamental way, but - being an undereducated idiot myself, and a product of American public schools to boot - this isn't something I can quantify, just a sense I had that some subjects felt a trifle skewed or bubble-wrapped, though never overtly warped. Miller being a British comedian, his references sometimes slid just to the side of my American background, though the overall humor comes through. (Also, being from 2012, it has a sense of optimism about the future of science in Britain and America that looks almost quaint when viewed in 2019, given alterations in trajectories for both nations - particularly the latter.) Still, it delivers precisely what the cover promises, complete with a bibliography for further reading.

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The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben)

The Hidden Life of Trees
Peter Wohlleben
Greystone Books
Nonfiction, Nature/Science
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Intellectually, most people know that trees are alive: they grow, they reproduce, they even become ill and eventually die. But we tend to think of them as little more than objects. Certainly plants can't see or smell or taste or remember or communicate, can they? Recent research proves that they can do all of that, and more - or, at least, they can if humans haven't messed up their growing conditions, planting them in the wrong environment or cutting off the root networks they build beneath their forest homes or culling their elders before they can raise the next generation of giants. A European forester discusses the fascinating lives of trees and how doing better by our woodsy neighbors might be the key to our own long-term survival on Earth.

REVIEW: In truth, this might be better titled The Hidden Life of Trees and Fungus; one of the integral parts of a healthy forest is the symbiotic relationships the trees (and other plant life) develop with surprisingly vast and complex networks of fungus beneath the soil, networks that allow them to communicate information about water levels and pest outbreaks and other stresses and dangers, even enabling them to share food with ailing neighbors. A lack of appropriate fungus partners might well be responsible for failure of some trees to thrive, particularly when transplanted to unsuitable urban or suburban areas. The findings and observations Wohlleben reports (in easy-to-digest lay terms) are amazing, much of it overlooked until very recently due to our innate tendency to only see life on an animal level and not the inconceivably slow and strange timescale - centuries, even thousands of years - experienced by trees. Much of the research is so new it seems to raise more questions than answers; tests confirm that trees can learn, but nobody can agree just where memories are stored, or how, or even if they're stored in the tree itself or in the root or maybe even the fungus network where so much tree activity takes place. Trees are even responsible for the habitability of inland environments and possibly life in the seas, as well; without chains of forests from coasts to the interior, promoting evaporation and cloud formation, rain would never reach the middles of continents, and leaf litter in streams has proven to promote the growth of plankton, the very base of the oceanic food pyramid. One wonders just how much we have destroyed unknowingly in our long-term (mis)management of woodlands, and how our own future is (again) threatened by our inability to think beyond our own immediate lifespans and needs. The author offers hope for the future, as new awareness and laws attempt to turn the tide around, but when recovery takes forest-scale time - five hundred years, he estimates - one can't help despairing that we impatient apes, with our ever-changing minds and ever-changing political priorities, just aren't equipped to undo the damage we've done. (Even if it proves too late for us to change our ways, though, Wohlleben suggests that trees, with their timeless wisdom, may well endure to grow over our bones.) After reading this, I don't think I'll look at a tree the same way again...

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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Neil deGrasse Tyson
W. W. Norton and Company
Nonfiction, Science
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Relativity theory, the Big Bang, pulsars, galaxy clusters, dark matter... Science news reports on all manner of new theories and discovered wonders in the universe these days, but to the average person, it can be more than a little overwhelming. Popular scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down the vast field of astrophysics for people who don't know where or how to start.

REVIEW: This title promises a quick, simplified "tour" of the vast (literally and theoretically) field of astrophysics and why it's so important. For the most part, it delivers. Starting with the "Big Bang" at the start of the (known current) universe, it touches on the terms, discoveries, and theories that inform our current understanding of reality as we know it... and how each breakthrough leads to more questions. From the stars at night to the very atoms that make up our bodies, we literally owe everything in existence to events billions of years ago. At the end, Tyson touches on why sciences like astrophysics, which seem to have no tangible short-term benefit, are really the most important of all if we're ever going to mature and survive as a species. (Given recent attitudes toward science by more than one developed country, I sadly suspect H. sapiens has chosen voluntary extinction over embracing the notion that we aren't the center of the universe, but I digress...) The organization can be a bit scattershot, and even in simplified terms some of the concepts are just too big to stuff into my undereducated primate gray matter, but it does live up to its title.

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