The Age of Wood (Roland Ennos)

The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization
Roland Ennos
Scribner
Nonfiction, Anthropology/History/Nature
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Computer Age... looking back, one might think that our history began when we started shaping rocks to tame the world, and our future lies in silicon chips and electricity. But long before the first axes and arrowheads, long before Homo sapiens itself came to be, our ancestors were relying on another natural material with amazingly useful properties, one that continues to underpin our modern world, one so ubiquitous it's often overlooked: wood. Author Roland Ennos explores how trees and wood helped transform us from arboreal apes to space-age humans, and how rediscovering the versatility of timber products might help create a sustainable future.

REVIEW: Due to its generally poor preservation compared to stone artifacts, the importance of wood in our own species's prehistory and the development of civilization has often been glossed over. It's only relatively recently that anthropologists have paid more attention to wooden tool making, a process whose roots can be seen in other great apes today (shaping branches to access food sources like insects or honey, even weaving nests for protection from the elements). When one realizes that wood was essential for mastering fire, an immensely pivotal development, it seems a glaring oversight, but Ennos demonstrates how wood has always been such a common part of our world that we almost don't even see it... and, he argues, we haven't paid enough attention as it has disappeared from more and more of our environment, both artificial and natural. Without mastering wood, our species never would've developed pretty much anything we take for granted now. Even the materials many of us think of as replacing wood - iron, concrete, and the like - depended on wood in some form or another, even just as the charcoal and coke to smelt it. Have we outgrown the need for natural materials like wood, in our age of plastics and synthetics? Not at all; there are still many places where wood and wood products are as good as, even potentially superior to, the often-polluting materials we've created to replace it, not to mention the planetary benefits of growing more (and more diverse, not just monoculture plantations) woodlands and the psychological benefits of reconnecting with forests.
For the most part, this book makes for an interesting tour of wood's uses (and limitations) through prehistory and history, generally centered around "Western" cultures but also looking into other places around the world, such as China and the Americas. There are a few parts where I felt Ennos could've dug a bit deeper - his European roots and perspective seem very much evident throughout, and he also waits until near the very end to even mention issues with biodiversity loss that come with overexploitation of woodlands even before modern machinery made logging so much more devastating to the environment - but overall I found it intriguing.

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The Ancient One (T. A. Barron) - My Review
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben) - My Review

The Smart Neanderthal (Clive Finlayson)

The Smart Neanderthal: Cave Art, Bird Catching, and the Cognitive Revolution
Clive Finlayson
Oxford University Press
Nonfiction, Anthropology/Archaeology/Nature
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Popular culture has long relegated Neanderthals to the roles of dumb brutes who were outsmarted by the genetically and cognitively superior humans, leading to their extinction. Over the years, various criteria have been put forth to define the so-called "cognitive revolution", the traits that allowed our branch of the family tree to succeed where lesser hominins failed - traits that were generally considered beyond the supposedly slow, shambling Neanderthals. But more recent studies have turned these notions on their ear. For one thing, genetic evidence shows that there was significant interbreeding during the times when the theorized eradication was supposed to occur. For another, far from being our inferiors, the Neanderthals seem to have been our equals, perhaps our superiors, in some important ways. Author Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist, draws on decades of research, both in the caves of Gibraltar and elsewhere where generations of the ancient human relatives lived and beyond in the natural world, to debunk a few particular common myths, with a special interest what the many bird bones found in the dwelling areas can tell us about the life and times of the Neanderthals.

REVIEW: Storytelling is one of our our species' strengths, a way to pass down knowledge and culture, but it can also be one of our weaknesses if the stories we tell, particularly about ourselves, are built on distortions and lies... and once a story takes hold, it can be very, very difficult to get us to revise the narrative. The story of our own origins is perhaps the most entrenched in our cultural consciousness. For a long time, it had everything people love in a story: a hero (us) facing monsters (those lowly, lesser hominin species, who surely must've been little better than base animals) and proving our inherent, even divinely-gifted superiority with victory over all comers. Even those who determined the "other" was not monstrous tended to show their extinction as sadly inevitable due to inherent flaws in their intellects, their brain shapes, their simple lack of being us. This book is not only an interesting update to outdated notions about "inferior" human ancestors (ones which, as he notes, bear reflections of how different H. sapiens groups belittle and malign others of our own species when cultures collide), but an exploration at how limiting it is to look at any one species in isolation. By looking at the other animal remains, particularly the birds, Finlayson recreates the shifting climates that the Neanderthals would've experienced as global conditions shifted, plus some eye-opening insights into how they must've lived and hunted and viewed the world. The author and his son travel to various regions, observing living birds and their habitats and learning how a primitive hominin might have hunted them. Certain species seem to have been taken not to eat, but for their feathers and talons (as evidenced by tool marks on wing bones and signs of polishing and shaping on the claws), hinting at minds that, far from being animalistic and brutish, could conceive of aesthetic decoration, abstract thought, and perhaps even spiritual notions. That this activity predates the arrival of "modern" humans in their regions nixes the idea that these were just learned and imitated from our "superior" ancestors. Through it all, the author's love of both Neanderthals and the natural world (which really are one and the same, all things considered, as we and other hominins are ultimately animals of Earth) shines clearly, an infectious enthusiasm.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
Last Ape Standing (Chip Walter) - My Review
Paleofantasy (Marlene Zuk) - My Review

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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The Ghosts of Evolution (Connie Barlow) - My Review
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The Invention of Nature (Andrea Wulf)

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Andrea Wulf
Vintage
Nonfiction, Biography/Nature
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Once a household name, Alexander von Humboldt is all but forgotten in many countries, but his life and works continue to influence how we view the world. From the late 1700s to the mid-1800's, he traveled much of the world, viewing nature not as a collection of individual parts but as an interconnected web - and raising an alarm about the disruptive and short-sighted activities of humans and their long-range consequences as strands of the natural web are thoughtlessly snapped. Author Andrea Wulf explores the life and legacy of the first modern environmentalist and the many people he influenced.

REVIEW: It's both chilling and depressing to read of Humboldt even as my nation takes active, borderline malicious steps to eradicate ecological progress, though that makes the topic all the more timely. Like many Americans, I don't recall ever hearing the name Alexander von Humboldt - an eradication partially attributed to anti-German sentiments following World War I, but that's hardly a valid excuse given the man's massive influence that resonates even today. His ability to marry emotion with science, to turn a topic prone to dry numbers and figures into riveting narratives and poetic imagery to capture the greater public's imagination and attention, helped make him one of the greatest naturalists of his age, with books published in dozens of languages around the world. He was not without his flaws, of course, but he was a singular individual who managed to exist at the perfect time and place to create a new vision of the world, possessed of boundless energy and a keen intelligence. As enthusiastic as he was about his many areas of study, he never hesitated to call out our species on its mismanagement of our only native habitat, seeing with his own eyes how deforestation destroyed soil and waterways and poor farming practices exacerbated poverty... calls that, by and large, went unheeded by those with the power to act on them, as witness the state of too much of the world today. Indeed, by the end of his life he had become very jaded on matters of politics. Wulf includes several illustrations from Humboldt's work and others, particularly those who rose in his wake: Thoreau, Darwin, and John Muir, among others who read and fairly worshiped the man's books.
In parts it could be a bit dry, but the message of the man's work is so timely I gave this one an extra half star. I'm seeing it again and again in my reading, how the compartmentalization and isolation of scientific subjects weakens the whole, how the emotions and imagination need to be engaged alongside the intellect if we're going to have any hope of surviving our own tenure on this planet, let alone having any hope of reaching others. Why do we keep forgetting this, and will the lesson ever stick beyond a generation? Where is our Humboldt, with the vision and the drive and the words to teach us again in the face of ignorance and greed so active they seem like viral pandemics poised to wipe us out? I wish I had answers, but I'm just another uneducated reader...

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Ghosts of Evolution (Connie Barlow) - My Review
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Aliens in the Backyard (John Leland)

Aliens in the Backyard: Plant and Animal Imports into America
John Leland
The University of South Carolina Press
Nonfiction, Nature
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: What could be more American than the quintessential country image of a towheaded boy with a can of worms, using a bamboo pole to fish for trout in the local pond, while Ma's apple pie cools on the windowsill and starlings sing in the trees above the cow pasture? Actually, nothing in that image - the boy, the worm, the pond, the apples, the starlings, even the cattle or most of the grass in that pasture - technically qualifies as native. Humans have been mucking up North America since our species first set foot on the continent, each successive wave bring fresh invaders and alterations to the terrain, benefiting some species and harming or exterminating others. The author discusses many imports, some devastating and others benign, and how complicated matters of conservation and protection become when the line between native and import has been blurred almost to the point of meaninglessness.

REVIEW: Like most Americans, I knew that many familiar species, such as the starling and the rat, were invasive pests from the Old World, but I hadn't realized just how many plants and animals had "invaded," some deliberate (often well-intentioned) imports and others either hitchhikers or simply taking advantage of man-made conditions. That great symbol of the southwest, the nine-banded armadillo, didn't even cross the Rio Grande until ranching and farming created ideal habitats, and the much-maligned coyote has not only endured attempts at genocide but has actively expanded its range in recent decades to become a cosmopolitan carnivore from coast to coast. Along with these iconic animals, numerous lesser-known "invaders" have made their mark, for good or ill, on the landscape through the ages. The end result, after thousands of years, leaves America as much a culture clash as a melting pot, both naturally and politically, as various imports have been alternately lauded and reviled, encouraged and eliminated, with life managing to persist (and often thrive) despite massive opposition. It's easy to look at history and point the finger at European colonists as the greatest despoiler and distorter of the land. While there's no denying the extensive, often detrimental changes wrought since 1492, however, Leland points out that the idea of a pristine pre-European American wilderness is as much a myth as the patriotic origins of apple pie; for thousands of years, various cultures have been altering the landscape, sometimes quite extensively, to benefit themselves and their favored plants and animals, as our species has done around the world since prehistoric times. So, with such complex history, are all imports and escapees automatically evil? Many seem to be relatively benign as citizens, so interwoven in the landscape that eradication would likely cause far more problems than it resolved, but that doesn't stop the matter from being hotly debated and efforts at extermination (government sanctioned and otherwise) from moving forward.
It's an interesting overview, but at times it seemed Leland had bitten off much more than he could adequately chew; several entries feel underdeveloped, while others wandered. It also seemed there were some omissions in species covered. (Locally, for instance, trees like holly and mountain ash are imports, but both seem to have become important food sources to native animals. Then there was no mention of one of the great invasives I myself have seen taking over nearby woods, that insidious green tree-strangler known as English ivy - still, inexplicably, available as an ornamental groundcover in nurseries.) Leland also seemed unwilling to commit to the now-widely-accepted notion that the Bering land bridge migration wasn't the only way humans (and many of their accompanying species) reached the New World before Columbus. All in all, it's a decent introduction to the complicated topic of plant and animal migration, one with at least a great of an impact on the nation as human migration... and just as murky and thorny and politically (and ideologically) tainted.

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The Ghosts of Evolution (Connie Barlow) - My Review
Last of the Giants (Jeff Campbell) - My Review
Let Them Eat Shrimp (Kennedy Warne) - My Review

Never Cry Wolf (Farley Mowat)

Never Cry Wolf
Farley Mowat
Back Bay Books
Nonfiction, Nature
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In the middle of the 20th century, the Canadian wilderness faced a dire threat: wolves, numbering in the hundred thousands at least, murdering countless caribou and other valuable game animals. Even bounties failed to curb the vicious beasts from their bloodthirsty ways. To study the problem, young biologist Farley Mowat was sent into the wilderness... but what he found was a far cry from what he'd expected.

REVIEW: I wavered over how to categorize this book for a while. At the time this was published, it was among the first modern books speaking to the public on behalf of the long-maligned wolf, a creature that - like most every animal - humanity has loaded down with its own expectations, myths, and fears with little regard to facts. In pursuit of his points, Mowat evidently tweaked reality, though everything was ultimately based on his true-life observations, and the expedition it chronicles is a matter of record. The essence, though, is truthful, as is the overall theme of people condemning an entire species out of superstition, error, fear, and flat-out greed... a PR problem that continues to plague wolves and other animals as humanity places increasing pressure on our planet's last bastions of wilderness. In a political climate where the outcome was determined long before Mowat boarded a plane for the barrens, the unvarnished truth stood little chance of being heard. The result is an interesting, often amusing and at times surprising chronicle of a young man's struggle toward a truth that society at large had programmed him to resist: the primary problem facing game animals is not predation, but people. Along the way, he makes "friends" with a small wolf pack and a few locals. It's the interactions with the humans that show the most exaggeration - not surprising, as his original intent had been to write about the absurd bureaucracy and other headaches he encountered in his tenure as a government-employed biologist. Today, it reads a little dated (largely due to the somewhat comical embellishments), though it's thanks to writers like him that the notion of a less-than-savage wolf isn't so radical a notion anymore. The ending is particularly potent, and managed to lift the book back to a solid four stars.

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Animal Wise (Virginia Morell) - My Review
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Let Them Eat Shrimp (Kennedy Warne)

Let Them Eat Shrimp
Kennedy Warne
Island Press
Nonfiction, Nature
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In 2004, a massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean devastated coastal cities and killed more than 200,000 people... deaths due in part to the stripping of coastal mangroves for shrimp farms and other developments. It highlighted the cost of an ongoing environmental disaster that only scientists and local communities seemed to know or care about, one that takes on new urgency as we reach a tipping point in climate shift. The author travels around the world to view firsthand the price of mangrove destruction to wildlife, local economies, and people - and finds a few small slivers of hope for the future.

REVIEW: Like any book about the environment these days, it can't help but be a downer. Warne's travels bring him into contact with the many people with a personal stake in mangrove preservation, from various scientists to native villagers, in areas trying (or not even trying) many different tactics with varying degrees of success. Despite the proven worth of mangroves - not just as nurseries to commercial fish and numerous birds, shoreline buffers for storm surges, and providers of nutrients to saltwater environments, but as incredibly efficient carbon sinks to offset industrial pollution - the world by and large still views them as it views all swampland: something to be destroyed, or at best exploited for a quick buck. There are also intangible benefits, the beauty and serenity and inspiration to be found among the life-filled mud and branches and tangled roots of the mangrove forests - inspiration drawn on by prominent writers and orators from John Steinbeck to Martin Luther King, Jr. Placing a monetary value on such things is impossible - but, as Warne points out in his final chapter, the idea that the only things of worth have a concrete cash value is part of what got us into this mess to begin with. He also explains the roots of the shrimp farming global juggernaut, an idea that began with good intentions (as so many disasters do) but which has created a monster... one that few people in industrialized nations seem to care about as they chow down on endless shrimp buffets at their favorite fast-food restaurants. (I distinctly remember watching this shift as I grew up; at one time, shrimp was a luxury food, and then suddenly I was seeing DQ selling them by the bucket.) Of course, it's not the fault of the shrimp industry alone; population growth in coastal cities, rising real estate values, pushes for new tourist resorts and golf courses, and more pressures are putting the squeeze on these brackish rainforests, not to mention poor public image; everyone can see the beautiful fish of a coral reef, or the tigers of a jungle, but mangroves lack a charismatic "face" for people to care about. A growing number of people and governments are coming to realize the cost of mangrove destruction, and the value of sustainability, but with a patchwork of imperfectly-enforced laws and conflicting interests and hard-learned distrust on all sides, it's hard to see much hope for long-term prospects... at least, not until humans are either forced to wake up or knocked off the top of the global totem pole by our own short-sighted land (mis)management. It's a good, eye-opening book, even if some of the names ran together by the end.

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The Ghosts of Evolution (Connie Barlow) - My Review
Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation (Bill Nye) - My Review
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Eyewitness Books: Eagle & Birds of Prey (Jemima Parry-Jones)

Eyewitness Books: Eagle & Birds of Prey
Jemima Parry-Jones
Knopf
Nonfiction, YA Nature/Birds
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: No bird has been so honored by rulers the world over as the majestic eagle, and few can gaze upon a raptor soaring overhead without feeling a sense of wonder. This book offers an introduction to birds of prey around the world, discussing their unique anatomy, keen senses, flight and hunting methods, and their role in human history.

REVIEW: Like all Eyewitness books (and related knock-offs) I read, I primarily focused on the photographs. They are, after all, the main selling point of the series. Raptors make great reference animals for any number of fantastic creatures, and the many high-quality photographs - covering everything from skeleton to feathers and resting poses to active flight - make this book an excellent inspirational resource. The text is also informative, naturally, and written in a simple, kid-accessible style, describing the often mind-boggling abilities of these remarkable birds. This book makes a fine starting point for exploring the world of raptors.