If only the eleventh chapter of Elizabeth J. Rosenthal’s Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson was the entirety of the book, it would still be well worth the cover price; for it is in this chapter, titled “DDT, the Osprey, and the Old Lyme Offspring,” that Rosenthal recounts in exquisite detail what is all too often neglected or underplayed when the life story of Peterson is told. Fortunately, Rosenthal has chosen a somewhat unusual style for her biography of Peterson; one more thematic than strictly chronologic and from this is able to draw more focused attention to threads that spanned years and even decades throughout his life. Read the rest of this entry »

The search for the solution to what Sir John Herschel famously called the “mystery of mysteries” – how new species come to exist – has brought a myriad of remarkable creatures to the attention of science. From Deinonychus to Darwin’s Galapagos finches, every discovery has added another clue to the assembled body of knowledge that may someday yield the solution. Yet after reading Sean B. Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species, the reader is left with another tantalizing question to ponder in addition to Herschel’s mystery; that question being which are really the more remarkable – the creatures that have been discovered in the one-hundred-fifty year old quest for the mystery’s answer or the “creatures” (meant rhetorically and with the greatest possible respect, of course) who made the discoveries. Read the rest of this entry »

Recounting the life of a notoriously private person is, not unexpectedly, a very difficult task. In the case of Roger Tory Peterson, the activity is made all the more difficult by the fact that one facet of his life, his creation and refinement of the modern field guide, so dominates his popular legacy. But while in the minds of millions of nature enthusiasts the name “Peterson” is nearly eponymous with the very idea of a field guide itself, to limit one’s attention to this admittedly monolithic achievement of such a talented and complex man is to misjudge the importance of his true legacy to humanity’s relationship with nature. Fortunately, Douglas Carlson’s biography is sufficiently expansive in scope to encompass the many facets of Peterson without being unwieldy in length or needlessly excessive in detail. Read the rest of this entry »