Back in 2007 my family and I had the good fortune to visit the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria during its exhibition of artifacts from the Titanic. The exhibit was, without fear of hyperbole, extraordinary. Through the masterful curatorial skills with which the exhibition was planned, designed, and presented, the entire historic portrait of [...]
Last night in New York, the National Book Foundation announced the recipients of their 2009 awards. As previously reported here on The Well-read Naturalist, two natural history titles, Sean B. Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species and David M. Carroll’s Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook, were in contention [...]
For the past decade, the subject of global warming has been a touchy one to say the least. To some it is a simple fact supported by reams of scientific data, to others it is fear-mongering fiction promoted by “environmentalist radicals.”
It was with great pleasure that I noticed among the recently published list of finalists for the 2009 National Book Award not just one but two titles that fell squarely inside the category of natural history.
Thanks to the popularity of Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan’s landmark documentary film The National Parks, America’s Best Idea presently being broadcast on PBS, the writings of John Muir have been selling at an astonishing pace. According to a representative of The Library of America, the publishers of a well known and highly regarded collection [...]