With a format, size, and style of content that is very reminiscent of the original Golden Guides and the Observer’s Books series, the new Princeton University Press Little Books of Nature series is a welcome development indeed.
In his new book “Hearsay Is Not Excluded; A History of Natural History,” Prof. Michael R. Dove takes up the histories of four representative natural historians from the previous four centuries – Georg Eberhard Rumphius, Carl Linnaeus, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Harold C. Conklin – to examine how their own studies were undertaken in times and socio-cultural circumstances when crossing today’s more fortified disciplinary boundaries was not only allowed but expected.
Like the other volumes in Princeton’s The Lives of the Natural World series, “The Lives of Sharks” presents its subjects in a habitat arranged structure that features representative species presented in lively and accessible text that explains shark biology, behavior, and ecology, all of which material is extensively supported by vivid, captivating photos and well-drawn, informative illustrations.
It’s not often that I find myself presented with the opportunity to write about a new book the subject of which centers upon not only the geographic location in which I’ve spent my entire life (thus far, at least) but also the activity that has defined, and even the very person responsible for putting me on, the strange occupational path I’ve followed these past twenty-five odd years.