This category contains full-length reviews of, short essays about, and new pertaining to books.
When it comes to the most prolific contributor of volumes to the monumental Collins New Naturalist Library series, by my reckoning the winner is Ian Newton OBE, FRS, FRSE. Beginning with Finches (vol. 55) in 1972, and continuing through Bird Migration (vol. 113), Bird Populations (vol. 124), and Farming and Birds (vol. 135), he has recently reached a remarkable fifth title contributed to the series with his newly published Uplands and Birds (vol. 142).
When it comes to classics of American nature writing, Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” likely ranks second only to Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” in terms of the influence readers today would say it has had upon their ways of thinking about the natural world and relationship to it (and indeed, for some, Leopold’s book would outrank Thoreau’s on such a list).
Historically-minded person that I am, when I initially heard that MIT Press was publishing a new book titled The Scientific Attitude, I naturally made the assumption that they were bringing out a new edition of C.W. Waddington’s classic 1941 work of that name, originally published as part of the brilliant Pelican series of paperbacks that provided generations of impecunious university students and any interested others with the opportunity to discover and read the works of many of the world’s great (then) contemporary thinkers.
Sir Winston Churchill once famously remarked “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.” At least so said Sir Anthony Montague Browne, Sir Winston’s private secretary. And for my part, I very much hope he did – […]