“Local people know a lot about managing tropical forests, and they are much better at it than we are.” So writes Charles M. Peters in his new book “Managing the Wild; Stories of People and Plants and Tropical Forests.”
Managing the Wild
Newly Noted Books
New and forthcoming books that are worthy of attention but that have not yet been fully reviewed.
The Book of Seeds
After covering such subjects as beetles, frogs, eggs, caterpillars, and even orchids, the University of Chicago Press’ Life-Size series is finally showing signs of going to seed – well, “seeds” actually (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
Oxford Atlas of the World, 24th Edition
In a world that seems to be changing so rapidly – indeed changing in ways that often seem entirely out of control and beyond anyone’s ability to comprehend – it is reassuring to have a tangible reminder that someone, somewhere is indeed making a valiant attempt to keep at least some of the larger changes in our world under observation and publishing an annual record of what they have noticed.
Plants of the World
I could spend paragraphs explaining how significant the recent publication of “Plants of the World; An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Vascular Plants” is to the history of the literature of botany; how it’s “the first book to systematically explore every vascular plant family on earth,” and how it’s “organized in a modern phylogenetic order [with] detailed entries for each family.”