As one raised on the north Oregon coast in a family with deep and long-standing ties to the fishing industry, and still living within a relatively short drive from it, I am perhaps a bit more aware of marine affairs than the average person. So not surprisingly, when a copy of Professor C. Drew Harvell’s “Ocean Outbreak; Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease” arrived from University of California Press, you can believe that my interest was immediately piqued.
This coming week will see the UK publication by Penguin UK under their Harvill Secker imprint of a book that is already – according to The Guardian – being “touted as the next H is for Hawk;” the book in question being “How to Catch a Mole, and Find Yourself in Nature” by Marc Hamer. How realistic is this touting? Like you, I get a bit skeptical whenever I hear any book breathlessly referred to by the literary cognoscenti as “Y is the next X.”