Ingenious stories in the service of deep natural history.
The famous evolutionist meditates on his favorite topic.
Dawkins, bestselling author of The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and numerous other landmark books, argues persuasively that every living creature’s body and behavior can be read as a book. Confronted with a hitherto unknown animal, a future biologist could decipher its entire evolutionary history. Today’s scientists lack the technology and fossil record to deliver a detailed account, but few are more qualified than Dawkins to make the effort. Demonstrating more good sense than many of his colleagues, he makes generous use of photographs and Lenzová’s expert illustrations. The author emphasizes that every individual’s genes came to be the way they are over many generations through random drift and mutation guided by natural selection. Sexual recombination ensures that the gene pool is stirred and shaken, while mutation sees to it that new variants enter the pool. Natural and sexual selection determine the shape of the average genome changes in constructive directions. Individuals, species, and the physical DNA die, but the information in the DNA can last indefinitely. Having laid the groundwork, Dawkins proceeds with several dozen mind-bogglingly fascinating anecdotes describing animals, often wildly disparate, dipping into the ancient history of their DNA to solve problems in similar ways. A mole is a mammal, and a mole cricket is a bug. Adapted to life underground, they have evolved to look nearly identical. The same applies to marsupial and modern placental mammals, who have evolved separately for more than 150 million years. The cuckoo learns nothing from its parents, whom it never encounters, yet its DNA provides everything it needs to know from the species’ long history, including its song and its eggs, the design of which invariably changes to resemble eggs in the nest it parasitizes.
Ingenious stories in the service of deep natural history.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780300278095
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
A heartwarming and inspiring story for animal lovers.
The third volume in the Elephant Whisperer series.
In this follow-up to An Elephant in My Kitchen, Malby-Anthony continues her loving portrait of the Thula Thula wildlife reserve, which she co-founded in 1998 with her late husband, South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony, who published the first book in the series, The Elephant Whisperer, in 2009. Following his death in 2012, Malby-Anthony sought to honor his legacy by continuing his vision “to create a massive conservancy in Zululand, incorporating our land and other small farms and community land into one great big game park.” At the same time, the elephants gave her “a sense of purpose and direction.” In the Zulu language, thula means quiet, and though the author consistently seeks to provide that calm to her charges, peace and tranquility are not always easy to come by at Thula Thula. In this installment, Malby-Anthony discusses many of the challenges faced by her and her staff, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. These included an aggressive, 2-ton rhino named Thabo; the profound loss felt by all upon the death of their elephant matriarch, Frankie; difficulty obtaining permits and the related risk of having to relocate or cull some of their animals; the fear of looting and fire due to civil unrest in the region; and the ongoing and potentially deadly struggles with poachers. Throughout, the author also shares many warm, lighthearted moments, demonstrating the deep bond felt among the humans and animals at the reserve and the powerful effects of the kindness of strangers. “We are all working in unity for the greater good, for the betterment of Thula Thula and all our wildlife….We are humbled by the generosity and love, both from our guests and friends, and from strangers all around the world,” writes the author. “People’s open-hearted support kept us alive in the darkest times.”
A heartwarming and inspiring story for animal lovers.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781250284259
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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