Don’t you hate it, you have finished a book a few months back with a brilliant idea that you want to tell someone about…. and you have no recollection of the name, author or further details.
This is my solution, a placeholder for me to remember great (and even not so great) reads and what made them so. My good intentions is to include the following information:
Title:
Author:
Recommended Read (out of 5, 5 being highest): 3 – is the typical score
My thoughts: [my views if chatting about this to a friend].
From Chapters: [from Chapters.ca or other reviewer]
Organizational Biology 
Title: COOKED: A NATURAL HISTORY OF TRANSFORMATION
Author: Michael Pollan
Recommended Read: 4
My thoughts: I have always been a much better eater than cook. Nevertheless, I certainly like to read about where my food comes from. Michael Pollan’s previously wrote ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ which discusses the various methods by which food is produced. In newish (2013) book, he returns but this time focuses on how it is prepared.
Pollan discusses the challenges of an industrial food production system without getting to jihadist about it. Nevertheless he is not a huge fan of over processed food or our role as a consumer. This book discusses food through four preparation means of fire (e.g. whole hog barbeque), water (stews), wind (bread) and earth (fermentation of cheese, beer, etc.).
The classification works to a point but does fall apart if you apply too much scrutiny to it. As well, Pollan seems to have run out of steam a wee bit after a very strong start with fire and water. Nevertheless, he parades past an interesting cast of characters including a convict felon pit master, an off the grid baker and a cheese making Roman Catholic nun with an advanced degree in microbiology. Memorable bits from the book includes the following:
– I need to get to the US South and experience the various varieties of barbeque including whole hog. The description of the mix of pork meat and crackling on a bun is now definitely a bucket list item.
– I would like to find an artisan fermenter of vegetables. Not only would I like to try the taste but also I suspect that we have not done enough to groom our internal fauna.
– Pollan reinforces the idea that we are a symbiotic creature that needs a healthy microbiological ecosystem in our gut to not only properly digest food but also to prevent malevolent.
– The Beer-before-Bread Hypothesis states that humans adopted agriculture not for food but instead to ensure a steady supply of intoxicants such as beer.
Cooked is a good read for not only the foodie, the cook but also for anyone who eats and wants to better understand where the stuff comes from. Pollan has a casual writing style that makes the consumption of his larder of facts easy to consume.
From Chapters:
In Cooked, Michael Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements—fire, water, air, and earth—to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer.
Each section of Cooked tracks Pollan’s effort to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements. A North Carolina barbecue pit master tutors him in the primal magic of fire; a Chez Panisse–trained cook schools him in the art of braising; a celebrated baker teaches him how air transforms grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread; and finally, several mad-genius “fermentos” (a tribe that includes brewers, cheese makers, and all kinds of picklers) reveal how fungi and bacteria can perform the most amazing alchemies of all. The reader learns alongside Pollan, but the lessons move beyond the practical to become an investigation of how cooking involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships. Cooking, above all, connects us.
The effects of not cooking are similarly far reaching. Relying upon corporations to process our food means we consume large quantities of fat, sugar, and salt; disrupt an essential link to the natural world; and weaken our relationships with family and friends. In fact, Cooked argues, taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make the American food system healthier and more sustainable. Reclaiming cooking as an act of enjoyment and self-reliance, learning to perform the magic of these everyday transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life.
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Oooohhh good addition for my upcoming travel reads!! Thanks buddy!!
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Title: GUT: THE INSIDE STORY OF OUR BODYS MOST UNDERRATED ORGAN
Author: Giulia Enders
Recommended Read: 5 – See my blog: Guts, Gory and the Organization.
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Title: Coppermine Journey
Author: Edited by Farley Mowat
Recommended Read: 3
My thoughts: The journey of Samuel Hearne from the Hudson Bay to nearly the Arctic Ocean. Actually the story of three journeys of which only the third is remarkable or successful. Mowat has edited the Hearne’s journals and puts together a strong narrative about living off the land and with the natives of the time. This includes their skills as hunters but also the savagery. For example Hearne witnesses a massacre of Inuit by his guide and the guide’s camp followers.
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Title: Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways
Author: Christian Wolmar
Recommended Read: 3
My thoughts: An interesting read of how the development of railway technology paralleled that of the railroad. Really this book is about the advancement of logistics to support both peacetime and war efforts. In some cases these two goals were inter-twined, for example the Russian decision to have a different gauge of railway to slow potential invaders. In other cases, the two goals were entirely separate but forced together.
The book is a series of stories of hard lessons learned, lost/ignored and then learned again. For example during the US Civil war Herman Haupt, an obstinate whirlwind of a force that introduced two key principles of railway-warfare:
1) The military were to leave the operation of the railway to the railway, and
2) Train cars were to be emptied and then returned promptly to the rail head.
These principles meant that military commanders could not commander trains for local objectives while interfering with larger strategic operations of the network. Also, hoarding train cars often meant that they were not available to transport future waves of material to support an effort. The result could often mean spoilage and bottle necks of supplies.
While these lessons were learned early in the age of the railway, Wolmar goes onto show how often they were ignored and required re-learning in subsequent engagements. Of primary interest to a) a railway buff and then b) a history/military buff; Wolmar detail can be a bit plodding but he is generally very readable.
From Chapters: The birth of the railway in the early 1830’s revolutionized the way the world waged war. From armored engines with swiveling guns, to the practice of track sabotage, to the construction of tracks that crossed frozen Siberian lakes, the iron road” facilitated conflict on a scale that was previously unimaginable. It not only made armies more mobile, but widened fighting fronts and increased the power and scale of available weaponry; a deadly combination.
In Engines of War, Christian Wolmar examines all the engagements in which the railway played a part: the Crimean War; the American Civil War; both world wars; the Korean War; and the Cold War, with its mysterious missile trains; and illustrates how the railway became a deadly weapon exploited by governments across the world.
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Title: The Secret Language Of Doctors
Author: Brian Goldman
Recommended Read: 4
My thoughts: Goldman’s book is about the ‘argot’ of Doctors (and other health practitioners): the informal and highly specialized nomenclature and vocabulary used by people in a particular occupation, hobby, sport or field of study. Goldman has organized his slang field trip into a variety of categories/chapters such as body fluids (Code Brown), difficult patients (Frequent Flyers), or the obese (Harpooning the Whale). Interestingly, much of the codification for Doctor slang came from a fictional account written by Dr. Stephen Bergman under the nom de plume: Samuel Shem in the book ‘the House of God‘.
Goldman does not seem to have landed on his opinion on the use of slang or an argot among doctors. On the one hand he points to exclusionary nature of slang and how it objectifies and depersonalizes patients. On the other hand, he recognizes the role argot has in helping staff let off steam and create a group identity (for more on this, see my blogs on the Healthcare Ethos). As well, argot can communicate very precisely and quickly information that would be otherwise lost having to translate it into the politically correct-ese equivalent.
The Secret Language is as much about how doctors et al manage and survive the world they find themselves in as a secret code book. Goldman has a good writing style and is a natural story teller – even if has trouble understanding exactly what message he wants to convey about the argot of doctors.
From Chapters:
Have you ever wondered what doctors and nurses are really saying as they zip through the emergency room and onto elevators, throwing cryptic phrases at one another? Or why they do it? Do you guess at the codes broadcast over the loudspeaker, or the words doctors and nurses use when speaking right in front of patients?
In The Secret Language of Doctors, bestselling author Dr. Brian Goldman opens up the book on the clandestine phrases doctors use to describe patients, situations and even colleagues they detest. He tells us what it means for someone to suffer from incarceritis, what doctors mean when they block and turf, what the various codes mean, and why you never want to suffer a horrendoma. Highly accessible, biting, funny and entertaining, The Secret Language of Doctors reveals modern medical culture at its best and all too often at its worst.
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Title: STRATEGY AND THE FAT SMOKER: DOING WHAT’S OBVIOUS BUT NOT EASY
Author: David H. Maister
Recommended Read: 3
My thoughts: This book dovetails nicely into my personal view that strategic planning is largely a waste of time. It is not that planning per se is bad it is that planning without execution is relying on wishes and fairy dust to create change. The book discusses this both at an organizational and personal level. Thus desiring to quiet smoking, lose weight and get fit are noble goals – buying the patch, getting off the sofa and measuring your cardio improvement is what counts though.
For governments, Maister has a good section called ‘Strategy Means Saying “No”‘. In other words, Strategy is deciding whose business you are going to turn away (actively or implicitly). As an aside, see my blog on a similar theme, ‘Can we stop and define stop‘.
From Chapters:
We often (or even usually) know what we should be doing in both personal and professional life. We also know why we should be doing it and (often) how to do it. Figuring all that out is not too difficult. What is very hard is actually doing what you know to be good for you in the long-run, in spite of short-run temptations. The same is true for organizations. What is noteworthy is how similar (if not identical) most firms’ strategies really are: provide outstanding client service, act like team players, provide a good place to work, invest in your future. No sensible firm (or person) would enunciate a strategy that advocated anything else. However, just because something is obvious does not make it easy. Real strategy lies not in figuring out what to do, but in devising ways to ensure that, compared to others, we actually do more of what everybody knows they should do. This simple insight, if accepted, has profound implications for
How organizations should think about strategy
How they should think about clients, marketing and selling and
How they should think about management.
In 18 chapters, Maister explores the fat smoker syndrome and how individuals, managers and organizations can overcome the temptations of the short-term and actually do what they already know is good for them.
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Title: ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE?
Author: Frans De Waal
Recommended Read: 3
My thoughts: A reasonably enjoyable read although I find that De Waal spends too much time fighting old battles and not enough time doing what he does well – describe current science in an accessible manner. As a result, it is entirely possible that we are not smart enough to know how smart animals are. More to the point, we are too limited in our own paradigm to be able to understand a cat, dog or primate’s concepts. The analogy is like a visit to a very foreign country and realizing that you really have no idea why a particular behaviour is practiced. A good read, certainly makes you wonder if we should be eating animals… well other than they are very tasty of course!
From Chapters:
What separates your mind from an animal’s? Maybe you think it’s your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future—all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet’s preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been disproven outright, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence. He offers a firsthand account of how science has stood traditional behaviorism on its head by revealing how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long.
People often assume a cognitive ladder, from lower to higher forms, with our own intelligence at the top. But what if it is more like a bush, with cognition taking different forms that are often incomparable to ours? Would you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you’re less adept at recalling the locations of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your perception of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of a echolocating bat? De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.
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Title:At Home: A Short History Of Private Life
Author:Bill Bryson
Recommended Read (out of 5, 5 being highest): 5 – is the typical score
My thoughts:
Bill Bryson is the master of the rabbit hole. That is, he takes the reader down one hallway, and pops up in an entirely different place. His 2011 book: At Home: A Short History Of Private Life is an excellent example of this.
Ostensibly, we are poking through his 19th century home in rural England. In the process he guides us through the history of poverty, architecture, constructing sewers, the development of archeology and more. This is done be going room to room of his home with each rabbit hole adventure being an excuse and theme for a collection of asides. Here is one example, the impact of ice on improving diets. Wenham Lake in Massachusetts for a while was a famous geographic local because of its ice production and the impact that had on preserving food bound for England from the United States. “For several decades, ice was America’s second biggest crop, measured by weight.”
A great read and a very fun ride. Sort of like surfing the internet within a book but without the annoyance of having to press the mouse button.
From Wikipedia (Reception):
The review in The Guardian noted that the book is not really about home, but a venue for Bryson to present each of a series of historical events as a “well-turned story, a mildly humorous aside, a colourful anecdote”. Historian Judith Flanders said that “occasionally the book seems to have better jokes than it does a sense of history” but still called the book a “treasure”. Another reviewer noted that one with “any interest in furniture, food, fashion, architecture, energy or world history … (will have) stumbled across some (or all) of the information Bryson has on offer (because) countless books have been written on every subject covered in At Home; many are credited in the ample bibliography”.
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Title: Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways
Author: Christian Wolmar
Recommended Read (out of 5, 5 being highest): 3
My thoughts: An interesting read about how trains helped to change they way wars were fought. A bit dry and redundant but also a good review of the conflicts covered. This included the Crimean, US Civil, first and second world wars and the Korean. What is interesting is how long the lessons from one conflict took to be applied to another.
From Chapters: The birth of the railway in the early 1830’s revolutionized the way the world waged war. From armored engines with swiveling guns, to the practice of track sabotage, to the construction of tracks that crossed frozen Siberian lakes, the “iron road” facilitated conflict on a scale that was previously unimaginable. It not only made armies more mobile, but widened fighting fronts and increased the power and scale of available weaponry; a deadly combination.
InEngines of War, Christian Wolmar examines all the engagements in which the railway played a part: the Crimean War; the American Civil War; both world wars; the Korean War; and the Cold War, with its mysterious missile trains; and illustrates how the railway became a deadly weapon exploited by governments across the world.
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Title: Charles Darwin
Author: Cyril Aydon
Recommended Read: 3
My thoughts: I had a reasonably good knowledge of Darwin before reading this guide. This book helped to flesh out the details including his reluctance to publish his theories and the role a comfortable living had in supporting this long time to publish.
From Chapters: Biographer Cyril Aydon drew upon a lifetime’s interest in Charles Darwin and his work to write Charles Darwin: The Naturalist Who Started A Scientific Revolution. The result is a fascinating and informative biography of the famed author of “The Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man”. It was Charles Darwin whose theories of evolution (and whose proposal that the descendants of primordial primates could, over thousands or millions of years, eventually become men through the process of natural selection) would change forever how human beings think of themselves and understand their own genesis. This accurate and engagingly written biographical account blends an overview of natural science with the events of Darwin’s life before, during, and after the publication of his trailblazing scientific treatises. Charles Darwin is a very highly recommended study of a truly great man whose trailblazing contribution to biological science is still a substantial part of public debate and controversy today between religious creationists who deny, and the scientific community which supports, Darwin’s concept of human evolutionary development
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Title: The Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning Story
Author: Brian Brennan
Recommended Read: 4 – is the typical score
My thoughts: Overview: The Social Credit were a force in Alberta from 1935 to 1968 and for most of these years, Earnest Manning was the man at the center. This is the story of his association with the movement and how a poor Saskatchewan farm boy became Alberta’s longest serving premier. Although out of power for nearly 50 years, the echoes of Manning’s governments can still be heard in the halls of the Alberta legislature and its public service. To a large extent, the subsequent Conservative governments under Peter Lougheed changed very little of how the public service was run or its structures. With the consolidation being undertaken by the current NDP government, in many ways the Alberta Government is returning to its roots of a centrally controlled and administered government.
From Chapters: The first book-length biography of Ernest Manning, the longest-serving premier of Alberta, who directed the transformation of the province from Depression-era poverty to modern, oil-based affluence.
Brian Brennan traces the story of a poor farm boy from Saskatchewan with little formal education who rose to become one of the most successful politicians in Western Canadian history while simultaneously attaining long-lasting success as the director of Canada’s National Back to the Bible Hour radio program.
Drawing extensively from a series of oral-history interviews Manning did for the University of Alberta archives after he left provincial politics; from an unpublished memoir written by his wife Muriel; from interviews with family members, former colleagues and others; and from the various books and articles written about the rise and fall of the Social Credit in Alberta, Brennan tells how Manning:
1.) Left the farm as a teenager after hearing William Aberhart preaching the Bible on the radio and moved to Calgary with the intention of becoming a minister of the gospel.
2.) Became Aberhart’s full-time assistant, helping run the Prophetic Bible Institute and participating in his radio broadcasts.
3.) Helped Aberhart organize study groups around the province to make Albertans aware of the social-credit monetary reform theories of an English economist named Major Clifford Douglas.
4.) Coordinated the initiative to turn Social Credit from an educational into a political movement when the ruling United Farmers of Alberta refused to adopt its economic policies.
5.) Stage-managed the successful 1935 provincial election campaign that saw Social Credit swept to power with fifty-six of sixty-three seats and, at age twenty-six, became the youngest cabinet minister in the British Empire.
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Title: How to Disappear: Erase your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without A Trace
Author: Frank M. Ahearn, Eileen C. Horan
Recommended Read: 4
My thoughts: See my blog: https://myorgbio.org/how-to-disappear-when-you-really-need-to-go.
From Chapters: How to Disappear is the authoritative and comprehensive guide for people who seek to protect their privacy as well as for anyone who’s ever entertained the fantasy of disappearing—whether actually dropping out of sight or by eliminating the traceable evidence of their existence.
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Title: THE STORY OF ENGLISH IN 100 WORDS
Author: David Crystal
Recommended Read: 3
My thoughts: I have a soft spot for books on linguistics. Crystal’s book takes you through the development of the English language through 100 choice words. The book is not a straightforward history in that it meanders from one word to another while taking small sojourns in the French, Celtic, German and even Japanese influences. Crystal focuses on British Isle English, American, a wee bit of Australian and just a wee touch of Canadian.
I listened to the audio version on the way to work so it was like having a Welsh accented english professor riding in my car. Nevertheless, I left craving a bit more meat and history. As well a number of the words Crystal covers are new and I would have liked more history rather than potentially fleeting Twitter-verse-esque words. Of course a full helping of Canadianism would have been even better.
A good easy and interesting read.
From Chapters: In this entertaining history world’s most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on one hundred words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the word “roe” was written down on the bone ankle of a roe deer in the fifth century. Featuring ancient words (‘loaf’), cutting-edge terms that reflect our world (‘twittersphere’), indispensable words that shape our tongue (“and”, “what”), and more fanciful words (“fopdoodle”), David Crystal takes readers on a tour of the winding byways of our language via the rude, the obscure, and the downright surprising.
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Title: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Author: Tom Reiss
Recommended Read: 3
My thoughts: Despite enjoying history, I have a limited exposure to the events of the French Revolution. Certainly I know the broad brush details (storming of the Bastille, the terror and the eventual rise of Napoleon). Reiss’ book helped to round this out by telling a history from both sides of the Atlantic. It follows the arc of Alexandre Dumas’ grandfather who made a life in the French Caribbean with a slave wife and his mixed race children. This Alexandre was a scoundrel at best given that he sold these children, except for Alex (the black count) into slavery when he returned to France. Alex was eventually sent for and lived in a particular moment of European history when Africans and mixed races had opportunities albeit not full rights or recognition (but then even the inhabitants of Europe at this time lived a precarious life). It turns out that Alex was brilliant general both in his ability to lead men, logistics and tactics. As a result he was a celebrated general within the republic. When Napoleon went to Egypt he took Alex with him and the latter greatly impressed the locals… and this is where Alex’s trouble began. Despite Napoleon’s reputation as the person who created European institutions, one institution he brought back was slavery and the exclusion of non-whites in French society. Napoleon never forgot the impression Alex made and as a result he and his beloved family were left destitute Alex’s fall from grace and Napoleon’s role in it was the model that his son, Alexandre Dumas, used in creating the Count of Monte Cristo.
While a good read and an interesting slice of history I was not aware of, I found Reiss’ writing to be plodding and his style to have a strong preaching or sermonizing tone. This is a compelling story and Reiss is a good writer, to bad he choose to tell this story in such a heavy handed manner.
From Chapters: General Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
But, hidden behind General Dumas’s swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave—who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution—until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.
The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. TIME magazine called The Black Count “one of those quintessentially human stories of strength and courage that sheds light on the historical moment that made it possible.” But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.
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Title: The Frighteners: A Journey Through Our Cultural Fascination with the Macabre
Author: Peter Laws
Recommended Read (out of 5, 5 being highest): 4
My thoughts: I am not a fan of horror or scary movies or books. I have read Christine by Steve King and that was enough for me. As a result the book Frighteners by Peter Laws would seem a strange read for me.
It is a bit of a strange book as well. To start the author is an ordained minister and not in some obscure faux religion like the cult of the headless Barbie doll (which I just made up and hope it is faux). Laws delves into a number of aspects of the macabre such as ghosts, and zombies and the people who have adopted such things as a life style.
While vampires or death make for titillating reading, also considers darker things such as serial killers, fun stuff. For each of the themes Laws provides a history and a view in the current context of society. The book seems to have been somewhat therapeutic for Laws as it was a way to reconcile his interest in the macabre with his Christianity, his job and his hobby of writing horror stories.
A good read for anyone with an interest in history, even it’s darker bits.
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Title: Mile Marker Zero: The Moveable Feast of Key West
Author: William McKeen
Read (out of 5, 5 being highest): 4
My thoughts: Before AIDS and drug fuelled crime there was the 1970’s. While many people think of California for the US 70’s experience Florida also had its back water counter-culture in Key West. Now over run by tourists, Key West was a centre for drug smuggling, a US Naval base (until its closure) and home to some of the greatest writers of the day. Of course Hemmingway’s ghost lurks in the shadows for these writers as the consumed large quantities of booze, marijuana, drugs and fished.
A good book that introduces this cast of characters, gives worthwhile rabbit holes to explore and provides a tinge of sadness of a time and place that could no longer be created.
From Chapters:**True stories of writers and pirates, painters and potheads, guitar pickers and drug merchants in Key West in the 1970s. **
For Hemingway and Fitzgerald, there was Paris in the twenties. For others, later, there was Greenwich Village, Big Sur, and Woodstock. But for an even later generation—one defined by the likes of Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, and Hunter S. Thompson—there was another moveable feast: Key West, Florida.
The small town on the two-by-four-mile island has long been an artistic haven, a wild refuge for people of all persuasions, and the inspirational home for a league of great American writers. Some of the artists went there to be literary he-men. Some went to re-create themselves. Others just went to disappear—and succeeded. No matter what inspired the trip, Key West in the seventies was the right place at the right time, where and when an astonishing collection of artists wove a web of creative inspiration.
Mile Marker Zero tells the story of how these writers and artists found their identities in Key West and maintained their friendships over the decades, despite oceans of booze and boatloads of pot, through serial marriages and sexual escapades, in that dangerous paradise.
Unlike the “Lost Generation” of Paris in the twenties, we have a generation that invented, reinvented, and found itself at the unending cocktail party at the end—and the beginning—of America’s highway.
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Title: Our Native Bees; North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them
Author: Paige Embry
Recommended Read: 3
When you think of bees and try to list them off you get honey, bumble, ummm… others?. Who knew there were about 20,000 varieties of bees or that most are solitary and like to live in the ground… Paige Embry now does! She takes us through her exploration of North American native bees, a side trip to euro-asian variety imported to give us honey and the role bees have as pollinators.
Paige provides a pretty good overview of what is bee, the various varieties, interesting anecdotes, the ones we have managed to kill off and their future. She has a pretty good writing style with nice asides, colour photos and a few interesting characters. She does a good job of describing the average life of a bee, why the collect pollen and nectar and how the next generation grows up (including a few varieties that indulge in creating zombies out of other bee species’ larvae).
A good read from a history, environmental, social commentary and technical perspective.
From Kobo summary: Honey bees get all the press, but the fascinating story of North America’s native bees—endangered species essential to our ecosystems and food supplies—is just as crucial. Through interviews with farmers, gardeners, scientists, and bee experts, Our Native Bees explores the importance of native bees and focuses on why they play a key role in gardening and agriculture. The people and stories are compelling: Paige Embry goes on a bee hunt with the world expert on the likely extinct Franklin’s bumble bee, raises blue orchard bees in her refrigerator, and learns about an organization that turns the out-of-play areas in golf courses into pollinator habitats. Our Native Bees is a fascinating, must-read for fans of natural history and science and anyone curious about bees.
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Title: Ready to Retire?: What You and Your Spouse Need to Know About the Reality of Retirement
Author: Lyndsay Green
Recommended Read (out of 5, 5 being highest): 4 – is the typical score
My thoughts: See my blog on the book: https://myorgbio.org/retiring-read.
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This Read is Garbage (and that is good):
Some thoughts on a book that was garbage – and why that is a good thing. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte, Jennifer Aquino, et al. [1]. An excellent survey of the world of trash and the disposal of other unmentionables. https://myorgbio.org/book-garbage-land/
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A Walkable Read
The Jetsons would have us believe that flying cars and moving sidewalks are just around the corner. It turns out that the Jetsons live in an unhealthy environment in which the citizens would be fat, isolated and unhappy. The book, the Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, by Jeff Speck gives an alternative, and brighter future. https://myorgbio.org/walkable-read/
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Title: Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys
Author: Rob Dunn
Recommended Read (out of 4, 5 being highest): 3 – is the typical score
My thoughts: In my ongoing efforts to remember what I have read, a description about biological descriptions: taxonomy.
Firstly, I am envious of people who can look at a plant or animal and say with authority, “That is a Flowerious smelleeniceous”. I although I have taken biology courses and have had a long-standing interest in the field, that is a skill I do not have.
As the Bard observed a while back, a rose is smelleeniceous no matter its name. While one could argue that the Binomial Nomenclature should share its place with traditional naming systems, the strength of the system is its comprehensiveness versus its cultural or geographical specificity.
Enter Rob Dunn who takes us through the history of coming up with names for life. Wikipedia or a Google search can give the broad brush history although Dunn accomplishes this with an engaging writing style. A core theme of the book is the challenge of nailing down exactly what is life and the challenge of knowing when to stop looking.
Carolus Linnaeus is the creator of the system we use and wanted to name every living thing within his life time. A reasonable goal if you have one foot believing that all such creatures would fit onto a big boat of biblical proportions. Linnaeus was dismissive of the new science (for his time) of studying microscopic life.
Fast forward a few hundred years and what have we learned? To start, the microscopic realm exceeds in count, volume, and bio mass the macroscopic. That the little bugs live deeper and in more extreme environments as compared to anything else. That it is a matter of definition of when a microscopic bug cease being a life form and instead is simply a collection of chemicals.
Tied to the bug discussion is the Matryoshka doll nature of life. Withing most organisms are parasites, symbionts, and creatures that could go either way depending on the circumstances. Linnaeus saw an Elephant and stopped there. In reality, the elephant is its own ecosystem.
A good read and refresher of this aspect of biological sciences.
From Amazon: Biologists and laypeople alike have repeatedly claimed victory over life. A thousand years ago we thought we knew almost everything, a hundred years ago, too. But even today, Rob Dunn argues, discoveries we can’t yet imagine still await us. More is unknown than known, whether about our bodies or the bottom of the sea.
In a series of vivid portraits of scientists as interesting as the mysteries they chase, Dunn introduces the reader to breakthroughs that have changed the world and others that might still. With poetry and humor, Dunn reminds readers how tough and exhilarating it is to study the natural world, and why it matters.
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