1) Brusatte, Steve. Mariner Books. Hardbound: 437 pages. Price: $
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: Tens of billions of birds share the planet with us, an astonishingly diverse array of species that are present nearly everywhere humans call home—and many places we do not. With their flamboyant plumage, joyous dawn serenades, extraordinary aerial feats, they have captivated human imagination for millennia. Undeniably delicate creatures with hollow bones and thin skin protected by downy feathers, how did such a seemingly fragile species break the bounds of Earth and begin to fly, how have they survived millennia, and how does their legacy shape our world?
Hailed as “one of the stars of modern paleontology” (National Geographic), Steve Brusatte now tells the extraordinary story of the dinosaurs' living legacy: birds. He begins by exploring how dinosaurs gradually developed the trademark features of birds one-by-one—feathers, wings, beaks, big brains, keen senses, and warm-blooded metabolisms. He investigates why birds were the only dinosaurs to survive the cataclysmic asteroid impact 66 million years ago and chronicles how these survivors rapidly proliferated to produce the diversity of avian species we know today.
Along the way, we meet a variety of remarkable – now extinct – species:
- 10-foot-tall terror birds with beaks that sliced flesh
- Elephant birds that lived on Madagascar and laid eggs the size of footballs
- Pelagornithid seabirds with 20-foot wingspans
- A ferocious Jamaican ibis that used its wings as clubs to attack rivals
Yet, Brusatte also urges us to appreciate the extraordinariness of birds alive today – penguins that literally fly underwater, parrots that can mimic human speech and crows that can make tools and are smarter than most mammals.
A fascinating scientific history that unearths the origins of birds, The Story of Birds establishes the living legacy of these remarkable species.
RECOMMENDATION: This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in bird evolution!
2) Princeton University Press. Hardbound: 767 pages. Price:
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: When Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man
was published in 1871, the book was an immediate sensation. It presents
Darwin's account of how we evolved from primates and expounds his
theory of sexual selection, which he believed accounted for human
origins and diversity. James Costa and Elizabeth Yale bring Darwin's Descent
to new life in this authoritative annotated edition, shedding light on
the cultural context in which the legendary naturalist developed his
ideas and exploring how subsequent generations of scientists, scholars,
and social reformers adapted them.
Informative and in-depth commentaries accompany the text of The Descent of Man,
enabling readers to engage with Darwin's ideas and contextualize them
in light of our current understanding of human evolution and sexual
selection. Costa and Yale show how Darwin's antislavery commitments and
his beliefs in European superiority shaped his account of the evolution
of human difference, and examine how Victorian beliefs about gender
informed the development of his theory of sexual selection. They explain
where Darwin's arguments about the origins of human differences line up
with modern science—and where they don't.
Spanning the
boundaries of history and science, this fully annotated edition
illuminates the rich cultural and scientific contexts underpinning
Darwin's ideas and introduces his landmark book to a new generation of
readers.
RECOMMENDATION: This book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in Darwin's writings!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.