Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Paul Ehrlich, arguably the most influential population and evolutionary biologist of our time, well published and abundantly honored, offers an autobiography describing his journey through science: collecting butterflies, performing summer jobs in the Arctic, and making his way as a Stanford professor. Marrying Anne Howland started a lifelong partnership of science research and advocacy. Several chapters illustrate Ehrlich's sheer joy at experiencing biodiversity, discovering butterflies, birds, and reef fish, illustrating his prodigious capacity for seeing research opportunities everywhere. However, Ehrlich is best known for policy activism and warning about global overpopulation, often on the popular Tonight show (1960s) and through publication of The Population Bomb (1968), which brought praise and criticism, fame and infamy. Ehrlich revisits that book, addressing naysayers, correcting and expanding the predictions, and validating its main points about overpopulation-overconsumption exceeding the earth's carrying capacity. Ehrlich's activism links overpopulation to climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, nuclear weapons, and the threat of extinction. He prides himself on loving people and making friends, so travels, meetings, dinners, new friends, and wine populate many pages. Finally he cites Nabokov: "existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" (p. 326). Perhaps, but what a long and very bright crack it has been. Easy reading about interesting people.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of evolution by natural selection so often overshadowed by Charles Darwin, gets his star turn in this richly textured biography. Costa (Western Carolina Univ.), a longtime champion of Wallace's historical importance, builds on his earlier Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species (CH, Jan'15, 52-2521) and his annotated edition of Wallace's species notebook, On the Organic Law of Change (CH, Aug'14, 51-6741). Unlike Darwin, Wallace worked for a living, and this biography chronicles the hard labor he invested to make his name as a jobbing naturalist, and then as a natural philosopher whose name echoed in the most rarified scientific institutions of 19th-century Britain. Costa also provides in-depth treatment of Wallace's progressive social and political views, deftly interwoven with discussions of his scientific achievements. Scientific and social domains are melded via the leitmotif of boundaries that Wallace explored--geological, biological, and social. Deep research grounds the book, but Costa's prose is nevertheless breezy and informal, driving an often-exciting narrative. Some readers may prefer to skim the asides on current geological knowledge to which Wallace had no access, or the indulgent zoological and botanical descriptions, which at times mirror Wallace's own 19th-century prose, but these features are bound to be useful or even charming to others.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This thoroughly documented family biography grew out of lectures Bashford (Univ. of New South Wales) delivered at Queen's University, Belfast, in 2018. Many Huxleys across six generations appear in the book, but she focuses on Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's contemporary, and his grandson, the scientific communicator Julian Huxley. Bashford uses a comparative approach to examine the men's careers with respect to ten topics, organizing the text into four parts: genealogies, animals, humans, and spirits. For instance, she traces in parallel T. H.'s interest in the marine world and Julian's studies of birds. These comparisons highlight similarities and differences in the two men's activities and provide opportunities to explain how evolutionary theory and the wider culture both changed over time. Recurring themes include the impacts of mental illness on certain family members and the men's complicated attitudes toward race and eugenics as well as religion. Each chapter's epigraph is a family poem. The amount of effort readers must make to keep track of all family members is not excessive, and Bashford's treatment of the scientific material is clear and accessible. The book is suitable for courses on the history of the life sciences and for popular audiences.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Begg brings over 40 years of experience on vaccines to this highly engaging, deeply personal narrative. The book starts by reviewing the history of vaccines and then proceeds to the mechanism of vaccine action, explaining how vaccine research is conducted. The text moves on to discuss the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the societal and public health aspects of vaccination including the issue of vaccine skepticism, COVID-19 vaccines, and finally what the future holds for vaccine technology. The text is written in a story-like fashion and is replete with absorbing personal and professional anecdotes. The content is comprehensive while being cogent. The text is lucid and reads effortlessly. The author manages to communicate complex vital concepts about the science and technology surrounding vaccines to the reader in an honest and unassuming way. This book can easily serve as an authoritative yet accessible resource that provides a comprehensive overview about vaccines for the general population. The absence of references, however, limits the utility of the work as a scholarly text.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates. General readers.

To learn more about cells--how they came to be and how they function--and be entertained by a skilled storyteller who is also a physician and research scientist, readers can do no better than engage with this volume. Having previously authored The Gene (CH, Dec'16, 54-1766) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies (2011), Mukherjee (Columbia Univ.) brings well-known and obscure cell scientists past and present together in a scintillating narrative. He entwines the history of cell science and medicine with occasional examples from his own work, enriching the story through anecdotes highlighting his personal background. Photographic images of featured scientists support the text. Mukherjee waxes nearly poetic in describing the work of earlier scientists, making readers' progress toward understanding the cell as the basic unit of life a vivid experience, evolving from discovery to discovery toward cells' behavior in human reproduction. Included in the story are specific instances in which cell alteration could play a role in disease damage repair. Through cameo portraits of his own patients, Mukherjee recounts successes and failures in his practice and how these events shaped his life. This author's enthusiasm and hopes for the future are infectious, offering an enjoyable read, no matter what readers' backgrounds are.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Viruses are all around us, playing a pivotal role in our everyday lives. Despite their small size, their impact can be felt in both positive ways (through maintenance of a variety of bacteria within the human gut) and negative ones (the COVID-19 pandemic). Roossinck (Pennsylvania State Univ.) provides a comprehensive and beautifully illustrated journey through the fascinating world of viral biology in this natural history of the infectious agent. The text begins with explanations of virus classification, structure, and replication cycles. The author goes on to describe virus-host and virus-ecosystem interactions. The book concludes with chapters on both "good" and "bad" viruses, making it clear that while pathogenic viruses are important, so too are the viruses that help us maintain aspects of life such as bacterial diversity, crop health, genomic evolution, and more. Each chapter, in addition to its explanation of a particular aspect of viral biology, describes specific viruses that help illustrate its main theme. This book offers an excellent overview of the main tenets of viral biology, designed to help readers better understand why viruses cause infection while also highlighting how our environment could not function properly without them.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. General readers.

This is no typical book about DNA as a cornerstone of genetics or gene expression. Instead, Travers (emer., MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology) presents a holistic portrait of the need for information storage in biological systems, and why DNA is an excellent solution. Citing Maxwell, Schrodinger, and Brillouin, Travers highlights early theory about information storage and transmission. Frequently referring to DNA as "code script," he draws comparisons between DNA functions and mid-20th-century development of information storage for computer systems. Dissecting the chemistry of double helix and nucleotide interactions, he considers the structure and function of the long DNA polymer, exposing the important requirement of employing a "decoder" to establish the continuity of information from storage in DNA to protein production. Using both mRNA and tRNA, Travers argues, evolution produced a fascinating solution as RNA is both encoded within DNA and expressed in the same "language" to facilitate the codon-anticodon interactions of protein assembly. Travers also explores the chemical nature of base-pairing as an evolutionary solution to increase sequence recognition through chemical complexity. He treats DNA's ability to dynamically fold into higher-order structures, or to change coiling density through supercoiling, as responses to environmental conditions. This is a welcome, fresh discussion of DNA as a complex biochemical resource beyond genetic functions.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.