Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Distinguished professor of philosophy and law Nussbaum (Univ. of Chicago) is author of over 20 books, among them Frontiers of Justice (CH, Dec'06, 44-2056) and Anger and Forgiveness (CH, Nov'16, 54-1138). At the heart of the work under review is Nussbaum's guiding principle, the capabilities approach, extended here to posit that each sentient creature should have the opportunity to flourish in the form of life characteristic for that creature. Who are sentient creatures? Nussbaum's answer: all those beings who can have a subjective point of view on the world and who can feel pain and pleasure. Following this theorem, "justice for animals" lies in the actualization of such opportunities in animals' everyday lives. In the course of advocating for animals and their well-being, Nussbaum has plenty of interest to say about, e.g., puppy mills, factory farming, the plight of whales and other wildlife, and the responsibilities we bear with respect to our non-human animal friends. Acknowledging the need to go beyond legal reformism, Nussbaum nevertheless concludes that the biggest obstacle to justice for animals lies in their lack of legal standing. This book is a must read.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. General readers.

In this small hardback, naturalist-turned-author and professional paleontologist Fitzner (Gaston Design) follows the history of crocodilians through their evolutionary lineage to the present day, and explores related ethical and conservation topics that affect crocodilians (and, by extension, their surrounding ecosystems and the world at large). The chapters are structured to address the history of crocodilians as related to their successive evolutionary adaptions, with titles such as "Physical Adaptations," "The Social Lives of Crocodilians," and "Intelligence." Further chapters address specific subgroups within the Crocodilia such as alligators, crocodiles, caimans, and gharials. The final four chapters delve into more anthropogenic matters, including the history of interactions between crocodilians and humans, crocodilians in mythology and religion, the effects of climate change on crocodilians, and the author's musings on the future of these creatures. Fitzner intersperses his clear and compelling scientific passages with memorable anecdotes from his world travels, adding photographic examples (black-and-white only)--many taken by Fitzner himself--to illustrate key points throughout. This text effectively combines aspects of popular science writing with travel literature in a manner that makes for an easy but educational read. The list of illustrations is almost as informative as the thorough bibliography and index. The book will appeal to a broad readership of scientists, conservationists, and animal lovers.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Wytham Woods, a 1,047-acre site owned by the University of Oxford, is home to some of the longest-running ecological studies in the world. The badger population in these woods has been studied for nearly 50 years by Macdonald (founder of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit), 30 of them working jointly with his former graduate student Newman (who spent 15 years living on site). The 19 chapters comprehensively address behavior, population ecology, and the effects of disease and weather on the European badger, and make appropriate comparisons with the other five genera of the world's badger species. During the study, life history data was recorded on over 1,800 individuals. Given the size of the study population and time depth of the study itself, there should be no surprise that such an enormous amount of information is presented in one volume. The scope is especially apparent when considering the multiple tables, figures, text boxes (some occupying more than a single page), and footnotes included. The volume also features some 70 pages of references. Fortunately, the highly accessible narrative can easily be enjoyed by the more casual reader without parsing the accompanying detail. That said, it seems likely that this work--including its massive data set--will be most useful to researchers and interested professionals.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty. General readers. Professionals.

Grasping feet were a characteristic of the earliest primates, distinguishing them from most other mammals and allowing them to exploit resources in trees. The unique feet of today's humans lost their grasping capabilities and became specialized for upright, bipedal locomotion. Zeininger (Duke Univ.) and colleagues have produced a thorough, up-to-date volume on primate foot anatomy, function, and evolution, focusing on morphological diversity among living and fossil primates, including humans' distinctive feet. A companion to the earlier volume edited by Tracy Kivell and others, The Evolution of the Primate Hand (CH, Mar'17, 54-3230), this book includes two introductory chapters and 14 substantive chapters organized into three parts, with a conclusion ("Recent Developments and Future Directions"). Part 1 focuses on anatomy; part 2 covers the foot from biomechanical, experimental, and locomotor perspectives; part 3 reviews paleontological evidence. Every chapter includes a literature review, the relevant data for that chapter, and suggestions for further reading. Overall, the text offers a comprehensive summary of the synthetic methodologies of its 25 contributors, who are exponents of the most cutting-edge methods employed today. The accessible text is supplemented by many figures, tables, and appendixes. This new book is required reading for all scholars in primatology and biological anthropology, regardless of academic level.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

The lion is an iconic creature--awesome, yet vulnerable. Packer (Univ. of Minnesota) details his 38 years of study of this species. Readers learn that lion prides have a complex yet fluid social structure focused around two or more lionesses. Larger groups are more successful and longer-lived than singletons, and groups fare better with at least one male protector. Packer recognizes individuals by their scars or their whisker patterns. All aspects of behavior--breeding, cub care, hunting--are analyzed by group composition. Packer studies who is travelling with whom and what they are killing and eating, as well as the costs and benefits of living in groups. Success lies in raising offspring to adulthood, which means defending against hyaenas and other intruding males who will kill the young to favor their own offspring. Multimale consortia keep out male intruders and enhance feeding and reproductive success. Competition among males for access to females is severe, sometimes lethal. Packer examines population regulation, considering the impacts of disease in some years, and competition and strife in others. Available habitat with prey and without people has shrunk. Lethal encounters with humans have increased. Overall, lions are in trouble. The final chapter examines the big threats--disease, trophy hunting, and bushmeat trapping--but expresses some hope for the future.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This work edited by geneticist Maclean (emer., Univ. of Southampton) represents an effort to benchmark the status and decline of wildlife species around the world--an ambitious task to accomplish even in 400 pages. Chapter 1, authored by Maclean, is a very well-written and concise overview of the evolution of life on Earth. Each of the following 16 chapters covers a taxonomic class or subclass, e.g., "Reptiles," written by Philip Bowles. The remaining four chapters provide an overview of species conservation efforts. Chapter authors range from postdoctoral scholars to emeritus professors. The broad scope of the taxonomic chapters relegates each to a 20,000-foot view; some authors include case study examples to complement this necessarily coarse-grained approach. The glue that binds these chapters is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Each chapter includes an outline of what percentage of species within the given taxon were Red List evaluated, including biodiversity status indicators (EX for "extinct," CR for "critically endangered," etc.) for the subset of animals to which this tool was applied. The IUCN data allow rough comparisons among taxa, notwithstanding the fact that certain taxa are less well represented--e.g., chapter 11's coverage of insects is relatively sparse.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Johnson, Gilman, and Abel (all, Coastal Carolina Univ.) employ a catchy play on Tennyson's line ("Nature, red in tooth and claw ...") in the title of this tour through the world of predators. Each chapter offers a mix of taxonomy, behavior, and anatomy. The introduction incorporates cultural history (including predators depicted in cave paintings), humans as prey and predator, and general illustrations of ecological webs. Separate chapters focus respectively on sharks, non-avian reptiles, raptors, cats, canids, bears, and marine mammals. Gratifyingly, a much-needed chapter on humans as the biggest, most fearsome predator of all completes the work. Chapter coverage comprises a diversity of included species and evolutionary history, threats and conservation status, human interactions, anatomy, locomotion, biology, and ecology, followed by discussion of how the predatory function works: the sensing, catching, killing, and eating of the prey. Each chapter includes anecdotes and lessons learned (or not) about each type of predator, addressing particularly the predator-human interface. Included, for example, is the story of how DDT condemned the bald eagle, osprey, and peregrine falcon to near-total reproductive failure, and the successful efforts to halt the use of endocrine disruptive chemicals and restore their populations. Every page-turn reveals beautiful photos and informative figures, making easy reading of diverse and fascinating material.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Are bees capable of perception or feeling things like emotion? Apparently so. That is what bee researcher Buchmann (Univ. of Arizona) explains in this book. Based on his own and others' research, Buchmann asserts that all sorts of bees, whether solitary or communal, quasi-, semi-, or eusocial, show complex emotions such as joy, happiness, pleasure, despair, anger, grief, and fear, as mammals do. If bees are "self-aware, sentient . . . conscious . . . solve problems . . . and think" as these investigations seem to confirm, such knowledge will impact the way handling and experimentation should be done with bees from now on. In the book's eleven chapters, readers learn about the mental capacity of all bees: how they experience a multitude of feelings, how they behave toward each other, how they feel about their whereabouts, how they are able to solve certain problems, and even how they use tools. The epilogue and final appendix provide insights into groundbreaking new research and suggest what readers can do to protect, support, and conserve native bees and those commonly used as "livestock" to pollinate commercially grown crops. This pleasantly written book brings new light to the subject and expands the reader's understanding of bees.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Schuster (Western Univ., Canada) views extinction from various angles, including the usual/familiar tallies of animals that have gone extinct, or nearly so, along with accounts of other flora and fauna around the world, showing how the tallies have increased because of human environmental pressures over many years. Most species discussed (such as the American bison) have been driven to near-extinction by purposeful actions of humanity or as side-effects of human ignorance. Polar bears remain in the waiting-room for extinction, with only 26,000 remaining, along with 20,000 lions and 10,000 blue whales. Schuster counts 3,000 tigers in the wild and 10,000 in captivity. About 40 percent of insects, birds, fish, and plants are not far behind. In the course of human history, some groups have tried (and failed) to obliterate others--Schuster cites the assault against Jews during the Holocaust, and intrusions into the homelands of Indigenous peoples around the world. But, Schuster suggests, the ultimate, worldwide extinction event is yet to come, caused by humans through emissions of greenhouse gases. This event will take time, given a current population of about nine billion people on Earth, but if the past is any guide, Schuster posits, human extinction will be the peak event in the history of our species.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Unlike the US government's reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, wolves found their own way back to France more than half a century after their eradication. The inevitable result was, and remains, conflicts between livestock farmers and wolves in a rural France that is becoming ecologically wilder as human populations there decline. Whether as a result of reintroduction plans or an outcome of the natural dispersal tendencies of these tenacious apex predators, the global question of how to live with wolves is coming to the forefront. In Wild Diplomacy, philosopher Morizot (Aix-Marseille Univ.) argues that neither of the historical approaches to managing large predators--exterminating them or confining them to preserves--is currently tenable. He proposes negotiating with wolves in ways that can alter pack behavior and redirect them toward hunting wild prey. This necessitates a better, more complete understanding of wolf society. It also requires a different diplomatic approach, one that emphasizes developing relations instead of prioritizing one entity over another. Morizot systematically evaluates and expounds on the necessary biological, ethological, ecological, cultural, philosophical, and political elements necessary for cohabitating with wolves. This is a noble effort, clearly advanced and brilliantly argued.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.