Fall 2008 Reviews
Tuna: A Love Story
By Richard Ellis
Alfred A. Knopf, 2008
Richard Ellis’s paean to tuna begins as a celebration but ends more like a Greek tragedy. After describing the tuna’s impressive anatomy and physiology and the romantic history of sport fishing for tuna, replete with larger-than-life heroes, from Hemingway to Zane Grey, Ellis delves deep into the darker side of our modern obsession with the big fish. From sushi to Chicken of the Sea®, global demand for tuna has brought us perilously close to destroying the object of our love. Ellis reveals the loopholes and political dealings that have allowed mass slaughter of bluefins to continue despite recognition of their imperiled status. His discussions of tuna ranching and issues surrounding mercury levels in tuna are enough to make any conscientious consumer squirm. The one bright spot in what is a depressingly bleak picture has been recent attempts at large-scale, land-based aquaculture of bluefins. ❧
—Margaret Pizer
Ichthyo
The Architecture of Fish
Chronicle Books, 2008
In stark white images on black backgrounds, the x-rays of hundreds of fish are laid out to make art in the new book Ichthyo. Reminiscent of fine prints in a gallery, a collection of fish from the Smithsonian Institution is exposed and aesthetically arranged to highlight their structural beauty. ❧
—Judy Wexler
The Endless City
The Urban Age Project by the London
School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s
Alfred Herrhausen Society
Phaidon, 2008
With photographs, statistics, essays, and graphs, this comprehensive volume delves into the social, political, and economic factors that affect the “built environment” of housing, buildings, transportation, streets, and public spaces.
—Judy Wexler
The Superorganism
By Bert Hölldobler and E.O. Wilson
W.W. Norton and Company, 2008
Almost 20 years after publishing their comprehensive, Pulitzer-winning tome The Ants, Bert Hölldobler and E.O.Wilson have followed up with an ambitious volume focusing on the emergent properties and evolution of insect social groups. Like its predecessor, The Superorganism is, at its core, a scholarly book complete with theoretical discussions of multilevel selection and literature reviews on bee communication, ant nest-building, and the genetics of caste determination. The authors skirt controversies over sociobiology, selfish genes, and group selection. Hölldobler and Wilson’s stance on these issues is clear from their histories and from their choice of title. Indeed, The Superorganism may reawaken the sleeping ghosts of acrimonious conflicts between Wilson and Dawkins, Gould, Lewontin, and others. But the text itself is understated, relying mainly on the accumulation of scientific data—much of it collected by the authors themselves over the course of their long and distinguished careers—rather than on polemics to make its point that selection has shaped the “beauty, elegance, and strangeness of insect societies.” ❧
—Margaret Pizer
[...] Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity Tuna: A Love Story The Super Organism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies The… [...]