The Comedian
11-29-2010, 11:28 AM
The other day my daughter (age 6) said to me -- "Dad, I like reading books about animals and plants." (She had just read a book called "Amazing Armadillos").
"Me too" I told her. I had just finished reading a book called Summer World: A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich. Heinrich is an established and respected writer of environmental non-fiction; he's also professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont. He knows his stuff -- environmental nonfiction can waver from spiritual and flaky to scientific and objective, Heinrich on the scientific realm of this sub-genre. Some of his other books, Winter World, The Trees in My Forest, and Mind of the Raven are some of the best books of natural history that you can read.
Summer World is his latest publication. It's divided into chapters based on the plant or animal that's he's investigating and progresses in time from spring/early summer to late summer/fall.
I poured through this book -- I'm a sucker for Heinrich's microscopic focus on the unperceived minutia of the world around us. His chapter on the spring orgy of wood frogs in vernal pools was captivating. . .the same frogs that in awaken from being "frozen solid" in a condition that "they don't have a heartbeat, breathing, digestion, or activity of the brain cells. A reputable human pathologist, applying the same clinical standards to them as he would to one of us, would conclude that they are dead". But every year they rise from the dead to procreate in song. As was his chapter on Mud Dauber wasps, a parasitic wasp that creates mud "silos" for its larvae. . .and feeds its larvae a living, but paralyzed spider. And his final investigation into the reasons why trees shed their leaves in the fall.
And while I greatly enjoy Heinrich's insight into the invisible that lives in plain sight all around us. . . . and while I enjoy his sharp and careful prose. . . .it's his driving curiosity that puts to him a thousand questions and mysteries about the world just outside of his door that I most admire. And I bet you will too, if you get a chance to read Summer World.
8.5/10 Ceropia moths
"Me too" I told her. I had just finished reading a book called Summer World: A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich. Heinrich is an established and respected writer of environmental non-fiction; he's also professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont. He knows his stuff -- environmental nonfiction can waver from spiritual and flaky to scientific and objective, Heinrich on the scientific realm of this sub-genre. Some of his other books, Winter World, The Trees in My Forest, and Mind of the Raven are some of the best books of natural history that you can read.
Summer World is his latest publication. It's divided into chapters based on the plant or animal that's he's investigating and progresses in time from spring/early summer to late summer/fall.
I poured through this book -- I'm a sucker for Heinrich's microscopic focus on the unperceived minutia of the world around us. His chapter on the spring orgy of wood frogs in vernal pools was captivating. . .the same frogs that in awaken from being "frozen solid" in a condition that "they don't have a heartbeat, breathing, digestion, or activity of the brain cells. A reputable human pathologist, applying the same clinical standards to them as he would to one of us, would conclude that they are dead". But every year they rise from the dead to procreate in song. As was his chapter on Mud Dauber wasps, a parasitic wasp that creates mud "silos" for its larvae. . .and feeds its larvae a living, but paralyzed spider. And his final investigation into the reasons why trees shed their leaves in the fall.
And while I greatly enjoy Heinrich's insight into the invisible that lives in plain sight all around us. . . . and while I enjoy his sharp and careful prose. . . .it's his driving curiosity that puts to him a thousand questions and mysteries about the world just outside of his door that I most admire. And I bet you will too, if you get a chance to read Summer World.
8.5/10 Ceropia moths