BOOKSHELF

Natural History, Oct, 2001

The Triumph of Sociobiology, by John Alcock (Oxford University Press, 2001; $27.50)

In 1975, ant expert E. O. Wilson published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, a systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior. Alcock, a biologist, looks at the ongoing debate sparked by Wilson's ideas and shows that they make sense in light of evolutionary theory.

Rock of Ages, Sands of Time, paintings by Barbara Page, text by Warren Allmon (University of Chicago Press, 2001; $45)

Page depicts a sampling of the earth's organisms at million-year intervals to represent evolutionary history from "the origin of macroscopic life on this planet [to] the recent conclusion of a millennium." Succinct essays by Allmon introduce readers to each geological period. Page's 544 contiguous panels will be installed in the new Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York, in 2002.

Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures, by Richard Leakey and Virginia Morell (St. Martin's Press, 2001; $25.95)

The views and voice of Leakey--physical paleoanthropologist, director of the Kenya Wildlife Service (1989-94), and advocate of African wildlife conservation--are captured here by Morell, a journalist who has relied on Leakey's notes and diaries and on her many discussions with him.

The Tangled field: Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control, by Nathaniel C. Comfort (Harvard University Press, 2001; $37.50)

This readable biography of one of the twentieth century's most important geneticists interweaves fact and insight about McClintock as both person and scientist. Her discovery of mobile genetic elements in corn and her efforts to resolve fundamental problems in biology (development, heredity, and evolution) make her, in Comfort's view, a rare visionary.

Uncle Tungsten, by Oliver Sacks (Knopf, 2001; $25)

"Many of my childhood memories are of metals: these seemed to exert a power on me from the start," neurologist Sacks writes at the beginning of his vivid memoir about growing up in wartime England and discovering the life of the mind.

The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth, by Stuart Pimm (McGraw-Hill, 2001; $24.95)

In a book packed with sobering information, conservation biologist Pimm considers our global use and misuse of water and land and the wildly accelerating rate of species extinction, yet he remains confident that good stewardship will save the planet.

The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis, by Lucy Jago (Knopf, 2001; $24)

Explaining these colored arches, bands, and curtains in the night sky became the lifework of Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland, whose theories about the northern lights, electromagnetism, comets, and the sun were accepted by the scientific community only after his death in 1917.

Rowing to Latitude: Journeys, Along the Arctic's Edge, by Jill Fredston (North Point Press, 2001; $24)

Be it storm, bear, or iceberg, nothing is predictable in Fredston's account of summering in the Arctic with her husband in a pair of oceangoing sculls (both work as avalanche experts in Alaska during the winter). One unusual discovery in Norway's Svalbard Islands was a bowhead whale hanging fifty feet above the water, its belly still embedded in the melting glacier that had encased it during the Little Ice Age (1300-1860).

Women of Discovery: A Cerebration of Intrepid Women Who Explored the World, by Milbry Polk and Mary Tiegreen (Clarkson Potter, 2001; $40)

Here, packed with illustrations and photographs, are the stories of eighty-four visionaries, adventurers, artists, and scientists--from Chinese poet Lady Wen-chi, kidnapped by Mongol warriors circa A.D. 190, to U.S. geologist Louise Hose, a dedicated caver who has recently uncovered new life-forms in the sulfurous passageways of Mexico's Cueva de Villa Luz.

The books mentioned are usually available in the Museum Shop, (212) 769-5150, or via the Museum's Web site, www.amnh.org.