Recommended Reading

Because it is so difficult to find excellent books on natural history, I decided to share the books I found to be outstanding. Nature, of course, is very complicated and notoriously difficult to describe. It is difficult to find works that write about the “nature of things” with passion and insight—the secrets of the universe don’t come easy.

Things fail for various reasons. Authors go down wrong paths, work too fast, stop too soon, and connect too little. I suspect authors also fall prey to fear, fear that no one will read their books. The pressure to sell is ever present, and before you know it, the biases start to creep in, the nature trail disappears, and you end up knee deep in the muck. The greater the influence of cultural and scientific bias, the harder it is to get at the heart of nature.

So who knows what they’re talking about? Who has a real passion and feel for the subject matter? Who is authentic? Even if one is very choosey, finding accurate descriptions of nature is a challenge. For every book on this list there are probably five I started to read and couldn’t finish, and twenty I considered reading that are still at the bookstore. Below are the few that I can recommend. Please let me know if you have titles to add. Thanks!

Mike Tidwell carbonmike@gmail.com

Tidwell's Recommended Natural History Books:

Exploring the Nature of Things

Richard P. Feynman summed it up best: “Here are all kinds of myths and pseudoscience all over the place. I may be quite wrong, maybe they do know all these things, but I don't think I'm wrong. You see, I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something, and therefore I see how they get their information and I can't believe that they know it, they haven't done the work necessary, haven't done the checks necessary, haven't done the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don't know, that this stuff is [wrong] and they're intimidating people. I think so. I don't know the world very well but that's what I think . . .

. . . If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is, but whatever way it comes out, it’s nature is there and she's going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn't predefine what it is we're trying to do except to try to find out more about it . . .

. . . If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we're going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned and then look for some mystic answer to these problems. How a scientist can take a mystic answer I don't know because the whole spirit is to understand . . ."

One note here. The authors here fall roughly into two categories. One group is the excellent writer or storyteller, who, with a lot of integrity, works very hard and pulls off a great description of a complicated piece of nature. But while these authors can be quite intimate and skillful with their subject, it pays to remember that they are still often on the outside looking in. Even in well-reasoned and creative descriptions of nature there is often an inherent distance between the subject at hand and the author, leaving some doubt about what part is the story and what part is the nature. It’s like Matt Ridley says. Let’s suppose that every morning that you get up the driveway is wet. Well, there are of course many clever theories that could explain the driveway being wet . . . sprinklers, fog, rain, thermal inversions, neighbors, gardeners or even combinations of factors. All are plausible and appealing but you are still guessing about the real answer—what the very water molecules themselves are actually doing. The second category is the rare investigator who takes you behind the scenes to capture the flow of the atoms themselves. In my list this is only Thomas Gold, Richard P. Feynman, Isaac Newton, and at times Erwin Schrodinger. It is these observers who are on another level and therefore deserving of the most trust.

1. The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold. Settle into your concert chair as Mr. Gold puts on a dazzling performance as a genius of physical nature. This is a stunning book. Gold works materials science, chemistry, physics, and Earth systems like a master craftsman. His thinking is a beauty to behold. This masterpiece shatters myths about evolution, carbon flow, mineral deposition, and petroleum reserves. These subjects may seem separate but I can assure you that they are intimately related.

2. Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf Birds by Bernd Heinrich. Heinrich is relentlessly clever in teasing out the secretive world of one of the worlds most sophisticated animals—the North American Raven. With energy, hard work and integrity, Heinrich pours himself into the subject at hand and it’s quite a ride.

3. One River: Explorations and Discovery in the Amazon Rain Forest by Wade Davis. This is an amazing, lyrical book. It expertly weaves several stories together. The main figure is an ethnobotanist Richard Schultz, who explored the extraordinary plants and Indians of the Amazon during the 1950s. Richard Schultz is one of the most remarkable people I have ever had the pleasure to know about.

4. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biography in an Age of Extinction by David Quaman. The extinction of famous animals like the dodo and Tasmanian wolf, among others, is chronicled in gripping and bittersweet detail. It gives one a feeling for the process of extinction which is applicable to, for example, recent attempts to stabilize Pacific coast fisheries. It is also a good introduction to some of the curious mechanics of speciation and the early work of Edward O. Wilson.

5. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape by Barry Lopez. Deft. Vivid. Powerful. Barry paints a picture of the landscape of the far north and not just of the animals but the ice and light of a great wilderness.

6. Caught Inside: A Surfers Year on the California Coast by Daniel Duane. This is a rich story not only about surfing, but also of waves and land and wilderness. It also takes you back in time when Monterey and Santa Cruz counties were a wilderness. This book makes you realize how quickly everything has changed. The author does a beautiful job of recalling their former glories.

7. Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America by Theodora Kroeber. I picked this book up on a whim while traveling to Yellowstone National Park on a family field trip. It started a bit slow but it really walloped me in the end, and so remains one of the most fascinating books I have read to date. It is inspiring on many different levels. Ishi eventually came to live at UC Berkley (in the natural history museum!) and became relatively famous in the San Francisco Bay Area influencing many. Overall an incredible story.

8. Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World’s Coasts and Beneath the Seas by Carl Safina. This book is a match between a great lyrical writer and a rich subject matter. It is divided into three sections. The first details Atlantic coast fisheries with vivid descriptions of one of the largest and most magnificent of animals—the Blue Fin Tuna. Part two explores the Pacific coast fisheries and joins one of deepest of pelagic fish—the Salmon. Part three concerns the tropical Pacific reef systems. This book is a masterpiece.

9. Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States by Stein, Kutnar, Adams. Where is the diversity in our country? In what areas of worldwide diversity do we excel? For example, we lead the world in crayfish diversity with 61% of all species. It’s full of surprises and fascinating insights—taking inventory and outlining relationships across America.

10. The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin by Stephen Trimble. It looks like one of those pretty, lightweight coffee table books but don’t be fooled. The pictures are fabulous and the text is even more interesting. The power of the landscape is evoked and you are gripped by the wonder of it. It’s also a remarkable story of change and climate and of just how new the American deserts really are, despite looking like they been there forever.

11. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. This book is the story of water in the western United States during the past one hundred years. It’s an incredibly well researched, well written, and thought provoking book. Arid lands, water, dams, salt, culture, government, and human nature swirl and scrap. I must have come across it at just the right time, as it was for me a bellwether book on many levels. When it comes to water the truth is far stranger than fiction.

12. The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett. Although this book was only written in 1994, it suffers in the light of the advances made in understanding the genetic makeup of microbes since the book was published. It is still a fascinating work however. It reads like a detective novel, racing across the globe to explore human disease both new and old. The world’s microbes are absolutely fascinating in their virulence, abundance, dominance of the world—and their ability to change and adapt. It is something to think about for a mammal with such ridiculously high population levels such as ourselves.

13. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman. Feynman was an exceptional physicist during the 20th century. Feynman was, as they say, “no ordinary genius.” In particular he possessed a feel for nature and a phenomenal ability to describe it, even in its most complicated phases. It's a short book and pretty funny, yet the tales were so fantastic that I did not know if I dared to believe them. The more I read about Feynman the more incredible his life became. It turns out this book only gives a mere tip of the iceberg about this amazing character. When Feynman speaks it is wise to listen very carefully. He, along with Thomas Gold (see Book #1), are the heavy hitters in the nature business.

14. Thread of Life: The Smithsonian Looks at Evolution by Roger Levin. An experience-altering look of the broad patterns of life through the eons. We have so little experience on this planet compared to other life forms that it pays to poke around in the immense time that preceded us. This book is a great way to open that door.

15. Germs, Guns, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Winner of the Pulitzer prize. So much of human history is written for and read by people encased in the bubble of their own culture, to the exclusion of all else, that the broad patterns of our nature are lost. This is an exciting tale of why one culture is able to secure more resources than another. Turns out the winner isn't personally superior at all. In a beautifully written work, Mr. Diamond offers clear insights into our history in 400 pages, and deftly assigns the proper weight to the proper factors.

16. The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. Deserved winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A riveting and masterful job on a complicated subject. Terrific insights are gained when a team of biologists intensely measure Darwin’s Finches over several decades. Part awe at the gritty determination of the finches to persist in an unforgiving landscape, and part amazing portrait of evolution at work—not over the millenniums, as is commonly assumed, but seemingly from moment to moment.

17. The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, and Biogeography by Ernst Mayr and Jared Diamond. A master work. The style of this book is closer to being a text book. These guys take an excellent stab at a slippery subject—speciation. In the island group studied, they took a very detailed snapshot of the birds found there, and draw some interesting conclusions about which birds are most likely to form new species and why.

18. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman. You have to be in awe of Feynman. With a few arrows and squiggly lines and 152 pages, he lays out the whole deal on the nature of things in the very small. Quantum electrodynamics is the crown jewel of physics, successfully explaining electricity, chemistry, magnetism, light, matter . . . the whole of the universe (except gravity and dark matter). The nature is described brilliantly with a legendary clarity that is the hallmark of this most remarkable of people.

19. American Bison: A Natural History by Dale F. Lott. The American bison one of the largest remaining herbivores in North America. This keystone species of the Great Plains ecosystem suffered massive declines in the late 19th century and now exists in only remnant populations. Mr. Lott proves to be a first class observer which allows him to vividly reconstruct the nature of this vanished place. His descriptions and love of the tremendous grasslands sparkle.

20. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for His Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks. This is a compilation of neurological case histories which illustrate the strange nature of the human mind. Minds are showcased with defects, excesses, aberrations, and disorders with all their strange consequences. The super abilities of some patients are astonishing. Others with disabilities have their own amazing stories to tell. Oliver Sacks is a most interesting person in his own right and he offers other compelling works as well which shouldn't be missed.

21. California Grizzly by Tracy I. Storer and Lloyd P. Trevis, Jr. Not well written but nonetheless very interesting. Grizzlies, mountain lions, Spaniards, Native Americans, Grizzly Adams, ring fighting . . . it seems more like a fantasy but just a few years ago it was going on right in my backyard. The heart of California Grizzly territory was Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties.

22. A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert M. Sapolsky. Humorous and very fun to read. You get to look over the shoulder of a good researcher and hear him think out loud and as well, the author’s encounters with the landscape and the people themselves are an adventure that is uniquely Africa.

23. An Introduction to Tropical Rain Forests by T. C. Whitmore. One way to know something of the great tropical forests is make detailed comparisons between Indo-Malayan, Amazonian, and Central African forests, looking at their climate histories, flowering cycles, genetic diversity, mammals, pollinators, soil types, rain fall patterns, nutrient cycles, and forest dynamics. This is a fascinating read.

24. The Life of an Oak: An Intimate Portrait by Glenn Keator. If you live around oaks this is the book for you. The drawings and photos are some of the best. Oaks are related to chestnuts and they are in their own right a fascinating group. In my habitat here, they are a cornerstone species, and so the oaks have interesting relationships with mammals, birds, fungus, and insects. This book is a handcrafted gem.

25. The Ants by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson. The ants are a dominant player, especially in tropical ecosystems. This book contains jewels such as: "We have noticed a worldwide tendency in the relation between behavior and species diversity, as follows: the fewer the ant species in a local community, the more likely the community is to be dominated behaviorally by one or a few species with large, aggressive colonies that maintain absolute territories." Okay . . . so it’s not for everyone but still it’s an awesome volume.

26. Genome by Matt Ridley. Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review. Just recently it is finally possible to take a peek at the 4-billion-year-old DNA found on our 23 pairs of chromosomes. This book is much like Book# 16—The Beak of the Finch—in that the author also takes a very complicated subject and does an admirable job of describing its nature. The book is structured into 23 chapters, one chapter covering a fascinating aspect of each pair of human chromosomes. The subjects of each chapter are amazingly diverse, linking our origins to the Round Flat Worm, accounting for male homosexuality, linking heart attacks with Alzheimer’s disease, and inherited traits such as intelligence, behavior, or language. It is shocking to also learn how battle scarred our “software” is—only 3% of it contains useful genes for example. Jump into this revolution in the making.

27. Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brian by Michael Paterniti. Humorous and nimble. And if you were thinking from the title that this work is fictional, you would be wrong. Einstein's brain was removed at autopsy and remained in the controversial possession of the surgeon who performed the autopsy for 40 years. Not sure how this contributes to our adventure here with nature but we have to have a break or two along the way. Strange but true story.

28. Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul. One of the greatest shows on the planet is the migration of the birds. This book moves you beyond migrations of the familiar ducks and geese (which in their own right are remarkable), to even more unbelievable athletic feats natural to the sandpipers, warblers, swallows, hawks and the curlews. This book brings together current research and the wonder of the nature of the birds themselves.

29. The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change by Paul Andrew Mayewski and Frank White. Right up front I can say that this book has a bland writing style and so nothing exciting here. But I can't let this keep it from being recommended, for in my view the drama of the climate system it describes for our planet over the preceding 100,000 years (detailed in the Greenland ice cores) and a whopping 400,000 years (the Antarctica ice cores) shouldn't be missed. It paints a sobering picture, among other things, that dramatic climate change can be on the scale of a single decade—not millennia, as is often assumed. The historical patterns outlined in this book reveal the nature of our planet's climate fluctuations to be amazing in their extremes. It is also not easy to understand what the important drivers of the system are. Key influences are presented that are little known. In the current warming trend we are experiencing, this book assumes additional relevance.

30. Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival by Carl Safina. I still can't get over the story of these birds. Albatrosses have recently been outfitted with satellite tracking systems, so for the first time we can see the extent of their flights. Nobody was prepared for the results: The current flight record holder is traveling a scorching 7000 miles in only 8 days. Check in with the master fliers of the planet.