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A smorgasbord of treats - Rated
Depending on your viewpoint, the volumes in this series are either treasure houses or minefields. The jewels are essays providing new topics and information to consider. That's also the danger. Most of these articles present the reader with a challenge - "Should I be concerned about this? Should I take some action?" It's almost wearying to turning the pages and be confronted with the need for a decision. Yet, those prompts are not artificial.
Preston, author of "The Demon in the Freezer" and "The Wild Trees" demonstrates his editorial skills with this engaging collection. Covering such diverse topics as the human threats to the seas, the nature of violence and looking for the oldest light, this series of over two dozen articles - with more than four dozen hovering in the wings - conveys how deeply science is penetrating Nature's mysteries. The editor's own writing skills provide a fine standard for assessment and there is nothing either dull or arcane to make the reader stumble. Interests vary, and Preston's choices will meet everybody's requirements. More to the point the subjects chosen and the information provided will stir interest in new areas readers might wish to pursue further.
Each reader - and reviewer - will have particular articles to favour as they wend their way through the anthology. To this reviewer, "Plastic Ocean" by Susan Casey is a foremost choice. Not only is it a fine piece of writing, but the subject - how our plastic products are being gathered into a great oceanic dump, known as the Pacific Garbage Patch - is one of universal concern. Casey interviews yachting captain Charles Moore to understand the immensity of the problem. Lest the reader consider the ocean a fit place to use as a dump, Casey demonstrates how tiny pieces of polymers are entering the oceanic food chain to appear on our supper tables.
In an essay on medical issues, Michael Rosenwald follows researcher Robert Webster as the latter flits from one continent to another in his quest to identify and seek controls on avian influenza. "Bird flu" is but one of many new viruses that were once considered species-specific, but are "learning" to cross over to others, particularly humans. Humans will also be interested in Patricia Gadsby's "Cooking for Eggheads" about how to judge the best way to cook an egg, and why the techniques are important. In a piece rather distant from your kitchen, Michael Lemonick travels to Hawaii's volcanic peak Mauna Kea and the Keck Telescope to watch Richard Ellis pace in frustration at the possible loss of an observing night. Ellis is looking for the oldest light in the universe - light emitted when the universe endured an immense inflation event immediately after the Big Bang.
Each of the volumes in this series contains a title that chains the eye and rivets attention. In this case the commanding lead is William Langewiesche's "How To Get A Nuclear Bomb". Dwelling on the author's analysis of that question will not do here, but his conclusions might suggest some revision of dogmatic thinking. A different dogma is challenged in Ethan Watters "DNA Is Not Destiny". In this essay, he explains how recent research by Randy Jirtle overturns the conventional wisdom of "gene as fate" - although how he derives this "conventional wisdom" remains obscure. Jirtle's work on "epigenetics" reveals how some genes are triggered or quelled from somewhere else. The work is new and still probing, but Watters' article explains the successes and new areas of research.
These books seem to reproduce in my library, with a long sequence of seemingly near clones stretching along a shelf. Yet, they are anything but duplicates of one another. Each editor has made choices of superior standards of excellence, with writing skills and new discoveries in abundance. One doesn't need any more excuse than asking: "What's going on in the world?" to have another collection of essays join its peers in your own library. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
