The Meadowlands – Robert Sullivan ****

We need to start of straight away with why this book is here at all, because it’s pretty borderline as popular science. Okay, the simplistic answer is because the publisher sent a review copy and we liked it – but it’s a little more than that. Meadowlands is in the same genre as Bill Bryson’s travel books – a personal account of experiences in a particular place or set of places, and though these books tend to get lumped under the travel category, they are just as much personal explorations of natural history, a crossover that was proved in Bryson’s science title. Robert Sullivan’s book is about exploring what most would consider a semi-industrial wasteland, the wilderness of tips, marshes and industrial waste on the outskirts of New York, and in doing so, the book comes across unclassifiably as a mix of industrial archaeology, travel, sociology and natural history – so it belongs here as much as it belongs anywhere else.

Perhaps the biggest attraction of this book is Sullivan’s obvious love for something very few could find attractive. It’s the attraction of the eccentric. The Meadowlands with its tips and foul waste is not the sort of place most people would want to spend a vacation in, yet time and time again Sullivan is enticed back to explore different parts of this strange nowhere land. And yet occasionally you can see why it’s so attractive. Here he is, in sight of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, yet he is in a place of wild marshes and wildlife (even if it’s also a place of pollution and wildfires).

This isn’t a book to read with the expectation of discovering new scientific facts, but it is one that will bring a smile to your face, fascinate and surprise – all in a gentle way. Sometimes Sullivan’s efforts seem a little odd – perhaps most notably his search for the remains of the original Penn Station, dumped in the Meadowlands when it was demolished – but they will never be less than interesting. If you like the look of this book it’s also worth checking out Sullivan’s Rats which is in a similar vein, but has more scientific content.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight ****

Not everyone would class this as popular science, but it concerns an attempt to take a scientific approach to paranormal abilities - notably premonitions (aka clairvoyance) and as such, it fits the category. Writing in the typical dramatic storytelling style of a US magazine, Sam Knight brings to life the remarkable tale of the work of two British figures from the 1960s. The central one is psychiatrist John Barker, with a supporting role given to newspaper and TV science reporter Peter Fairley. Barker had a long interest in extra sensory phenomena - the story takes off when he was inspired by a number of people claiming to have foreseen the Aberfan disaster (which terrible tragedy Knight covers movingly). As a result of the Aberfan premonitions, the pair were responsible for London's Evening Standard newspaper setting up a long-running experiment in the form of 'The Premonitions Bureau.' Aware that the Aberfan predictions were only reported after the event, and hence flawe...

Search This Blog