Unforgettable photos, fascinating data and a tough environmental message- they all characterize the season`s offering of nature and science books.
After a lifetime of close calls while studying black bears, Minnesota naturalist-photographer Lynn Rogers suddenly realized that the calls weren`t really that close. Rogers and writer Jeff Fair test the hypothesis in a marvelous work, The Great American Bear (NorthWord, $39), and prove that black bears are smart, shy, peaceable and patient-upstanding and unjustly maligned woodsfolk who will do their utmost to avoid trouble with people.
”Times do change, and sometimes for the better,” notes Rogers` Ely, Minn. colleague, ace wolfman L. David Mech, in the foreward to a reissued classic, Wolves (Sierra Club, $19.95). Editor Candace Savage summons the pack of the world`s top wolf photographers to portray the predator`s transformation from vermin to the poster child of conservation. Savage`s equally estimable Grizzly Bears (Sierra Club, $35) culls the best experts of that scientific clan.
Not a bear, but close, are the world`s cutest loners, vividly presented in The Secret World of Pandas, edited by Byron Preiss and Gao Xueyu (Abrams, $24.95) and featuring the work of Chinese naturalists. About 1,000 giant pandas remain in a few mountainous forests, and they share a fate with India`s tigers. Only 3,000 tigers still prowl there, as opposed to 40,000 at the turn of the century. Tigers: The Secret Life (Rodale, $35) tells the life stories of three females and their young, strikingly photographed by Valmik Thadar and Fateh Singh Rathore as part of their pioneering research in northern India`s Ranthambhore National Park.
The Total Penguin, a superb title for a superb book, ornaments the tuxedoed waddlers in witty and informative style by science writer James Gorman, and they`re photographed in goofy glory by Frans Lanting (Prentice Hall, $29.95). The birds also abound in two distinguished works, Poles Apart: The Natural Worlds of Arctic and Antarctic by Jim Flegg with the great British photographers Eric and David Hosking (Pelham, $29.95) and Wild Ice: Antarctic Journeys, in which four photographer-naturalists with more than 60 trips to Antarctica among them, show the glories of the frozen South and call for its preservation (Smithsonian, $29.95).
Among the things you`ll learn in Desmond Morris` latest zoological tour-de-force, Animalwatching (Crown, $35), is that many animals don`t sleep much, and shrews don`t sleep at all. This has led to a theory that says we sleep because nature wants us to keep still for safety reasons, not for recuperative ones. David Attenborough`s The Atlas of the Living World
(Houghton Mifflin, $39.95) explains the where`s and why`s of animal habitats, and the human impact on them.
British artist Andy Goldsworthy creates weird and often arresting outdoor sculptures with natural materials-ice, heron feathers, wood, leves, pebbles, etc.- and before they disappear, he records them with a camera. A
Collaboration with Nature (Abrams, $45) keeps one looking. Classic wildlife portraiture graces The Kingdom: Wildlife in North America, (Sierra Club, $45), with images by Art Wolfe and text by Douglas Chadwick.
Sure to give nightmares to loggers and developers are a series of offerings that protest the rape of the world`s forests. Entering the Grove, with photos by Gary Braasch and essays by Kim Stafford (Gibbs Smith, $34.95)
movingly honors trees. Wild by Law (Sierra Club, $50) presents American landscapes that will endure because of legal victories by the club`s Defense Fund and relives the courtroom encounters.
The Last Rain Forests is a world conservation atlas edited by Mark Collins (Oxford, $29.95), while Indonesian Eden: Aceh`s Rainforests displays the imperiled flora and fauna of northern Sumatra (LSU Press, $24.95).
Two magical names to whale fans, biologist Jim Darling and photographer Flip Nicklin, have teamed up for a special work: With the Whales (NorthWord, $39.95). Nicklin has swum with whales in most of the world`s oceans, and offers 130 of his slam-dunk keeper shots.
A classic in the making is Jonathan Scott`s The Great Migration (Rodale, $35), which covers in detail the mad migration by 1.3 million wildebeest in Serengeti/Mara, the most important game sanctuary on Earth. ”You would think they were possessed by demons,” writes Scott, ”or had an urgent appointment with some hidden ruler.”
Birders, as usual, will have a field day this season. Return of the Whooping Crane, by Robin W. Doughty (University of Texas Press, $24.95)
chronicles one of the great conservation epics. John Oliver Jones` Where the Birds Are: A Guide to All 50 States and Canada (Morrow, $24.95) tells you precisely where to go and what to look for. The Audubon Society Guide to Nature Photography by Tim Fitzharris (Little, Brown, $29.95) holds tips from a top photog on how to capture them on film.
Three spectacular science works are destined to be adopted by entire families. Gems and Crystals is by Anna Sofianides and George Harlow, gem curators of the American Museum of Natural History (Simon and Schuster, $40). John Farrand Jr.`s Weather (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $35) seems highly authoritative and fun. German cartographer Arno Peters` Peters Atlas of the World (Harper & Row, $50) presents the world in true projection via advanced computer cartography and satellite scanning.
Space buffs should know about Space Places (Collins, $45), an extraordinary odyssey by photographer Roger Ressmeyer, who long has specialized on the doings at the world`s bases of space exploration. A nice summation is provided by British astronomer Patrick Moore`s Mission to the Planets (Norton, $24.95), while Robin Kerrod`s NASA: Visions of Space (Courage Books, $19.98) offers the history of the American space program as seen in paintings, photos and graphics it has generated.
Finally, a sleeper that works: Journey from the Dawn: Life with the World`s First Family, (Villard, $22.50) in which paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and artist Kevin O`Farrell give us a glimpse of what life on this planet might have been like four million years ago when our earliest human ancestor-Johanson`s ”Lucy”-was living in Ethiopia with her hominid mate, Lorcan, and their daughter, Liban. Silly at first glance, the book works wonderfully well, with constant intercutting between narration and research. It blends hard science, sensible speculation and high drama, and is supposed to be for kids. I read every word.
