Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds

Author: Luis Chiappe

The last few years have witnessed an unparalleled rate of discoveries of early birds and their dinosaurian predecessors. Written by a recognised authority in the field, Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds provides a comprehensive summary of these discoveries and addresses the fascinating topic of how modern birds evolved from fearsome dinosaurs akin to the celebrated Velociraptor. The book focuses on an evolutionary approach and presents current research and fossil discoveries. The title includes coloured photographs of fossils and fossil localities, many of which have been rarely reproduced elsewhere.

Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal Evolution

Author: David Wallace
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this excellent work proves that a mural is worth 300 pages. Wallace (The Bonehunter's Revenge, etc.) uses the often overlooked Age of Mammals mural at Yale's Peabody Museum as the theme around which he builds the story of the evolution of scientific thought on mammalian evolution. Rather than structure his narrative around the theories themselves, Wallace focuses on the savants and scientists who developed them. Vivid descriptions of the "bare-knuckled rivalries of Gilded Age paleontology"-which saw respected scientists sending saboteurs to each other's digs and lambasting one another in the popular press, and museum founders who grafted human teeth onto the heads of roosters-bring these men to life as well as the best of them were able to do for the specimens they found. Each character's particular expeditions, macabre youthful pastimes and the fossils that led to their fame or downfall are illuminated by abundant quotations from a wide variety of sources. Judicious use of personal anecdotes lends an air of conviviality to the author's prose, and frequent returns to the Peabody mural add still more depth and perspective. Paleontology buffs will not be the only ones entranced; this charming story, skillfully told, will appeal to history and biography fans as well. 18 b&w photos, 2 line illus.

Book List on Humanizing of Animals

1. The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff
2. Why Animal Suffering Matters by Andrew Linzey
3. Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Gary Francione
4. Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance by Jason Hribal 

Book List on Society and Consumerism

1. Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson
2. Free: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society by Katherine Hibbert
3. The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy by Raj Patel
4. Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone 
5. Small Change: Why Business Won't Change the World by Michael Edwards

CHEATING MONKEYS AND CITIZEN BEES : The NATURE of COOPERATION in ANIMALS and HUMANS

Author: Lee Dugatkin

Evolutionary biologist Dugatkin (Cooperation Among Animals) is unabashed in his belief that "the study of evolution and animal behavior can be used to foster and enhance cooperation in humans." Without resorting to simple minded biological determinism, he argues forcefully that the behavioral predisposition of humans may be predicted by evolution. Thus, he asserts that research in animal behavior can provide baseline information about parallel behavior in (admittedly more complex) humanity. Such investigations may ultimately help us better understand the underpinnings of human behavior and allow us to restructure our environments to promote more cooperation. Dugatkin explains that cooperation arises through four pathways, "family dynamics, reciprocal transactions, selfish teamwork, and group altruism." He devotes one chapter to each pathway, clearly explaining the underlying evolutionary theory and providing myriad animal examples. His fascinating instances range widely from vampire bats willing to regurgitate blood for starving neighbors to mongooses who take turns baby-sitting. Each chapter concludes with an attempt to tie the lessons learned from animals to suggestions for public policy issues as diverse as class size in elementary schools and partnering in police departments. These applications, however, are the weakest part of an otherwise startling and eye-opening glimpse into the evolution of behavior.

Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive

Author: Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman

At the onset of winter, the American wood frog burrows into the soil of its native northern Canada. As the temperature drops, the frog's body begins to freeze, and in response it produces a supply of glucose that effectively lowers the freezing point of water, preventing the formation of ice crystals. For months the frog stops breathing and its heart stops beating. When spring arrives and the land begins to thaw, so does the wood frog.
Animals and plants are able to adapt to the planet's changing seasons by virtue of their internal calendar, write Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman in Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive (Yale University Press). In their previous book together, Rhythms of Life (Yale University Press), the authors dealt with the circadian clock that allows organisms to track the time of day, even in controlled laboratory settings. The circannual calendar, they note, requires much more patience of the scientists who study it; but although their knowledge of seasonal biological variations remains incomplete, "we have uncovered some of the mechanisms involved."
Those mechanisms include hibernation, migration, and seasonal reproduction, which ensures that animals give birth at the optimum time of year for survival —largely determined by the relative abundance of food. Many nonequatorial animals accomplish this by breeding only at certain times. During the rest of the year, their reproductive organs "regress," or all but disappear, saving much-needed energy as well as preventing conception.
Foster and Kreitzman —respectively a professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a science writer and broadcaster —stress the interconnectivity between species' seasonal adaptations: "The organisms higher up the food chain have to time their activities to the rise and fall in the abundance of those lower down the food chain." Thus interference with one species' population can set off a complex series of reactions throughout an entire ecosystem.
The second half of Seasons of Life focuses on Homo sapiens and the myriad ways our lives —and deaths —are affected by the time of year. The authors examine the seasonal cycles of infectious diseases, as well as seasonal affective disorder and how it has been diagnosed and treated throughout human history. They even suggest that the month in which a person is born has significant statistical correlations. Although predicting people's future based on the month of their birth has long been the province of astrologers, studies now show that, depending on geographical location, date of birth may be linked to incidence of certain diseases, physical characteristics, and even personality traits. Summer babies are more likely to develop the digestive disorder celiac disease, winter babies "show increased novelty and sensation seeking," and, "in the Northern Hemisphere, babies born in the early part of the year are 6 to 8 percent more likely than others to develop schizophrenia later in life."
Noting that "humans, just as chimpanzees and gorillas, are ready to procreate more or less at the drop of a hat, more or less most of the time," the authors look to factors like women's nutritional status at the time of conception to account for variations in offspring. Our past plays a role, too: June is still the most popular month in which to marry, in part because, for our agrarian forebears, "a June or July conception and a subsequent early spring birth meant that the mother had recovered to some extent in time for the busy autumn harvest season the following year."
Climate change has already begun to affect the duration and dispositions of the seasons, threatening all species, warn the authors: "Those that succeed will be those that have the flexibility to change and adapt to the new temporal regime."

The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today

Author: Ted Conover

The author  reveals globalization's neural system growing along the world's expanding and connecting road systems. Governments and smugglers, armies and insurgents, and the local poor and international NGOs negotiate their ambitions at border crossings, checkpoints, and dives. Tracing the route of rare mahogany from Peru's illegal jungle logging camps to Manhattan's brownstones, he examines how highways connect the fates of forests, untouched tribes, and finicky antique collectors. In the Himalayan frontier of Kashmir, highways are ventures of national territorial control, and in China a growing superhighway system underscores the disparity between the haves and have-nots. Conover's voice is that of a sobered Kerouac, tamed by a bigger conscience, and on an open road increasingly controlled by corporate, government, and military interests. His acclaimed narrative gifts are on full display in a wonderfully evenhanded treatment of the roadway in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Highways have been co-opted for Israeli settlements, and Palestinian professors, engineers, and migrant laborers construct ever-shifting back-road routes and taxi-hops to earn their living. With Conover as our guide, we move through Israeli checkpoints in Palestine's West Bank and witness the daily indignities faced by corralled Palestinian commuters and the psychological angst of Israeli soldiers. There is no open road here, just a gritty, fractured infrastructure of hatred that strangles both nations.More subtly, Conover reveals the highway as common social territory, particularly as the meeting place between men and women. His treatment of east African truck drivers—whose travels are suspected to be linked with the global spread of AIDS—avoids stereotype and sensationalism. He is as attentive to and interested by the drudgery of transporting goods as with the truckers' polygamy or encounters with sex workers and police bribery. We meet truck drivers who are true gentlemen and tough, articulate women fully capable of negotiating roadside life. Conover maintains a commitment to accurate portrayal and embraces the whole world, not only its dramatic aspects. The Routes of Man seeks to describe more than to explain this ever-connecting world. It does the former with an agility that leaves the reader anticipating the next adventure. But the narrative fails to build the argument posed in its subtitle: that roads themselves have become a source of change in the world, independent of the nations, armies, and cities that build, control, and fill them with trade and traffic. But this many-textured journey is not to be missed. Conover deftly navigates the romance and harsh reality of a world intent on a real and not just a virtual connectedness