Every Living Thing (Rob Dunn)

“Life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, crashes through barriers… Life finds a way.”
When Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie Jurassic Park) said those words, he was foreshadowing the disastrous end of a human-designed biological theme park.  But he would have been just as accurate describing [...]

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Nearly Human (Andrew Grant)

Much has been written about the point in evolutionary history when humans split from other primates, but Nearly Human: A Gorilla’s Guide to Good Living by Andrew Grant [LibraryThing / WorldCat] makes the comparison a bit more personal than DNA analysis and diagrams of an extended family tree.
Grant compares gorilla behavior with ours and shows [...]

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Marley & Me (John Grogan)

Marley was not the world’s worst dog, although it may have seemed so to John Grogan from time to time. He was expelled from obedience school and ate speaker covers so thoroughly they vanished. (I won’t even begin to describe Grogan’s idea for a jewelry-cleaning business.) But Marley was, in fact, a wonderful dog. Their [...]

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We Are the Cat (Terry Bain)

I haven’t had a cat since my divorce ten years ago. That cat died earlier this year at the age of twenty. Her name was Bugs. Her younger “sister” Rerun died a few years back. Before Bugs and Rerun, there was Arnie, Heather, and maybe a Kiki. Can’t remember. Lately, the only cats I encounter [...]

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