COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS ILLUSTRATIONS BY SEÑOR SALME BY ILLUSTRATIONS The Control of Wallace, Darwin, Nature and the Origin of John McPhee Species Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 1989. James T. Costa Icelandic lava, Mississippi Harvard Univ. Press: 2014. floodwater, San Gabriel Moun- tain mud studded with car-sized Did Charles Darwin and Alfred boulders, in Biblical quantities, Russel Wallace really come up gushing intermittently but with the idea of natural selec- inexorably, without surcease. tion simultaneously and inde- McPhee, a master of structure, pendently? Was it the same leaves his thesis unstated but idea? How did Darwin and his unmistakable: each of these ele- colleagues manage the delicate mental currents hurtles towards negotiation of co-presenting this a crushing central focus, a black concept to the public — without hole. The Control of Nature is Wallace’s knowledge? ironically titled, an allegorical, James Costa takes on these pitch-perfect triptych of futil- questions, and delves into the ity. In each locale — live vol- intellectual influences of the canoes in Iceland and Hawaii, two luminaries. (This book fol- the sliding mountains above lows two others by Costa for the Los Angeles, California, the Harvard University Press: The Atchafalaya swamp in Louisi- Annotated Origin (2011), a defin- ana — disaster is immanent. itive collection of facsimiles of The human inhabitants are in the first edition of Darwin’s 1859 denial, living where they should On the Origin of Species, and not. They dam, divert, sandbag, On the Organic Law of Change bulldoze, firehose and blockade, (2013), a facsimile of Wal- trying to stem the deadly flow. It lace’s historically crucial Species cannot be done. Their efforts are Notebook.) He also annotates puny and, if anything, make the a facsimile of the 1855 Wallace next inundation worse. paper known as the Sarawak The Control of Nature sucked law, an important precursor to me in when it was first pub- the essay ‘On the tendency of SUMMER lished. I read it slowly, letting varieties to depart indefinitely McPhee’s virtuosic prose and from the original type’, which playful wit leaven the har- Darwin received from Wallace rowing stories. A quarter of in 1858. That manuscript forced a century on, the book seems the question of a mechanism for prescient, an early warning evolution into the open. Costa’s BOOKS about a natural world respond- nuanced and well-documented Plunge into a profusion of brilliant ing with mounting violence as reading of this episode, as well we try to bend it to our will. as Wallace’s contributions and summer reads suggested by regular his relationship with Darwin, is reviewers and editors, far away from Nathaniel Comfort is a gift for any scientist’s bookshelf. professor of the history of the lab and lecture hall. medicine at Johns Hopkins Kevin Padian is professor University in Baltimore, of integrative biology at the Maryland, and is writing a University of California, biography of DNA. Berkeley. EDITOR’S CHOICE 1 THE HADAL ZONE / ALAN JAMIESON 2 THE DISPOSSESSED / URSULA K. LE GUIN 528 | NATURE | VOL 523 | 30 JULY 2015 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT How Not to Be Designing the Period Piece Extinction Wrong: The New American and Evolution: Gwen Raverat Hidden Maths of University Faber & Faber: 1952. What Fossils Everyday Life Reveal About the Michael M. Crow and Period Piece is a delightful Jordan Ellenberg William B. Dabars memoir of a late-nineteenth- History of Life Penguin: 2014. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press: 2015. century Cambridge childhood, by Charles Darwin’s grand- Niles Eldredge Anyone who writes about How can universities make daughter, Gwen Raverat. Firefly: 2014. mathematics faces this prob- the world better? In Designing Readers will learn nothing lem: readers need years of the New American University, here about natural selection. Palaeontologist and acute training to acquire the vocab- Michael Crow and William They will instead be absorbed thinker Niles Eldredge describes ulary and basic conceptual Dabars call for a reinvention into a world of “born Darwins”, how life has evolved through frameworks that insiders take to broaden access, engage the “married-in Darwins” and geological time, partly through for granted. Mathematician “knowledge enterprise” to the “Anti-Darwin League” for 160 beautiful colour plates Jordan Ellenberg tackles that address social needs, and reflect those who had “inadvertently” depicting more than 200 speci- issue at the outset. He will on why we seek to understand married into the family, such as mens of fossil and living species. guide readers through math- nature and ourselves. Gwen’s own mother. Among them are Eocypselus ematical ideas that are “simple Crow, president of my institu- In this world, the room in rowei, an extinct relative of swifts and profound”, which require tion, Arizona State University which On the Origin of Species and hummingbirds that inhab- no special techniques but (ASU), and historian Dabars was written is used for flower ited Wyoming some 52 million reveal deep insights into our have the ASU model in mind, arranging. The family hypo- years ago, and the coelacanth world and minds. but do not propose a blueprint. chondria is demonstrated by Latimeria menadoensis, a ‘living Ellenberg breathes life into Rather, Dabars’ rich historical each Darwin in turn — Aunt fossil’ whose close relatives are his theme of the perils of mis- contextualization and Crow’s Etty’s patent anti-cold mask nearly exclusively from the Pal- understood statistics through policy and managerial experi- receives special attention. And aeozoic and Mesozoic eras, 541 clear storytelling and by draw- ence provide design principles Darwin’s grandchildren mod- million to 66 million years ago. ing diverse and unexpected encouraging institutions to lev- estly feel due some small credit Most of the photographs are by connections. He delivers a erage their own place in a locally for having produced such a the late, great Murray Alcosser. thorough history of statistics appropriate way. For instance, grandfather. Eldredge emphasizes the — including digressions about the University Innovation Alli- Raverat, the elder daughter of existence of many species that taxes, basketball, lotteries and ance — a consortium of 11 pub- distinguished astronomer and resist evolutionary change the US Supreme Court — as lic research universities — is mathematician George Darwin, for long periods (such as the well as high points of the dis- working to increase retention draws the quirks, curiosities brachio­pod Mucrospirifer cipline such as prime numbers, and graduation rates for low- and narrowness of academic mucronatus), and the impor- information theory, geometry, income students through local Cambridge engagingly. Dinner- tance of mass extinctions in logic and calculus. strategies to achieve shared goals. party guests, for example, were creating conditions that aid the The book quietly initiates Crow and Dabars push uni- seated according to the foun- emergence of new species. He the reader into thinking like versities to boost diversity, pro- dation dates of their college argues convincingly that it is a mathematician. I would call mote the public good, develop or chairs — so professors of palaeontology, rather than evo- it one of the most intelligent sustainable environmental and Hebrew and Greek, founded in lutionary genetics, that allows us books written about math- societal practices, and achieve the same year, could never be to recognize these points. Splen- ematics, and possibly the most ideals of educated democracy invited together. For beach, bal- did photographs, vivid language entertaining. inspired by Thomas Jefferson. cony or a few hours’ travelling, and concise text: a great read. this offers wonderful, escapist Michael Harris is professor Jane Maienschein is a reading. Xu Xing is a professor at of mathematics at Columbia historian and philosopher the Institute of Vertebrate University, New York, and of science at Arizona State Tilli Tansey is professor of Paleontology and Université Paris Diderot, and University in Tempe and the the history of modern medical Paleoanthropology of the author of Mathematics without Marine Biological Laboratory sciences at Queen Mary Chinese Academy of Sciences in Apologies. in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. University of London. Beijing. 3 THE VITAL QUESTION / NICK LANE 4 MISBEHAVING / RICHARD H. THALER 5 EXTREME / EMMA BARRETT & PAUL MARTIN 6 MELTING AWAY / CAMILLE SEAMAN 30 JULY 2015 | VOL 523 | NATURE | 529 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS Animal, What If?: Serious Vegetable, Scientific Mineral? Answers to Absurd Susannah Gibson Oxford Univ. Press: 2015. Hypothetical Questions While dallying among the rock pools this summer, spare a Randall Munroe thought for earlier naturalists John Murray: 2014. — starting with Aristotle — who scoured the boundary between What if, on your summer holi- earth and sea for genre-defy- days, you are invited for a swim ing specimens of life. Animal, in the spent-fuel pool of a nearby Vegetable, Mineral? is a book nuclear-power station? Should about boundaries, following the you go? What are the risks? Or attempts of eighteenth-century what if you and your partner men of science to classify nature, want to prolong the sunset for despite nature’s apparent reluc- as long as possible by driving tance to be classified. From ahead of the dusk — for how fossils and Venus flytraps to long could you postpone the corals and somersaulting pol- night, and which road should yps, organisms seeped across the you use? If someone made a bul- ancient borders between animal, let out of neutron-star material, plant and mineral, inciting feuds should you poke it? The answer and rival theories among those is strange and repulsive, but not who sought to place them. as deadly as you might think. Susannah Gibson unpacks What If? is an essential holi- the experiments and specula- day companion. Each chapter tions that underpinned Enlight- takes a daft-but-tractable ques- enment natural history, showing tion such as those above, and how finds pushed at disciplinary applies science, reason and crit- boundaries.