Ten
Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin by
Birkhead, T. and Wimpenny, J., Montgomerie, B., Princeton UP
This isn't really a review,
merely a caution. I found this book to be extremely badly written and organised
and extremely unclear in its explanations. I just wanted to let BA readers
know my opinion so they can bear it in mind when deciding whether to buy
or borrow this book.
The main problem with this
work, which is organised around a series of key concepts in ornithology
and which traces their evolution (:-) ) through the late C19, the C20 and
the early C21, is that their explication of these ideas is very poor. Where
I understood what these concepts were, and some of the history of the concept,
I thought their explanations wouldn't
help others to understand.
Where I didn't know what some of the positions of researchers were I found
it impossible to work out from the information they supplied what the differences
were. For example, they state that the conclusions regarding natural selection
pressures on Darwin's Finches of Lack and Bowman are fundamentally different,
but I can't actually work out from their explication what the difference
is, and it sounds from their words as though Lack and Bowman are pretty
close in their ideas.
Anyway, IMHO a book to approach
warily.
John Leonard |
|
|
