Book Review: A Pair of Guides to Fossils, Past and Future
https://undark.org/2020/08/14/book-review-footprints-some-assembly-required/
How do you like your science writing served?
Some of us are omnivores, nose-to-tail gourmands who want as much information presented to us as we can load onto our plates. Others want our science served like a fancy gourmet meal, a little light, perhaps, but beautifully plated.
Two recent books illustrate the distinction: “Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA” by Neil Shubin and “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils” by David Farrier.
Shubin, the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, is provost of the Field Museum of Natural History, and he gives us the smorgasbord: a rich guide to the science of evolution in the age of DNA analysis. Farrier is a professor of literature and the environment at the University of Edinburgh, and his offering is a more literary work of quiet grace. Neither is an extreme example of the form — after all, these categories aren’t mutually exclusive. But they are very different, and tuned to the tastes of different readers.
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