My Reads

  • Articles of Interest – December 2025

    Instead of a book review, I’d like to share some articles I’ve read recently. I enjoy getting the weekly digest email from JStor, the repository of academic journal articles and much more. This piece on Jane Goodall has some great quotes and links to some of her work. What an incredible force for good in…

  • “The Light Eaters” by Zoë Schlanger

    If ever there was a book to appeal to a botanist such as myself, this is primo! But even better, it’s written for people who aren’t scientists. Schlanger quit her job as a staff writer for The Atlantic to pursue a subject that had fired her curiosity for years: What is the true nature of…

  • “The Dutch House” by Ann Patchett

    Over the past several months, my two book clubs have selected a variety of fiction and nonfiction, but the themes have been dark. I threw in another dark work, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. After about the fifth or sixth book about human behavior at its worst, I realized the impact they were having…

  • “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman

    This bestselling book is nonetheless an academic tome. But worthwhile reading. Kahneman was a psychology professor at Princeton who applied his theories to economics, for which he won a Nobel Prize. I was intrigued by the title, because I consider myself to be a “slow thinker” in the sense that, while I am reasonably intelligent,…

  • “By the Fire We Carry” by Rebecca Nagle

    Nagle’s book centers on a case that traveled from Oklahoma to the US Supreme Court from 2019 to 2022. The effect of the decision, which stretched out over two court terms, impacted five Native American tribes that had originated in the eastern part of the continent, and had been forcibly removed by the Andrew Jackson…

  • “Prodigal Summer” by Barbara Kingsolver

    Another author I greatly admire is Barbara Kingsolver. She writes fiction, nonfiction, essays, and even poetry. She is also a biologist (like me) and environmental issues often feature in her work. I’ve read nearly everything she has written. This book, though, is my favorite and I reread it recently. There are two parallel stories. One…

  • “Extinction” by Douglas Preston

    I’m not a fan of horror, but I’m a huge fan of Douglas Preston. He recently served a term as president of the Author’s Guild where he fought against the A.I. machines stealing our work. But his talents lie in his writing abilities: journalism, nonfiction, and fiction. His article on the Amanda Knox case is…

  • “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey

    How can one not be tempted to read a Booker Prize-winning book that comes in at just over 200 pages and has cover blurbs like “Ravishingly beautiful” and “Harvey makes an ecstatic voyage…and looks back to Earth with a lover’s eye.” I was ravished! Seriously, this a eye-opening book. On the surface, it covers a…

  • “The Cure for Women” by Lydia Reeder

    Seldom does a book come along that both infuriates and leaves one gaping in awe. This work is subtitled, “Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the challenge to Victorian medicine that changed women’s lives forever.” That’s a tall order, and Reeder does not disappoint, though “forever” may be a stretch. This is not precisely a biography…

  • “The First Ladies”

    This 2023 book is by the same authors as “The Personal Librarian”: Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. The story is a fictionalized look at the close friendship and activism of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, two women from entirely different places and backgrounds. Bethune, an educated Black woman, has learned to work the…