by Richard Fortey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 2008
Visitors to the venerable building in South Kensington will probably get more from Fortey’s lively, learned portrait than...
An insider’s tour of one of the world’s great museums.
Hired as the “trilobite man” at London’s Natural History Museum in 1970, Fortey (Earth, 2004, etc.) intimately knows its collections and many of the scientists who worked on them during his tenure. This thoroughly entertaining, beautifully written book displays his broad curiosity about scientific history and storyteller’s eye for the telling anecdote. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of the museum’s work: nomenclature, paleontology, zoology, botany, entomology and so forth. Each gives fascinating details about various aspects of its subject. For example, the Archaeopteryx fossil, one of the museum’s treasures, has given successive generations of researchers better and better insight into its relation to both birds and dinosaurs, thanks to increasingly sophisticated tools of analysis. The author also provides a wealth of detail about the scientists themselves, often as entertaining as the objects they study. We learn that Linnaeus named a particularly useless weed after one of his rivals and that the museum’s technicians used to cook sausages over Bunsen burners in the back. Fortey conscientiously limns the history of the museum and its many departments. He relates how various collections got started, often by colonial administrators or military officers who took up a hobby in distant postings. The famous controversies and hoaxes are here as well, notably the faked “Piltdown Man” fossil, which fooled two generations of anthropologists before it was exposed. The author offers a good explanation of why the establishment fell for the Piltdown hoax and falls in line with today’s generally accepted identification of the perpetrator. We also learn how the museum has evolved with changing ideas about its function, especially since the last Conservative government decided that it needed to be self-supporting.
Visitors to the venerable building in South Kensington will probably get more from Fortey’s lively, learned portrait than from any official guidebook.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26362-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
by Sophia Amoruso ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2014
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection...
A Dumpster diver–turned-CEO details her rise to success and her business philosophy.
In this memoir/business book, Amoruso, CEO of the Internet clothing store Nasty Gal, offers advice to young women entrepreneurs who seek an alternative path to fame and fortune. Beginning with a lengthy discussion of her suburban childhood and rebellious teen years, the author describes her experiences living hand to mouth, hitchhiking, shoplifting and dropping out of school. Her life turned around when, bored at work one night, she decided to sell a few pieces of vintage clothing on eBay. Fast-forward seven years, and Amoruso was running a $100 million company with 350 employees. While her success is admirable, most of her advice is based on her own limited experiences and includes such hackneyed lines as, “When you accept yourself, it’s surprising how much other people will accept you, too.” At more than 200 pages, the book is overlong, and much of what the author discusses could be summarized in a few tweets. In fact, much of it probably has been: One of the most interesting sections in the book is her description of how she uses social media. Amoruso has a spiritual side, as well, and she describes her belief in “chaos magic” and “sigils,” a kind of wishful-thinking exercise involving abstract words. The book also includes sidebars featuring guest “girlbosses” (bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs) who share equally clichéd suggestions for business success. Some of the guidance Amoruso offers for interviews (don’t dress like you’re going to a nightclub), getting fired (don’t call anyone names) and finding your fashion style (be careful which trends you follow) will be helpful to her readers, including the sage advice, “You’re not special.”
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection or insight.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16927-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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