Book Description
This is a book about the dramatic periods in the Earth's history called mass extinctions - short periods (by geological standards) when life nearly died out on Earth. The most famous is the mass extinction that happened about 65 million years ago, and that caused the death of the dinosaurs. But that was not the worst mass extinction: that honour goes to the extinction at the end of the Permian Period, about 250 million years ago, when over 90% of life is thought to have become extinct. What caused these catastrophes? Was it the effects of a massive meteorite impact? There is evidence for such an impact about 65 million years ago. Or was it a period of massive volcanic activity? There is evidence in the rocks of huge lava flows at periods that match several of the mass extinctions. Was it something to do with climate change and sea level? Or was it a combination of some or all of these? The question has been haunting geologists for a number of years, and it forms one of the most exciting areas of research in geology today. In this book, Tony Hallam, a distinguished geologist and writer, looks at all the different theories and also what the study of mass extinctions might tell us about the future. If climate change is a key factor, we may well, as some scientists have suggested, be in a period of mass extinction of our own making.
Customer Reviews:
Tough read but worth it.......2007-01-10
This compact little book has more information about so-called mass extinctions than you may want to know. It's a tough read for the non-geologist/scientist and I found I had to take it in small bites. BUT, it is worth the effort. His analysis of causes, his conclusions and his final overview of current global warming are excellent. He certainly puts the end to ideas of extinctions which happened overnight and shows how a combination of factors may have been necessary to achieve the death toll of most living things.
The author should stick to science.......2006-10-11
This book presents a great deal of information on mass extinctions, and it provides an excellent overview of how geologists and paleontologists gather evidence of the causes of mass extinctions. What they can garner from the geologic record is amazing. He also discusses the theories of other geologists in a very respectful manner. Dr. Hallam pokes holes in the asteroid theory for the mass extinction 65 million years ago--wiping out the dinosaurs--although he says that the asteroid may have delivered the final blow to the already dwindling species of dinosaurs.
My only quibble is that the author includes some little anecdotes about his research trips and the local people who helped him. He notes that he doesn't want to sound patronizing, but he does--VERY patronizing to the point of being offensive.
However, this book does an excellent job of explaining what we can learn--and what has been learned--from the geologic record.
Requires patience and some prior knowledge.......2006-09-21
Hallam impresses me as a careful scientist who has assimilated an immense amount of material. I enjoyed this book, even when the detail and vocabulary were daunting. However, I don't think it was particularly well written, and if you don't already have some background in earth history, do not even think of starting with this book. The book is written in kind of a monotone, without enough focus on the key ideas, and without enough summary material (despite a previous reviewer, most chapters don't end with any summary). Figure 9.1, extinction name vs contributing causes, does provide a nice overall summary, in fact all the figures are very helpful. The subject is inherently confusing because there are relatively few conclusions on which there is consensus.
It is probable that only the extinction involving the dinosaurs, at the end of the cretaceous, was caused by extraterrestrial impact; it is "volcanism" which is actually associated with many extinction's. Think not of a terrestrial volcano blowing its top, but sustained undersea activity which raises the seabed enough to cause worldwide inundation, and the release of sufficiently large quantities of dissolved methane to cause a greenhouse effect. Associated with volcanism is the impact of tectonic movement, with its consequences for global climate and ocean currents. Remember that for older extinction's, the benthos (organisms living on or in the sea bed, most importantly on continental shelves) was particularly important, and warming waters, as well as deeper waters, could cause a lack of dissolved oxygen. Warm water holds less oxygen, and this is aggravated by a lack of strong ocean currents which are normally driven by large temperature gradients between polar and tropic waters.
The last chapter on extinction's caused by humans is very readable and can be read by itself. For readers interested in earth history, I recommend Nick Lane's book, "Oxygen", part I. Even though it focuses on atmospheric oxygen levels, many important concepts are explained.
Theory of Mass Extinctions for the Serious Beginner.......2006-08-10
Other reviews on this page give a fair idea of the contents of this book and so, as with most of my science reviews, my main goal here is to describe the technical level so that potential readers can decide if this book is for them. (If you're interested, you can click above on "See all my reviews" for more. There are at least two pages.) This is especially urgent since one of the previous reviews (of the paperback edition) says that Hallam "keeps his use of professional terms within the reach of the basic reader..." while another reviewer (of the hard cover) says the book is more appropriate for specialists than for general readers. I have seen only the paperback and it has a LOT of jargon, words such as "Frasnian", "tectonoeustatic", "chronostratigraphy", "brachiopod", and "paraphyletic". I still say this is a book for beginners because it doesn't require much prior knowledge. All of the terms the reader will need to know are defined in the book; many are defined more than once, in case the reader has forgotten in the meantime. (That will often be the case.) One doesn't need to know mathematics, geology, chemistry, or the history of life.
There are also a great many undefined terms but, in general, there is no need to know the definitions. They are mainly names of kinds of organisms and the point Hallam is making is that a lot of kinds of organisms went extinct at the same time. For example, it doesn't matter if you don't know how rugose corals differ from other corals; the point is that the kinds of animals that built reefs before the Permian extinction disappeared in that extinction. Some readers will be uncomfortable at first with getting the gist of an argument without understanding all the words, but I think most will get used to it.
Hallam also has a very good chapter on the effect of mass extinctions on evolution. In particular, a pair of graphs shows a remarkable change in diversification of marine life about the time of the Permian extinction and another in land life at the time of the K-T extinction. I have always been interested in evolution, so this is the most interesting thing about mass extinctions for me. And there is a final chapter on the Holocene mass extinction, which is currently being carried out by humans.
There are two other books on mass extinctions which I have read and reviewed and which may be of interest. One is by Hallam and his colleague Paul Wignall. It covers essentially the same ground as the current book, but it is at a more technical level and it assumes the reader knows many of the terms that are used in the current book. The specialists that another reviewer mentioned would be much better off going directly to Hallam and Wignall, as would anyone who I familiar with the 5 words I cited above. Readers who absorb much of the vocabulary in Hallam might well like to go on to Hallam and Wignall.
The other book is by Douglas Erwin. This is more technical than Hallam but less technical than Hallam and Wignall. It also covers only one mass extinction, that of the end-Permian, and so there is less vocabulary to keep track of. The end-Permian is the most exciting for me, not only because it was more massive than the others, but even more so because one of the groups that was nearly wiped out was the the synapsids, the ancestors of mammals. One more extinction in that group and we might not be here. Erwin also has an excellent discussion of the significance of carbon isotope ratios.
In sum, if you want to learn the science of mass extinctions and not just descriptions, if you know only a little about palaeogeology and marine palaeobiology, if you like to work at learning, and if you're not intimidated by a lot of new words, This book is an excellent place to start. Some readers will find it so complete that they won't need more.
Supurb overview on the topic of extinction.......2006-06-17
Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities by Tony Hallam is a well written book on the topic of biological extinction through time . The volume is essentially a rewrite of the book he and Dr. Wignall wrote together in 1997 (Mass Extinctions and their Aftermath). While the latter is far more technical and probably more than the average person with an interest in paleontology and extinction events is willing to undertake, the present volume is written very much with the a vocational reader in mind.
The book has a very readable style, revealing the author's erudition in its sentence style, vocabulary choices (my favorite is "depauperate" with respect to a description of the diversity of a particular fauna), and thorough knowledge of the recent pertinent literature. He keeps his use of professional terms within reach of the basic reader and provides a glossary of terms at the end of the book. While he has some "attitude" with respect to certain issues, he addresses everything in a thoroughly gentlemanly manner, giving credit to the work of others, and when he disagrees with findings makes his point graciously and with evidential support. Students writing papers would do well to study his style and approach to argument.
The earlier book with Wignall addressed extinction as a series of specific events. It looks at each event, discussing the date, type specimens, and facies locales throughout the world that support the likely diagnosis of mass extinction and reviews the scientific data that suggests how they might have come about. The present book looks at extinction as a process that effects life and evolution through time. While specific events are discussed in an organized way, the author focuses more on the nature of proposed extinction processes. The most commonly and widely known of these causes are the bolide impact, anoxic aquatic or atmospheric conditions, volcanism, and climate change, each of which is examined in depth using specific extinction events to discuss the data.
The section I found most interesting was "Pulling the Strands Together." This was because it reminded me of other authors I've read on other subjects, the topics of which seem to have implications for extinction as a process.
One is Stuart Kaufmann's work on self organized criticality which discussed, among other things, a topography of fitness within a set of parameters. He introduced a diagram illustrating, through the rise of peaks from a baseline terrain, that life tends to organize itself in such a way as to make optimal use of the fitness terrain. He notes that, when conditions are altered especially when rapid, those at the peak are not able to hop from one peak to a better one. Their failure to adapt brings about extinction, and others along the lower slopes make a transition to a new peak fitness profile. As Hallam notes, catastrophes may occur too quickly for many taxa to adapt in a Darwinian manner, which leads to disappearance. However, where change is slow enough some taxa that seem to have disappeared may in fact simply have evolved into a descendant species. They sort of back down the old fitness slope and head off in a new direction.
Another author that is brought to mind is the theorist Per Bak, who studies self organized criticality and event probability. The discussion of periodicity/episodicity of extinction in Dr. Hallam's work reminded me of Dr. Bak's discussion of earthquakes, landslides, and similar events. In this case, the author notes that the frequency of occurrence of any possible event will lie along a curve that measures the probability of a given magnitude. In this instance, extinction might be seen as ranging from extinction of a single of species to the end of all life on earth. In short, Bak believes that all events that can occur will do so, but that they have a different probability of doing so. As with the disaster in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, it isn't a matter of "if" but of "when" the event will occur. The events as they occur through time, however, form an irregular curve with many small peaks punctuated with the random introduction of a few very big ones. The issue for disaster planners and others is that of prediction and preparation, so an effort is made to find a "periodicity" in the data that isn't necessarily there to find. This sounds very much like Dr. Hallam's discussion of the attempts to pin down a periodicity in the data of extinction events. Humans are very good at seeing patterns in random data, but ultimately all that can be said is that "if it has happened, it can happen."
I'd recommend the book to anyone with an interest in paleontology, paleoecology, and extinction events. It would make a lovely book for an introductory course on earth history, or in paleontology, and an excellent syllabus entry for a course in earth science for teachers.
A wonderful book, full of information, and well written.
Average customer rating:
- Some good chapters on fascinating new field
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Evolutionary Medicine
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Similar Items:
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Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine
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Evolving Health: The Origins of Illness and How the Modern World is Making Us Sick
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Evolution in Health and Disease
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Diseases and Human Evolution
ASIN: 0195103564 |
Book Description
Evolution is the single most important idea in modern biology, shedding light on virtually every biological question, from the shape of orchid blossoms to the distribution of species across the planet. Until recently, however, the theory has had little impact on medical research or practice. Evolutionary Medicine shows how this is beginning to change. Collecting work from leaders in the field, this volume describes an array of new and innovative approaches to human health that are based on an appreciation of our long evolutionary history. For example, it shows how evolution helps to explain the complex relationship between our immune systems and the virulence and transmission of human viruses. It also shows how comparisons between how we live today and how our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived thousands of years ago illuminate a variety of contemporary ills, including obesity, lower-back pain, and insomnia. Evolutionary Medicine covers issues at every stage of life, from infancy (colic, jaundice, SIDS, parent-infant sleep struggles, ear infections, breast-feeding, asthma) to adulthood (sexually transmitted diseases, depression, overeating, addictions, child abuse, cardiovascular disease, breast and ovarian cancer) to old age (osteoporosis, geriatric sleep problems). Written for a wide range of students and researchers in medicine, anthropology, and psychology, it is an invaluable guide to this rapidly developing field.
Customer Reviews:
Some good chapters on fascinating new field.......2001-05-05
This book applies Darwin's theory of evolution to medicine and that's very exciting. It's exciting because the theory of evolution turns out to be a framework with impressive explanatory power in the area of health and disease. Why do babies in modern Western societies show more excessive crying than infants of !Kung San hunter-gatherers? What makes many women that give birth in modern high-tech hospitals still unsatisfied with the process? Why do so many modern women get breast cancer? Evolutionary medicine proposes answers, sometimes controversial, but definitely almost always worth considering. Why only four stars then? Perhaps it's because the field is still maturing but I thought only six of the eighteen chapters of the book showed clear arguments, high-quality writing, and didn't require a Ph.D. in biochemistry to follow the details. (I liked the chapters about evolutionary perspectives on infant crying, sudden infant death syndrome, obstetrics, nutrition, psychiatry, and breast cancer). And finally, readers should keep in mind that "Evolutionary Medicine" is a university textbook. For a more accessible introduction into this exciting new field they should read Nesse and Williams' "Why We Get Sick".
Book Description
Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage-- which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows:
|
Level of Evolution |
Cause of adaptive failure |
resulting disease or problem |
|
Pre-life |
Environmental poisons |
Certain birth defects |
|
Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like) |
Viral infection |
Colds/flu/HIV |
|
Morula (sponge-like) |
Cellular stress |
Cancer |
|
Chordate |
Physical stress |
Back pain |
|
Fish |
Excess dietary salt |
Hypertension/heart disease |
|
Amphibian |
Tobacco smoke |
Lung cancer/emphysema |
|
Lower primate |
Excess dietary sugar |
Diabetes mellitus |
|
Higher primate |
Vitamin C deficiency |
Scurvy |
|
Ape |
Excess dietary protein |
Gout |
|
Homo sapiens |
Reduced dietary variety |
Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies |
Customer Reviews:
This book should be required reading in all the schools.......2007-09-30
This is one of the four or five best books I have ever read. It explains our most important health problems in their evolutionary context, and it explains why diet and lifestyle changes are far superior to pills and surgery. Everyone should read this book in their youth, so that they can prevent the health problems that come with a lifetime of bad choices and bad medical care. Buy this book, and buy more copies for all your relatives and friends --- and buy one for your doctor so that she can do a better job for you.
Evolution in Health and Disease.......2005-09-18
This is a fascinating book, written in clear, lucid, and descriptive prose, and written for the non-specialist and specialist alike, exploring the impact of evolution on health and disease. The book introduces "evolutionary medicine" to help the reader make informed choices about his or her own health. No one who wants to live a long, healthy life can afford to ignore the important insights gleaned from evolution in this book. What worked when we were hunter-gatherers on the African savannas no longer works in modern society, and the changes in our modern environments have caused Homo sapiens to adapt poorly.
One of the key evolutionary concepts is an entity's adaptation to its environment: When all the body's organs and systems are operating optimally under the ideal evolutionary environments, both internally and externally, our bodies are concordant. When our bodies are out of sync with either environment, they begin to fail, and our bodies become discordant. The former is homeostasis and health, the latter is disease and dysfunction.
After a very short introduction to the essential Darwinian concepts, excellently and easily recapitulated, the author turns to the seventeen stages of human evolutionary development, beginning with prokaryotes as stage one and ending with Homo sapiens as stage seventeen millions of years later, and describing all the intermediary stages in between. Although not difficult, it's the only place where the reader might become pensive, if not impatient, thinking the author is off course. But the key to understanding the rest of the book depends on understanding the material presented in Chapter Two. Here are some of the insights in columnar outline:
LEVEL OF EVOLUTION, ADAPTIVE FAILURE, CONSEQUENCE
Pre-life, Environmental poisons, Birth defects
Single cell, Viral infection, Cold/Flu/HIV
Morula (sponge-like), Cellular stress, Cancer
Chordate, Physical stress, Back pain
Fish, Excess dietary salt, Heart disease
Amphibian, Tobacco smoke, Lung disease
Lower primate, Excess dietary sugar, Diabetes mellitus
Higher primate, Vitamin C deficiency, Scurvy
Ape, Excess dietary protein, Gout
Homo sapiens, Reduced dietary variety, Allergies
This is a partial list. Each of the seventeen stages co-exist in humans; this complexity is both to our advantage, and can be our downfall. Understanding how each stage of evolution works within us unlocks a wealth of information.
Obviously, the emphasis is on prevention, not treatment, although there are constructive, non-medical, non-surgical options discussed. Some of the ideas are extremely valuable and helpful, others are highly speculative and dubious. For example, one particularly difficult concept advocated by Boaz is a return to a Paleo Diet that is high in animal products (especially gamey meats), while avoiding indigestible beans, grains, and dairy. It might be the "ideal" diet, but it's an impossible one to follow, and even more difficult to find. Still, the insights can help guide one to nutrition from an evolutionary perspective. The chapter on our musculoskeletal system was by far my favorite; I suffer from many of the system's dysfunctions, and now realize why. I knew it was a failure to adapt, but exactly how was new to me.
Nearly every anatomical and physiological system is evaluated in evolutionary terms. I'd run out of space just outlining them. Suffice it to say, this is not the only book on evolutionary medicine. This new field is literally exploding. Certainly an excellent alternative is Randolph Nesse's and George Williams' "Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine." Both are equally competent and informative, the only difference is a matter of style and approach. Take a look at both books and find the one that suits your temperament best. I truly enjoyed both. Ignore either to your health's detriment.
Excellent introduction to the ideas of evolutionary medicine.......2003-03-10
This works as a general introduction to the nascent field of evolutionary medicine. Note well the word "health" in the title. One of the central ideas in evolutionary medicine is preserving health, and in general looking at medicine from the point of view of the healthy instead of from an overweening concentration on the sick. An ounce of prevention in evolutionary medicine is worth a whole ton of cure.
Another important idea is to look, in so far as possible, to our adaptations as evolutionary beings to see what we might be doing wrong today. For example, grasses with plump seeds of carbohydrates were in short supply before the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. There were wheats and ryes, wild oats and such, but their seeds were relatively small and required a lot of labor to harvest. Consequently, our ancestors on the savannahs and in the woodlands ate grain carbohydrates in small amounts. Now, of course, grains--especially rice, wheat and corn--are the staple foods everywhere in the world and we eat massive amounts of them.
Is this a problem? As Professor Boaz points out, evolutionary medicine suggests that it is. We are "carbohydrate intolerant" (Boaz uses the term "glucotoxicity," page 133) and cannot shut down our appetite for all the carbohydrates so tantalizingly available to us. They are especially enthralling when served up with salt and fats.
In the prehistory there were no supermarkets open 24-hours a day. Instead there were freezing winters and droughts that might last for months or more, sure to visit almost every human eventually. So when there was a bountifulness in the land we chowed down big time. And those of us who had the ability to put on fat could live out the times of famine better than any prehistoric runway model. And so our chubby guy- or chubby gal-genes were favored. Boaz calls this the "thrifty genotype."
However that virtue has become a fault. What to do? Boaz recommends exercise, for one thing. In the pre-history our ancestors managed to walk all the way around the world. They had no cars or easy chairs. That we can solve our fat problem by looking at the way our ancestors lived and emulate them, is the somewhat bitter pill of this book. And, by the way, this "medicine" (hard to take, as we all know) also works against heart attacks, gout and other modern diseases.
Boaz has gone to some considerable trouble to associate various "diseases" with 17 evolutionary levels of human structure and function. (There's a table on pages 19-25.) These levels are like the idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" in that some of the levels are similar to those stages in the embryo's development from single cell through bony fish and amphibian to mammal, all the way to us. What Boaz is adding here is the idea that certain diseases are associated with each level of development. For example, emphysema is associated with the amphibian level of adaptation while viral infections go all the way back to when our ancestors were just single cells.
This scheme is useful in helping us to understand disease. It is even helpful in treatment. But Boaz's formulation is no magic pill or cure-all. For the chronic diseases that plague those of us in the developed world there is no easy cure. Boaz recognizes a "discordance" between our evolutionary selves and the modern environment that is leading to these diseases. He uses a concept he calls "adaptive normality" that can guide us away from the discordance.
This is a very readable book requiring no prior expertise. It is obvious that Boaz wanted to reach the educated lay person with his ideas. For those of you new to the idea of evolutionary medicine, this will be an exciting book. Boaz does an excellent job of teaching us is how to think from an evolutionary perspective, which is something we all need to do.
Another interesting book on this subject is Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (1994) by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams which I also recommend.
Book Description
This work provides a unified theory that addresses the important problem of the origin and maintenance of genetic variation in natural populations. With modern molecular techniques, variation is found in all species, sometimes at astonishingly high levels. Yet, despite these observations, the forces that maintain variation within and between species have been difficult subjects of study. Because they act very weakly and operate over vast time scales, scientists must rely on indirect inferences and speculative mathematical models. However, despite these obstacles, many advances have been made. The author's research in molecular genetics, evolution, and bio-mathematics has enabled him to draw on this work, and present a coherent and valuable view of the field. The book is divided into three parts. The first consists of three chapters on protein evolution, DNA evolution, and molecular mechanisms. This section reviews the experimental observations on genetic variation. The second part gives a unified treatment of the mathematical theory of selection in a fluctuating environment. The final two chapters combine the earlier assessments in a treatment of the scientific status of two competing theories for the maintenance of genetic variation. Steeped in the enormous advances population genetics has made over the past 25 years, this book has proven highly popular among human geneticists, biologists, evolutionary theorists, and bio-mathematicians.
Book Description
In 1939, the Nazi regime’s plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions of Jews. By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period—of how, precisely, the Nazis’ racial policies evolved from persecution and “ethnic cleansing” to the Final Solution of the Holocaust.
Focusing on the months between the German conquest of Poland in September 1939–which brought nearly two million additional Jews under Nazi control—and the beginning of the deportation of Jews to the death camps in the spring of 1942, Christopher R. Browning describes how Poland became a laboratory for experiments in racial policies, from expulsion and decimation to ghettoization and exploitation under local occupation authorities. He reveals how the subsequent attack on the Soviet Union opened the door for an immense radicalization of Nazi Jewish policy—and marked the beginning of the Final Solution. Meticulously documenting the process that led to this fatal development, Browning shows that Adolf Hitler was the key decision-maker throughout, approving major escalations in Nazi persecution of the Jews at victory-induced moments of euphoria. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this groundbreaking work provides an essential chapter in the history of the Holocaust.
Customer Reviews:
Evolution is apt.......2006-08-21
The mystery of how the Final Solution became the Final Solution will never be truly solved, that is lost to history, lost within Hitler's mind. Christopher Browning explains some of the forces and events that sped the Final Solution along. Browning may be the most eminent Holocaust scholar in America today. He has been looking at the whys and hows and wheres, mainly of the executioners, where motivations are still not crystal clear. What I saw as a reader was that the road to the Final Solution was almost an organic event. Poland was the first step, ethnic German resettlement next,then the necessities of occupation and finally Russia. Not one decision, but as you will see, decisions and choices dictated by events as much as ideology. This story will carry you along with fascination, with horror, and with a chilling understanding, not justification mind you, but understanding.
Did Hitler ever ordered it?Not a shred of evidence here!.......2004-12-28
This is a most commendable work from Browning, an internationally repescted Holocaust researcher who conclusively demonstrated that Hitler, while desiring of the cleansing, ie, forcible expulsion, of the Jews from German dominated Europe, in one way of another, had never decreed that the Final Solution , as coined by Himmler and his deputy, Heydrich, should end in the death camps and gas chambers.
The radicalization and escalation of measures against the Jews mostly originated from his underlings who competed for brute power in a polycratic, darwinist bureaucracy, and who sometimes paid little attention to Hitler's expressed wishes, unless they were set down as written directives.
On wonders all those counter factual arguments puit forth by the Intentionalists that Hitler, mindful of the adverse consequences (!) of a written directive putting Jews to death, was careful not to lay down a paper trail leading to him as the main culprit, when Hitler himself signed a directive for the forced euthanasia of crippled , mentally handicapped, and deformed GERMAN babies and old people (what would cause a greater outcry amongst the Germans, should a directive be found, one for disposing of thier own kin and the other of the despised Jews?).
As from 1939, Hitler, as evidenced by all the OKW/OKH/OKL/OKM dairies as well as his so called table talk,concerned himself exclusively with foreign diplomacy or his campaigns, and never gave much thought about domestic politics or internal administration, thus leaving a void for his cohorts to enagage in a free for all power grab, with to each his own interpretation of what Hitler mentioned as the end of Jewry in Europe, and each and everyone going for increasingly radical measures as justification for aggregating addtional power/authority to oneself.
All in all, this is a sad book to read of the fate and treatment of the Jews by their persecutors, tormentors and executioners, be they Germans, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Dutch, French, Italians, Russians, Slovaks, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Belgians, Greeks....
Intensive but worthwhile.......2004-08-26
This is one of the best books on the market that explains the political development of the Holocaust inside the Nazi power circle. It provides a strong argument that the Nazis did not originally plan to exterminate the Jews in Europe, but rather export them from Germany. Browning's thesis is a challenge to the slippery slope fallacy, which suggests that just because a person steps a foot in one direction doesn't mean he'll step a mile. The Nazis clearly started out w/ a 'Final Solution' plan of sending the Jews to a place like Madagascar (which was on the table as late as the Battle of Britain), but after the invasion of Russia this 'Final Solution' snowballed into a landslide of killing Jews via gas chambers (not that the Anti-Semitic rhetoric of the early 30s were justified in any way, whether pro-genocide or pro-expulsion). The Nazis took a step in a bad direction, and then they walked a mile along that evil path. This would give logicians a nightmare.
Most people assume that Hitler ran on a genocide program in 33. This is a dangerous assumption, for two reasons: 1.) it tends to view the Nazis as a supernatural party of evil. Make no mistake, the Nazis WERE evil, but they believed themselves to be do-gooders who provided solutions to the problems the average German faces. Did the German people know what they were getting into in 1933? Sure, they were willing to view Jews as the scapegoats for the Depression, but did they hate Jews enough to kill them? This book challenges the "Hitler's Willing Executioners" theory, because although Hitler touted a Final Solution in Mein Kampf, that wasn't interpreted by him or his companions as outright genocide until 1941.
And 2.) Holocaust deniers use this fact, that the "Final Solution" in the 30s meant population dispersal rather than genocide, and then they play the "Well, if you were lied to in high school about the original intentions of the Nazis, what else were you lied to about? (hint hint, you were lied to about the Holocaust period!)" card to gain confidence w/ the unsuspecting listener, and then convert this person into a Holocaust denier. It is important that we know the facts about the Holocaust, so that the uninitiated in deep WWII history won't be hoodwinked w/ "gotcha" facts by Holocaust deniers.
Superb Investigation Of Holocaust Circumstances!.......2004-08-19
While no serious Holocaust scholar would argue against the idea that the Third Reich meant in some fashion to dispose of its so-called "Jewish Problem" through some dispicable action or another, whether it by via forced emigration, deportation, resettlement in either Madagascar or the western reaches of the Ukraine, or through other means, there has been a long-ranging debate within the academic community regarding the intent of the Nazis from the beginning regarding the actual attempted extermination of the Jewish people as it later occurred, primarily in Poland and the occupied territories, during the later course of World War Two. One school of thought argues that from the very beginning Hitler intended to rid himself and Europe of the Jews through such nefarious means as starvation, forced labor, and later, in the death camps. Others, such as Professor Christopher Browning, posit that the policy of extermination evolved as a result of existential factors such as food and shelter as the Wehrmacht marched east into Poland and beyond to the Soviet escarpment.
Thus, this brilliant work by Browning intends to offer proof of the more circumstantial theory, one in which various attempts were made to offer some relief to over-extended troops and resources to deal with the indigenous Jewish population within Poland and the other territories as they were conquered based both on logistics and the state of chaos that ensued in the war zone. This is not to suggest that the Nazis intended to spare the Jews; on the contrary, the issue was how to dispose of them, whether it be through forced emigration, slave labor, simple starvation, or finally, through implementation of an intentional murder machine by way of the death camps. From the beginning Hitler intended to use them to best advantage.
As Browning argues, however, the course of events must be taken into consideration when viewing the evidence, for while Hitler's main aim in warring first with Poland and later with Russia was for what he referred to as "Liebenstraum", or living room, it was also his intent to brutally subjugate the native populations within the conquered areas and literally work them to death, so their labors could profit the Third Reich and prepare the areas for German immigrants. But given the chaotic and undisciplined nature of the Nazi hierarchy and its bureaucracy, several overlapping policies worked against each other and created a wilderland of competing efforts, many of which left the local authorities puzzled as to what policy to follow and how to reach the unrealistic goals given to it by higher headquarters. In the midst of the chaos, according to Browning, evil machinations gradually emerged and as they succeeded in reaching goals, became the modus operandi.
Browning brilliantly focuses on the specific time frame in which the policies of the Third Reich solidified into what became the Final Solution. This is easily the best and most completely documented work on the subject I have yet read, and while I find it an impressive work of historical research (Browning's use of new archives and secondary materials is particularly impressive in this regard), I remain unconvinced that Professor Browning has successfully ended the debate (not that he claims to have done so), nor do I think he has explained some very deliberate and troubling evidentiary materials that seem to provide grist for the other camp regarding the instructions given to both the Wehrmacht and to special troops under the command of the Gestapo regarding the conduct of troops in the eastern zone.
In this regard, German troops were encouraged from the very beginning of the so-called eastern campaigns against both the Poles and the Russians to consider all indigenous Jews as communists, and thus subject to summary execution whenever and wherever they might be discovered, whether in urban areas working as academics or as rural farmers tending to their humble fields, and to support and aid the special troop formations trained and organized to systematically round up and murder indigenous Jewish populations from village to village, from the very outset of military operations in September 1939. So, while I personally subscribe to Browning's interpretation of the gradual move toward more and more intentionally systematic and increasingly more murderous assaults against the Jewish population, I do not believe he has proven once and for all that it was not part of the original plan from the time the Nazis took power in 1933. Nonetheless, this is indeed a superb book, and one I can heartily recommend. Enjoy!
Only for academics.......2004-06-21
This book is only appropriate for someone that desires a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the subject. The actual text is about 450 pages with some 200 pages of footnotes. The writing is very difficult to follow and its meaning unclear. The text would have benefitted from a strong editor who would have forced the author to speak in plain, generally understood English.
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Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences (Advances in Vertebrate Paleobiology)
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0306460920 |
Book Description
This book examines an important and growing issue among ecologists, conservation biologists, and archaeologists, namely recent extinction of species, and will focus on treatments of losses thought to have been caused by humans in some way over the past 40,000 years when Homo sapiens spread worldwide. There is an exemplary list of leading figures in this debate, and the book should have impact for the debate on current conservation issues and biodiversity.
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Chris OSU.......2005-03-24
The very much like the book. I thought it was very informative and coming from me (one who does not like to read factual books) that is saying something. I do not think everyone will react the same way to the book as i did. i like it because i am an animal enthusiast and any more information about conservation and extinction habits is music to my eyes (lol) anyway i would recommend this book to all who are interested in animals or want to have an informational book for projects. but many might not like it because it is written as die hard facts, it does not have a plot and would not be interesting to those who do not appreciate animals or science. ManPhee compiles a bunch of informtion based on the editors he gathered it from. it reads sort of like how u would find a history book, with graphs and charts to back up his info all in all it was very informative and i got lot out of it.
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- Do you want to stop suffering "the species problem"?
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Genes, Categories, and Species: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Cause of the Species Problem
Jody Hey
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Speciation
ASIN: 0195144775 |
Book Description
In Genes, Categories and Species, Jody Hey provides an enlightening new solution to one of biology's most ironic and perplexing puzzles. When Darwin showed that life evolves, and that it does so by natural selection, he transformed our understanding of living things. But the very question Darwin addressed-the nature of species-continues to pose an awkward conundrum for biologists. Despite enormous efforts by a great many scholars, biologists still cannot agree on how to identify species or even how to define the word "species." Genes, Categories, and Species is not like other books on the species problem, for it does not begin by asking, "What is a species?" Instead, it focuses on the very fact that biologists are stumped by species and their curious behavior in coping with that uncertainty. Faced with a persistent conundrum-and no lack of data on the subject-biologists who ponder the species problem have ceased to ask the most essential of scientific questions: "What new information do we need to resolve the problem?" This is the question that motivates this book and leads to the discoveries it reveals. The answer to the species problem lies not with the processes and patterns of biological diversity, Hey contends, but rather in the way the human mind perceives and categorizes that diversity. The promise of this book is twofold. First, it allows biologists to understand the causes of the species problem and to use this knowledge to avoid the major confusions that arise over species. Second, with its explanation of the species problem, it gives scholars and students of human nature a humbling example of how ill-suited the human mind is for certain kinds of scientific questions.
Customer Reviews:
Do you want to stop suffering "the species problem"?.......2001-09-01
Jody Hey's book provides an answer to a problem that has plagued biologists over the past century. Biologists have been suffering "the species problem": how can we come up with a definition for biological species? The word "species" is famous and incredibly popular. Biologists, and newspapers and magazines use the word daily, nature lovers and conservationsist love to count them, and of course Darwin wrote the book that shook the world with "species" in the title. As biologists we have had a burning passion to paint a tidy picture in words to exactly capture what species are. The debate has paraded over numerous books, and has taken up very much journal space. Yet there is no agreement on exactly what a species is! Jody Hey, a theoretical and empirical biologist, has come up with a convincing answer. Hey has weaved together philosophical, psychological, anthropological, and biological information (down to the genetic level) to show us how we have been trying to define the undefinable. Humans love to delineate recurrent patterns in our world, and put them in neat categories. But our categorization process is a very human thing and it has limitations for how we see our world. The species problem, Jody Hey describes, is like "trying to put clouds into boxes." Jody Hey shows us that 'species' are unreal, but that there are things out there in our biological worlds that are real, though fuzzy. These are "evolutionary groups." They are real because evolutionary forces have acted on them in the past, and continue to act on them in the present. Biologists must become comfortable with the notion that biological nature is fuzzy and stop looking for pithy definitions of "species". In this way we can get on with studying the really interesting problems -- how evolutionary processes work.
If you are a person interested in discovering how human thinking (and language) can distort our picture of the world, then this book provides a fascinating account. If you are a biologist who uses the word "species", this book is ESSENTIAL reading.
Book Description
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964), one of the founders of the science of population genetics, was also one of the greatest practitioners of the art of explaining science to the layperson. Haldane was a superb story-teller, as his essays and children's books attest. In "The Causes of Evolution" he not only helped to marry the new science of genetics to the older one of evolutionary theory but also provided an accessible introduction to the genetical basis of evolution by natural selection.
Egbert G. Leigh's new afterword to this classic work places it in the context of the ongoing study of evolution. Defining Haldane's refusal to be confined by a "System" as a "light-hearted" one, Leigh points out that we are now finding that "Haldane's questions are the appropriate next stage in learning how adaptation can evolve. We are now ready to reap the benefit of the fact that Haldane was a free man in the sense that really matters."
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The first thing that Harvard University biology professor Stephen Palumbi wants you to know is that evolution is a fact, not a theory. The second is this: evolution does not require eons and eons to make its effects manifest. By tinkering with genes and rewriting the laws of natural selection, we humans have lately been "accelerating the evolutionary game, especially among the species that live with us most intimately"--not our pets, that is to say, but the food we eat, the pests that share that food, and the diseases that visit us.
Almost all of this accelerated evolution--which, as in the pointed case of the human immunodeficiency virus, occurs faster than we can track it--is an unintended, accidental consequence of some well-intentioned effort to improve human life by sidestepping nature. One such consequence is the growing incidence of drug-resistant bacteria and viruses, which have mutated to survive antibiotic treatments to the point that postoperative infections from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus now pose a major threat to hospitals. Another is the arrival of pests that have evolved to survive pesticides of many kinds, pests that threaten crops around the world in a time of ever-increasing scarcity. All this, Palumbi writes, is "evolution with teeth," and such responses to our hapless prompting make humans the most potent evolutionary form the planet has ever known. Whether we can survive our own power to reshape the earth remains a question. But, Palumbi concludes, ideas evolve, too, so that we can hope against hope to think our way back to more or less normal cycles of evolutionary change. Well-written and provocative, his book makes for a useful start. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Evolution is not merely the process that ruled the rise and fall of the dinosaurs over hundreds of millions of years. It also happens rapidly, so quickly and so frequently that it changes how all of us live our lives. Drugs fail because diseases like HIV and tuberculosis evolve in a matter of months, neatly sidestepping pharmacology. Insects adapt and render harmless the most powerful pesticides in a matter of years, not centuries. While the ecological impact of human technology has been well publicized, the evolutionary consequences of antibiotic and antiviral use, insecticide applications, and herbicide bioengineering have been largely unexplored. In The Evolution Explosion, Stephen R. Palumbi examines these practical and critical aspects of modern evolution with a simple, yet forceful style that contains both an urgent message and a sense of humor.
Customer Reviews:
Poor science or just poor thinking?.......2002-06-26
One of the stones around the neck of Darwinist evolutionary theory is that it hasn't been observed to happen.Thousands of years of intensive breeding of dogs (not even the undirected evolution Darwin described) hasn't produced a new species of non-dogs. Same with cats and other living things.
The way around the problem is to avoid defining what evolution is or broaden it to simply mean "change" so that anything that changes is said to evolve. Defined that way, evolution can be trumpeted every time a rock rolls down the hill.
It's sort of like AIDS in Africa. First you had to be tested and found to have HIV to be counted as an AIDS case. Well, it was hard to test, so instead AIDS was redefined to be a class of symptoms. If you had the symptoms, you were counted. Immediately after the redefinition of AIDS, the reports started about an explosion of AIDS in Africa.Now whenever the stats need to be cranked up, a commission meets to add new symptoms to the list and expand the pool of what can be called AIDS.
These are also the author's primary methods, used in the hope no one looks too closely at all the semantic shell games being played. At times evolution is used in a context which implies "change". Then there is a shift and the idea is blended without warning to mean speciation (Darwinism). Word meanings flip back and forth without distinction so credibility can clandestinely be transferred from what everyone knows to be true (genetic variation) to that which is unproven (Darwinian speciation).
The organisms that develop resistance to antibiotics are the same type of bacteria as before they developed resistance. They have not become a different kind of bacteria. Exposure to the solvent DMSO has made resistant bacteria again susceptible to the old antibiotics. The reason isn't certain, but it appears as if it might have something to do with an external coating rather than genetic coding. Inheriting a useful slime coat from a pool of bacteria (that reproduce by splitting) is now being trumpeted as evolution without evidence, just like AIDS is exploding in Africa without testing. An artifact of definition.
It's like how one might persistently catch colds until beginning to take vitamin C supplements. If I no longer catch colds, have I biologically evolved? The author would have you think so.
The actual criticism of Darwinism is directed at the claim new information (new species) can be developed by undirected natural selection. It just has not been observed to happen.
Now if you want to falsely represent the critics of Darwinism, you can define evolution to simply mean "change". Then every time there is change in a biological system -- bingo -- you can say it "evolved". And critics of Darwinism then can be made to appear foolish and ignorant by ignoring all the "evidence of evolution (change)" exploding around them. Deeply dishonest. Lousy thinking, lousy science.
Everyone is aware of genetic variation. Blonde and black-haired spouses may have brown-haired children; tall and short may produce children in-between, etc., etc. This is the biological equivalent of painting-between-the-lines; radically different from the production of new species and the origin of life.
The subject of antibiotic resistance is a serious and interesting one, but using it falsely to wrap around evolution as a disguising cover is disingenous; an act of propaganda, not science.
It is completely true that accepting genetic variation but not speciation is a failure of imagination. Imagination is simply not enough to do the job.
Speciation by natural selection is claimed to be a science, yet hasn't been observed,isn't repeatable and can't predict results. It's not science, but a philosophy of rationalization; it allows little stories to be constructed to explain why things are without regard to reality.
Darwinist start with the question "How do I want the universe to be?" and then determine truth to fit the answer. Actual science reverses the questions: "What is truth?" THEN "How shall we live?"
Science writing that will make creationists cringe........2002-05-02
This excellently-done book explores the human tendency to cause explosive evolution in our environments. Don't believe in evolution? Note how effectively we've caused many disease organisms to evolve resistance to our best antibiotics, in the course of less than 100 years. Or the fact that all of our food and pets have been selectively bred to exacting standards for more than 10,000 years. If we hadn't accelerated the evolution of maize, we'd still be eating cobs less than an inch long, you know. So there. And to counter your arguments: yes, selective breeding is too evolution. It's evolution by artificial selection, which is a perfectly valid mechanism. So there again.
Palumbi is both a colorful and informative writer. He spends a lot of time discussing HIV, and why it's so hard to beat (it mutates constantly, overwhelming the immune system). I would have liked a more in-depth discussion about whether humans are still evolving or not -- I think we are -- but he only touched on that subject. Nonetheless, highly recommended.
Why evolution Matters and why you should care........2002-01-12
This is a great read. Steven Palumbi shows everyone why evolution matters today in real and meaning ful ways.
Two quotes from the book
".. the best education is the one that bites back, the one that shows with clarity of glacial ice that the facts and principles of the scientific world are of crucial importance to every day life.... not through eclectic recourse to scientific theory or historical anecdote. Instead, I need to do it through examples about how evolution in the world around us matters."
And why does it matter: " And if antibiotic resistance just happens, then we have no notion of how it comes to be, and no real chance to block the rise of some of the world's deadliest forms of life. But if something evolves, then the science of evolution can chart the answer to why, and perhaps prevent or change it."
Colorful take on how we cause unwanted evolutionary change.......2001-11-24
It has become clear over the last few decades that evolution can take place much more rapidly than Darwin ever imagined. The evolution of the AIDS virus is a particularly compelling case in point, and one of the focal points of this engaging book about how our efforts to control our world can bring about unwanted evolutionary change over time periods measured not in millennia, but in weeks and months. Mostly it is microbial evolution that Harvard Professor of Biology Stephen Palumbi writes about, the AIDS virus, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, staph and other infections, but also insects and plants, particularly the insects that eat crops and the plants we call weeds, and even fish. At the center of change is the "evolutionary engine" that is continually at work adjusting organisms to their environments. Change the environment of a creature and the creature changes to keep its fit, a never-ending phenomenon that frustrates our efforts to eradicate harmful pests and deadly diseases.
Palumbi shows how it is not enough to spray our fields of amber grain with pesticides because the pests will inevitably evolve to flourish in the new pesticide-filled environment. It is not enough to throw antibiotics at the bacteria that invade our bodies because they too will evolve to flourish. Our efforts to combat the scourges of field and body are now seen as just one half of the prey/predator, parasite/host phenomenon of co-evolution. As Palumbi phrases it, "The disease dance continues, turning to the evolutionary tune, and both players must step smartly." (p. 90) We must take the power of life forms to evolve rapidly into account, and realize that they will react to our efforts. This is the evolutionary arms race, the "Red Queen" hypothesis, that keeps us (if we "step smartly"enough) and our enemies in the same place even though we are both running at full speed. This may be seen as a kind of cosmic joke at those who would find "progress" in evolution.
En route on bringing us up to speed on rapid evolutionary change, Palumbi sets some sort of record for the use of colorful language. There is some distraction as metaphors and analogies fly about like confetti at a wedding , but he is so clever that we forgive him. Some examples:
p 16: "...as unknown as the dreams of a sleeping infant."
p. 56: a trait (a recessive gene) is said to lie "dormant like thoughts on a Saturday morning."
p. 102: a virus is compared to a credit card.
p. 107: a typical viral attack on the immune system "has more plot twists than a soap opera."
p. 137: expressing the too-optimistic hopes of a five-year malaria eradication program: "...by then, surely malaria would be gone like the world's last car payment."
p. 240: "bad ideas" are compared to "anchovy daiquiris" that "live on only in a few people with fishy breath."
In short, this book colorfully illuminates one of the most significant conundrums of our time: despite our best pesticides, our most powerful antibiotics, our most clever and hopeful chemical cocktails, we are not winning the war against pests and disease. We are at best holding our own. The message of this book is perhaps we can do more if we take into account the power of the evolutionary engine, and finds ways to use it to our advantage.
Humans impact evolution.......2001-07-23
"The Evolution Explosion" by Stephen R. Palumbi, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2001.
By David Liscio
Anyone seeking an eloquent explanation of recent evolution as it relates to human impact -- from the use of herbicides, pesticides and antibiotics to AIDS treatment and genetic manipulation -- should find "The Evolution Explosion" a worthwhile read.
Harvard University biology professor Dr. Stephen R. Palumbi has written what is essentially a text on fast-paced evolution, in a style more akin to travel and adventure books, yet packed with scientific detail.
From the start, he explains that the task is "to bring home the equally common impact of evolution on daily life - and not through eclectic recourse to scientific theory or historical anecdote. Instead, I need to do it through examples about how evolution in the world around us matters." To make his point, Palumbi refers to the fertile soils of Kansas that "are part of the everyday life of millions of people - and billions of insects and weeds. And evolution lives among the fields and stalks the checkbooks of struggling farmers - here, like everywhere else, living in the many weed and insect species that have evolved resistance to pesticides." Palumbi notes that as long ago as 1954, a young Paul Ehrlich studied the impact of DDT and evolution of flies that would survive and resist the deadly chemical. As the author explains, Ehrlich's famous work, "The Population Bomb," is partially a result of "the DDT dustings (Ehrlich) and his future wife endured at drive-in movie theaters during Kansas' aborted attempt at mosquito eradication."
Consider this: American troops during WWII dusted themselves and civilians with a white powder. In 1944, entire neighborhoods of Italian villages were coated to keep typhus-bearing lice in check. The epidemic was soon declared dead. "But complete victory was short-lived, and only a year later, DDT-resistant insects were reported," Palumbi writes. "By 1946, houseflies in Sweden were resistant, and by 1951, mosquitoes and flies in Italy were resistant not only to DDT but also to a wide range of the new pesticidal chemicals like chlordane, methoxychlor, and heptachlor."
The author adds that both Egypt and the U.S. used DDT to control mosquito-borne malaria from 1947-52, even though the disease was already on the decline because of extensive dredging. It is yet another example of attempts by human to intervene and, ultimately, speed up the natural evolutionary process.
Palumbi, 44, who in 1996 relocated his laboratory after 11 years from the University of Hawaii to Harvard, articulately lays out the issues surrounding AIDS treatment, the use of antibiotics, and the genetic "tinkering" linked to the fight against crop-destroying diseases, all framed in terms of evolutionary speed.
The researcher most recently caused a stir in the scientific community by using molecular genetics to show that the meat of a certain whale species was contained in fish products sold by Japanese commercial markets. Although the product was marked as containing whale, Palumbi's technique showed that the specific whale was a member of an endangered species.
The book publicist quotes Harvard University's Edward O. Wilson as commenting that Palumbi "has hit upon and clearly explains one of the most important but widely neglected issues of our time in biology, medicine and agriculture: the potential for the swift evolution of our organisms when accelerated by human activity."
Bottom line: evolution is generally thought of as slow, with significant change requiring millions of years, yet human intervention can dramatically speed up the process through efforts to improve the quality of life. The benefits and risks of such intervention must not be ignored....
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