Under the category of 'Science is Where You Find It' I'd like to recommend
Candice Millard's book 'River of Doubt'. It deals with Theodore Roosevelt's
trip to the Amazon Basin in 1914. The trip started out as a light vacation but
somewhere along the line changed to a full expedition along the here-to-fore
unnamed river nicknamed River of Doubt by previous explorers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Roosevelt Catastrophe ensued. But that's
another story and completely off topic.
What I did like about Millard's work was the time she took dealing with a
myriad of other topics, apart from Teddy Roosevelt. She went into the plate
tectonics of the Amazon Basin, something I wasn't familiar with, the
development of the Telegraph system in Brazil, some anthropology (I'm sure most
of what was written at the time by the explorers was racist at best) and
Brazil's humanist political movement that shaped Brazil's flag and politics for
the 20th century. She does write quite a bit about botany, the intense
competition for resources and methods of reproduction along with co-evolution
of species. Something I didn't expect to find in a book ostensibly about Teddy
Roosevelt.
As someone once said about Eric Hansen's book 'Stranger in the Forest', 'River
of Doubt' is a cracking good yarn. No orchids per se, but a cracking good yarn.
A blend of excitement and science, what more could you ask for?
K Barrett
N Calif, USA
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