Customer Reviews

Nature: An Economic History

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book begs to be reviewed. It is magisterial in scope, thesis, and evidence gathering. To read it is to follow along with the mind of a master. The book's title gives the thesis - to study nature's ecosystems as economies. Predator and prey are construed as consumer and producer. Ecosystems are compared as between different evolutionary eras, continents versus islands, and different climactic regimes to pull out principle relations among and between economies such as power. An easy sample: "Ecologically, this means that powerful entities are large, fast, wide-ranging, rapidly metabolizing units capable of exerting strong forces, storing and regulating resources, and responding appropriately to a wide variety of circumstances. Power makes for prolific producers and demanding consumers with a wide reach." (p. 124)

The book gave me the sense of the author's being onto something really important, but at the same time the thesis came off somewhat diffuse and without the punch of a mature new theory (why I gave only 4 stars). On the other hand the ideas and the evidence presented are dazzling. The author's specialty, animals with shells, especially came into view as a startlingly large and important group of organisms with great evolutionary variety of shell strength and design against various predators in different "economies." I try to imagine someone's reading it who is not engaged in the advances of evolutionary theory or in the massive new evidence being gathered or who is not intrigued with the biology/economics similarities. Often the animal stories version of natural history are there, but I am afraid that the abstract complexes of organisms dominate. Still, with work, an exciting book to be grateful for.

My sense is that this book is a great book, great in the sense of significant or important, but I found the prose to be impenetrable. It was like wading through molasses: very tasty, but the effort, oh the effort! (I got halfway through Chapter 3 before succumbing to exhaustion.)

I give it 5 stars for content and 1 star for the writing, so the average is 3 stars.