Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

The late-18th-century naturalist Andre Michaux is known, even to most botanists, only as the author citation "Michx" on the hundreds of binomials for eastern US plants he discovered and named. This book goes far beyond plant names to focus on the journals and letters of this major plant explorer, who made a dozen collecting trips from his base in Charleston (South Carolina) into the eastern US and Canada. Williams (ret., Charlotte Mecklenburg Library), Norman (emer., Stetson Univ.), and Taylor (emer., Univ. of Central Florida) translated Michaux's notebooks from the French and provide excellent summaries of each trip along with copious footnotes. The notebooks comprise 280 pages of text, with clarifying footnotes adding another 100. Appendixes include 18 pages of excellent photographs of plants Michaux encountered and another 44 pages of tables summarizing plants and animals described, including the name Michaux used, the modern binomial, and page references for the species in his journal. This work is a significant contribution to the history of American natural history. The journal entries offer fascinating accounts of traveling in colonial North America in search of plants, and the footnotes provide useful elaboration. Readers interested in natural history, whether professionally or as an avocation, will find much of value here.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.

Focusing on botanical gardens, traditionally associated with medical schools, still symbols of colonization, and sources for potential commercial exploitation of plants from around the world, Neves (Concordia Univ., Montreal) here addresses the crucial contemporary role they play as repositories of DNA and protectors of endangered plant species and biota with potential pharmacological uses or special cultural significance. Botanical gardens today serve as public spaces for enjoyment, and call attention to preserving the natural environment and preventing further erosion of biodiversity. Neves offers multiple case studies: one chapter is devoted to the history of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew; another to the Espace Pour la Vie in Montreal, a consortium of science institutions including the Montreal Biodome, Botanical Garden, and Insectarium. Further case studies include the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, the Bristol Zoo Gardens, and the "Communities in Nature" initiative in Singapore. Anyone interested in climate change and how enlightened governments can help ensure the biodiversity of the planet will find this a compelling book. It is full of dramatic examples illustrating how politics and personal interests must combine to save the planet as we know it, or perhaps more accurately, as it once was.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This work portrays an interesting method of looking at history as revealed by the science of dendrochronology, the study of growth rings in trees. The text unfolds as a narrative, based on the author's own personal history. Trouet (Univ. of Arizona) describes her career in the scholarly world, from her beginnings as a young student in Belgium up to her success as a US academic, where she is currently a faculty member of the renowned Tree-Ring Lab in Arizona, literally the home of her chosen discipline. Trouet's research has taken her to many countries on various continents to examine patterns in the trees found in each environment and explore what their rings reveal about the climactic and biological changes that may have taken place there in the remote past. Often Trouet has been accompanied by students/colleagues, and her account of trips to locales ranging from deserts to high mountain ranges is both substantive and entertaining. The rings themselves can play their own role in geopolitics, as shown by Trouet's observations on climate change and the debate over a perceived dismal future. Her conclusions are particularly arresting, projecting the inundation of certain land masses in the not-too-distant future. In this intellectual autobiography, man-made climate change plays a role of utmost importance.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.