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Evolution: Making Sense of Life.--Carl Zimmer and Douglas J. Emlen.

Article in Systematic Biology · July 2013

DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syt017

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 Book Reviews

Syst. Biol. 62(4):633–634, 2013

© The Author(s) 2013. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Society of Systematic Biologists. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
DOI:10.1093/sysbio/syt017
Advance Access publication March 7, 2013

Evolution: Making Sense of Life. Carl Zimmer and phenotypes, selection, adaptation, microevolution,
Douglas J. Emlen. 2013. Roberts and Co., Greenwood macroevolution, and behavior, and ending with human
Village, CO. xxxiii+660 pp. ISBN 978-1-936221-17-2, $92 evolution and medicine. I have seen few books that try
(hardback); ISBN 978-1-936221-36-3, $80 (paperback), to create an interesting storyline throughout, and yet
$80 (iPad app). this one does. The objective has not been to present
evolutionary studies but rather to make studying
I started out really wanting to like this book, and I evolution interesting. This is a laudable goal, and it has
ended up finishing it still wanting to like it, but things been amply achieved.

Downloaded from http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/ by David Morrison on June 8, 2013

went astray somewhere in between. In essence, I think The content is as current as you could expect, but
that everyone involved has tried just a bit too hard to obviously only until last year, and only from the authors’
produce this book, and they have over-done it in a way perspective. This does create a few problems, arising
that makes the whole seem less than the sum of the parts. from the fact that the book leads you to expect an
Evolution: Making Sense of Life is an interesting unreasonable degree of currency. For example, topics
collaboration between a well-known science writer and such as junk DNA, or phylogenetic networks versus
an academic biologist. Carl Zimmer is an award-winning trees, get mentioned, but not in a way that will allow
writer on evolution, with several books for the masses the book to remain contemporaneous. It is true that one
under his belt, whereas Douglas Emlen is a professor way to engage the interest of students is by presenting
of evolutionary biology at the University of Montana last week’s news rather than last year’s, but I doubt
(in the United States). According to Emlen’s professional that a textbook could ever do this. Currency should
homepage, the collaboration had one main goal: be the preserve of the students’ interactions with their
a revolutionary new textbook designed from instructors, not their authors.
the start to be an enjoyable and engaging Moreover, Zimmer and Emlen wished to create
read. Evolution reflects our shared vision a “reading adventure” but, instead of being an
for what modern textbooks can be: exciting, introductory story, it is more like The Lord of the Rings,
relevant, concept-oriented, and gorgeously an epic saga in the Scandinavian tradition. This is hardly
illustrated; a reading adventure designed to surprising, because the more you look at something in
grab the imagination of students, showing biology the more complex it turns out to be. Evolution,
them exactly why it is that evolution makes as the over-arching conceptual framework for all of the
such brilliant sense of life. biological sciences, is thus inevitably the most complex
idea (or set of ideas) to fully grasp. However, I am not
This goal is an important concept for me, because my sure that this is what a textbook should be trying to do,
earliest book reviews (in the early 1990s) concerned as even I found the book rather over-whelming. That is,
themselves very much with the search for a textbook that while trying to present the message “evolution is all-
presented systematics as an interesting science rather encompassing,” the authors end up saying “evolution
than solely as one component of academic intellectual is over-whelming.” Trying to keep track of all of the
activity. I failed to find any such thing at the time. information was like trying to keep track of all the
So, Zimmer and Emlen have their hearts in the right Russian names in a Tolstoy novel.
place, as far as I am concerned. My concern is that Perhaps it works better as a textbook, which is read
they may have missed their goal simply by trying a bit at a time over the several months of a semester,
too hard. but even then this might not quite work. There are 18
The writing in the book itself is smooth and engaging, chapters, ranging from 18–52 pages, although most are
which is perhaps the book’s greatest strength. A textbook in the 32–40 page range. Since semesters often have 12–
can consist of “a page of dry text defining some obscure 13 weeks of classes (plus tests, etc.), the question for an
term in biology” (to quote a book review that I once instructor becomes which chapters to leave out, or which
read), but Zimmer and Emlen have succeeded in going to combine into a single session. A perusal of the web
well beyond this. There is, sadly, no way to make a for courses that have already adopted the book (which
textbook read like a novel, but making it readable is itself came out in August 2012, even though the copyright date
a meaningful goal in science. is 2013) indicates that the most popular ones to skip are
The book is organized in an innovative way, starting the final four, on partnerships, behavior, humans, and
with the science and philosophy of evolution, then medicine, and the first couple of chapters are most often
proceeding through fossils, phylogenetics, genotypes, combined.

633

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 634 SYSTEMATIC BIOLOGY VOL. 62

Emlen has also commented: “We want this book to writing, the Evolution app is up to Version 1.3, so most of
be fun to read and, more importantly, we want the the bugs have been ironed out.
content to stick in the minds of students.” These are, Importantly, in this case, the app is not simply
indeed, 2 distinct goals, as the one does not necessarily an adjunct to the printed version of the book but
imply the other. Perhaps the most obvious approach is a stand-alone multimedia “experience” containing
used by the authors to providing an “engaging read” is to images, audio and video clips, and interactive graphics
present anecdotes, both about people (at the start of each and exercises. For example, when reading about the
chapter) and about organisms (during the chapters). way male frogs attract females when mating, you can
However, using anecdotes about each topic is burdened actually listen to the difference between apparently
with the possibility that the anecdotes will be the only attractive and nonattractive calls. Also, you can highlight
remembered thing. Indeed, there are comments in online text information and make notes in the margins,
review sites that suggest that this has in fact happened: and then create custom study sheets that incorporate
“you’ll never care (or, in my case, remember) what the supplemental information.
Buri experiment is, [but] at least you’ll remember what Zimmer and Emlen are at the forefront of the move
a Harlequin beetle or an okapi looks like” (from Joanna, to enhanced digital presentation. As Kwok (2012) has
at GoodReads). noted: “publishers are increasingly placing equal or

Downloaded from http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/ by David Morrison on June 8, 2013

The authors’ approach to providing something that greater importance on the digital product rather than
is “gorgeously illustrated” has, I am sorry to say, turned considering it as an add-on to the printed book.” This
out as far too many illustrations per page. The individual kills 2 birds with one stone—authors can focus on “the
photos are very pleasing, and the graphs and other complete learning experience” rather than trying to do
processed data are clear and informative, but there are everything with written words, and the readers can stop
simply too many per page for there to be any visual feeling like they are doing weight training every time
coherence. Sorting out what was what on each and every they try to learn something. A similar thing can be said
page became a real challenge after a while. I am not about species-identification books, where a printed book
convinced that I will even remember what an okapi is both heavier and less useful than an interactive app,
looks like, because by the end of the book I had over- especially in the field (Morrison 2011).
dosed. So, the content is to some extent buried under the So, the bottom line with Evolution is that this is a very
presentation. Even the index is in 4 colors (plus italics). well-intentioned book that achieves many laudable aims
Once again, here I think that less might be more. but simply goes too far in trying to achieve its overall
The over-whelming nature of the book is also goal—the sum of the parts ends up being more than the
translated into its size, of course. William Goldman, the whole. I sincerely hope that this can be addressed in a
novelist and scriptwriter, once wrote a large book (Boys second edition.
and Girls Together), about which he later claimed one
reviewer wrote: “‘a child of nine could understand this
book before he could lift it’ . . . from there the review got REFERENCES
really bad.” Zimmer and Emlen are lucky not to have Kwok R. 2012. Going digital. Nature 485:405–407.
that same reviewer, because their book has 713 pages Morrison D.A. 2011. Why is taxonomy still presented to the world as
and weighs 2 kg, even in paperback. If you try to read books? Aust. Syst. Bot. Soc. Newslett. 149:17–22.
this book in bed, it is literally life-threatening.
So, do yourself a favor, and get a copy of the app for
your iPad Mini, instead, because this is precisely the type David A. Morrison, Section for Parasitology, Swedish University
of book that Apple had in mind when they designed that of Agricultural Sciences, 751 89 Uppsala, Sweden; E-mail: David.
device to help with your bedtime reading. At the time of [email protected]

Syst. Biol. 62(4):634–637, 2013

© The Author(s) 2013. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Society of Systematic Biologists. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
DOI:10.1093/sysbio/syt026
Advance Access publication April 18, 2013

Tree Thinking: An Introduction to Phylogenetic mainstream biology. Unfortunately, along with this
Biology. David A. Baum and Stacey D. Smith. 2012. shift came the realization that phylogenetic trees
Roberts and Co., Greenwood Village, CO. xx+476 pp. are prone to misinterpretation. A phylogenetic tree
ISBN 9978-1-936221-16-5 $US75 (hardback). provides a particular type of narrative representation of
evolutionary history (O’Hara 1992), and one needs to
For many years, phylogenetics was a topic confined grasp “tree thinking” to correctly interpret this form of
largely to systematics. However, after the “molecular narrative.
revolution” phylogenies began to permeate nearly Systematists tend to take it for granted that
every branch of the biological sciences, and they a phylogenetic tree is straightforward to interpret.
have since become tools that are common throughout However, in the real world this is clearly not so, and tree

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